The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Human error to blame for failures, say police
Force denies closure of call centres has had a detrimental effect
Police Scotland’s failure to properly respond to more than 200 calls for help is not connected to the force’s decision to axe some of its call centres, a senior officer has said.
Assistant Chief Constable Nelson Telfer insisted the 202 recorded incidents were down to human error rather than the move to rationalise call handling.
Police Scotland has shut its Aberdeen call centre and is pushing ahead with plans to close its Inverness facility.
Mr Telfer told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “I don’t think the centralisation of call handling or any process we have put in place or any systems that we use to back that up have got anything to do with this.
“I’ve already said this is the human factor. When human beings are dealing with decision making, sometimes the decision making will be wrong and we need to pick up on that and learn from it and move forward.
“I would love to operate in a perfect world, but there’s always going to be that human factor and no one lives in an error-free environment.”
He spoke out after Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson demanded answers from First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, saying MSPs had previously been “promised” the reduction in police control rooms would not result in a loss of local knowledge.
The Tory chief said a suicidal caller who rang the police was told to “hang up”, while no officers were dispatched to help a couple who rang 999 when their front door was “being kicked in”.
Other cases she highlighted included “a woman threatened by her ex-partner who didn’t get a response from police because they were sent to the wrong address” and “a man threatened with a knife where police were sent to the right flat in the right street but in the wrong town”.
Mr Telfer said: “The bottom line is our staff are now confident in declaring mistakes and learning from them.
“Don’t think I’m making any excuses for mistakes being made, one for me is too many. But we need to put this into context.
“This is over a period where we received in excess of 2.2 million calls, both emergency and non-emergency calls and the 202 incidents we’re talking about is 0.009% – that’s the human factor there.”