Garda has addressed flaws in responding to 999 calls, Drew Harris tells forum

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has said a new control system for dealing with emergency calls, including sexual assaults, has addressed serious shortcomings identified in a review of the Garda response to 999 calls.

Mr Harris said that improvements had been made to staffing and training issues in addition to better control and supervision since the report was published last year.

The review was commissioned after it emerged that thousands of emergency calls were cancelled by gardaí, resulting in some victims not receiving the immediate assistance they required.

The review published last autumn identified “substantial shortcomings” in call handling, giving rise to a potential for serious harm to victims.

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[ New €40m Garda ‘control centre’ opens for Dublin’s 999 calls and city CCTV ]

[ Garda ‘will never know’ whether harm was caused over mishandling of 999 calls by its members ]

“We have accepted those recommendations and they’ve been implemented both in terms of staffing, training, supervision and then review of calls, particularly critical calls.

“We have introduced a new command control system called Garda Safe. That allows us a good deal more supervision of the calls, and the nature of the calls, and making sure that we don’t miss incidents.

“A third part of that is on the Pulse [system]. We’ve added a relationship field and that’s been able to identify all our domestic abuse incidents which might have been missed, beyond partner relationships, [extending to] intimate relationships in terms of within a family.”

The Garda Commissioner was speaking at the margins of a seminar for the Women’s Aid Annual Impact Report in Dublin on Tuesday. It discussed a record number of 31,229 contacts during 2022, the highest-ever received by the organisation in its 50-year history. It represented an increase of 16 per cent on contacts from 2021.

Asked what focus An Garda Síochána was putting on domestic abuse, Mr Harris said it was integral to the work of the force.

“[It is important] from the moment the 999 call is received. From that moment on, we have to think about the victim and how we can gain the confidence of the victim.

“Very often we have to build a relationship so that we have a full understanding of the offender and what has been perpetrated on them [the victim]. It’s our job then obviously, to investigate that but also to protect the victim as best we can to go on forward. All of that we take very seriously.

[ Garda ‘999’ call failures prevented sexual assaults being investigated ]

[ Women’s Aid records highest number of domestic abuse contacts in 50-year history ]

“We have a national unit, the Protective Services Bureau, but at every division we have specialist teams that have been trained and are experienced in dealing with both domestic abuse and sexual abuse. So we put resources and training and personnel into this.”

Asked about incidents where serving members of the Garda were accused of domestic abuse or of sexual assault, he said the force also took its responsibilities seriously in that regard.

“There is zero tolerance for domestic abuse, there’s zero tolerance for coercive control. They’re investigated properly.”

He said those allegations would be fully investigated by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) as well.

“We’ve seen recent court outcomes where individuals have been convicted of serious offences and have been properly dealt with through the criminal justice system.

“We would say that any individual who is related to a member of An Garda Síochána and they may be afraid to come forward, go to Gsoc or come to us, and we will take your allegation seriously and we will properly investigate it,” he added.

Sarah Benson, the chief executive of Women’s Aid, said it had organised the seminar following the disclosure there was a sharp increase in contacts from distressed women between 2021 and 2022.

“What we’re doing at the seminar today is actually making sure that we keep the conversation going. We need to continue to highlight the opportunities for all aspects of society – statutory organisations, police, employers and the community – to play a role in doing more to support victims and survivors of domestic abuse.

“It’s an epidemic in this country, but actually, we’ve never seen better alignment to do more together to actually create a better response,” she said.