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GARDAÍ ARE FORCED to waste time on frivolous call outs because of an “over-correction” in the wake of the cancelled 999 calls scandal.
That is the conclusion of Dr Elaine Byrne, the who is the chair of the Policing and Community Safety Authority (PCSA).
In an interview with The Journal Byrne criticised how operational gardaí are now forced to respond to calls they should not be called to deal with.
The PCSA has taken over the role of the Policing Authority and Garda Inspectorate and acts as a civilian oversight of how gardaí carry out policing.
She said that gardaí are wasting time with calls that they should not be responding to and that these calls should be cancelled.
As revealed by The Journal, gardaí are facing a backlog of hundreds of calls on a daily basis across the country because there is now no triaging of calls. First reported in 2023, multiple sources said this week that the situation is unchanged.
The Policing Authority carried out a major enquiry into the 999 call cancelling scandal. This identified failings in how domestic violence calls were responded.
Arising out of that exchange between senior garda management and the oversight body, a dramatic policy was introduced that all calls from the public must be responded to by a garda.
Byrne said she and her colleagues have spoken and listened to operational gardaí and they have raised those concerns with senior garda management.
“We hear this all around the country. It’s a constant pattern that you have an over-correction.
“Now guards are being called out to things that they should never have been categorised as a call for service, and in fact, that call should have been cancelled.
“Before you had excessive calls being cancelled for reasons that shouldn’t have happened, particularly calls around domestic violence.
“What you have now is calls that should be cancelled that aren’t cancelled,” she said.
She said an example would be a call from the public of a suspicious car passing through a community which can only be responded to “two days later” because of the volume of calls.
“There needs to be maybe a greater prioritisation of categorising what is a call for service, because it takes a lot of resources,” she added.
Byrne said that policing is now more complex than ever for gardaí and that they are struggling to meet the huge volume of work.
“There’s not an indefinite amount of resources for the guards and there needs to be a prioritisation of what the guards focus on.
“There is an over-correction, and this is a management issue that they need to take responsibility about,” she added.
Gardaí primarily respond to criminal emergency incidents such as fights, domestic violence, cases of robbery and thefts as well as road crashes and damage to property.
They have no role in resolving civil disputes such as arguments over contracts, refusal of service in a shop or pub, rental complaints.
Recently Waterford-based garda Peter Firth told the Garda Representative Association conference about what members were facing in dealing with unnecessary calls.
“We have a very weak policy in relation to the Garda decision-making model due to the level of oversight and fear of discipline.
“People are very slow to cancel calls because gardaí are worried that a member of the public might complain or that someone in management might perceive a call that we didn’t attend as one we should have. Again it’s a fear of discipline.
“We are getting calls that are never a policing matter and they’re being responded to by An Garda Síochána. Sometimes those responses are absolutely laughable,” he said.
Firth said gardaí have been sent to a call as ludicrous as “people eating crisps on a bus” after a call from a member of the public who did not like the smell.
The conference heard there was another call about nesting birds being trapped in a house. Gardaí also were called to a householder who thought her dog was suicidal and gardaí in south Kilkenny were called to a sighting of a suspicious pheasant in a pub car park.
Firth said such calls, while being absurd, are pulling gardaí away from incidents that are much more important.
On a more serious level, Firth had said that routine mental health calls should not be dealt with by gardaí but rather specialist HSE workers.
A statement from An Garda Síochána said they do not comment on “third party remarks” but said that explained that a large volume of calls do require policing responses.
It said that in 2023 it introduced a new Computer Aided Dispatch system known as ‘GardaSAFE’.
“This new system enhances and improves our response and allow more efficient use of our resources thereby ensuring that the public receive the best possible response.
“GardaSAFE sees all calls requiring the dispatch of a Garda resource handled by a number of regionally located control centres. These control centres are staffed by trained call takers and call dispatchers,” the statement added.
It concluded that it delivers a community policing service to rural and urban areas using a “partnership based, proactive, problem solving style of policing”.
It said that part of that is around “quality of life issues” impacting communities.
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