Irena Asher

The NZ Herald has a transcript of the three calls Irena Asher made to the Police.

Upon reading the first call I have some sympathy for the staff, as it wasn’t evident the caller needed emergency assistance. However as I read through the next two calls my view changed that at this point they should have erred on the side of caution and sent a police car. If a young vulnerable caller has three times said they are scared, you can’t assume it is just self imposed distress.

The Police need to be both resources, and have internal priorities, so that they can respond to emergency call-outs like this, rather than take the risk of assuming (tragically in this case) that it isn’t an emergency.