KEY POINTS:
Police admit they bungled an emergency 111 call by failing to send patrol cars to a violent knifepoint attack in the Bay of Plenty.
A senior officer says an inexperienced operator at the Auckland- based northern communications centre made mistakes in dealing with the call made as two men with a knife entered an Omokoroa dairy at the weekend.
They struck the Omokoroa Beach Store on Saturday at 5pm, threatening staff and customers and trying get away with a charity box.
Customer Jo Anthony dialled 111 as the attack was happening but the operator finished up by saying: "Okay, thanks very much."
Ms Anthony said: "And that was it. I hung up, sort of amazed."
It sounded like they weren't going to send a police car, which she said "bewildered" her. The store's owner was furious.
Police finally turned up yesterday - 43 hours later.
Superintendent Steve Fitzgerald, the Communications Centre National Manager, said that he was "certain that we didn't get it right" and that police should have made the incident a priority and attended.
"I couldn't see any issue in terms of having no patrols available in the Tauranga area to actually attend that incident."
When asked if patrols were available and if the call had slipped through the net, his response was "that's exactly right". "There are issues that we need to look at internally.
"Certainly if I look at our volume of calls, the amount of mistakes, which do happen, and mistakes will happen from time to time, they are very very small, not that that would provide much comfort to the residents of Omokoroa.
"Principally we had a younger call taker, somebody who hadn't been there that long, and who made an error of judgment," Mr Fitzgerald said .
He said a senior officer from his office and Western Bay area commander Inspector Mike Clement would go to Omokoroa and talk to the store owner plus the 111 caller.
"It might be at the same time we need to speak to that group and provide them some assurance that we will respond to their triple- one calls, because fundamentally, there is no alternative to the triple one service so, from my perspective, we need to get it right and learn from these incidents, however regrettable they are."
During the attack, one of the men, believed to be on drugs, started getting "angrier and angrier."
Ms Anthony, the store supervisor, another customer with children and a 17-year-old worker were in the store at the time, while two 14-year- old workers watched the events unfold on a monitor at the back of the shop.
"I was waiting at the counter and he started ... swearing and being obnoxious," she said.
The offender broke an egg, which Ms Anthony told him to pick up.
"Then a customer came up behind me and said just be careful because one of them has apparently got a knife on him," she said.
The store supervisor, who was now standing beside the 17-year-old teenager behind the counter, whispered: "He has a knife, you better call the cops" to Ms Anthony.
The 49-year-old then nipped out the back where the 14-year-olds were watching the incident unfold on a security monitor.
"I then dialled 111," she said.
In the store, one of the two robbers held a knife out to the 17-year-old teenager, who was behind the counter and threatened to kill him and a customer.
The 17-year-old, who works part-time at the store, told the Bay of Plenty Times: "He started saying 'I'm going to ... kill you'.
"I thought ... 'I don't want to get stabbed today' ... I saw he had a knife up and thought, 'what's going to happen now?"'
After dialling 111, Ms Anthony relayed the situation to the operator, including that the men were swearing and that they had a knife. She stayed on the phone while they continued to harass the 17-year-old.
Another customer, who had two small children with him, eventually coaxed the knife-wielding man out of the store.
The robbers fled, dropping a charity box they had stolen, and made their getaway in a blue station wagon.
The make and number plate are unknown.
- Bay of Plenty Times
