The calls for help from a 17-year-old boy dying of a drugs overdose in police custody went unheeded by a cells officer more interested in surfing the internet, a fatal accident inquiry lasting 19 days found.
She noted, “Steps have, however, now been taken, by means of an upgrade to the computer system.”
The findings continue, “Kristoffer should have been classed as ‘highly vulnerable’ and subject to half-hourly checks. Instead he was classed as of low vulnerability, meaning that he was to be checked every hour.”
Buzzers for prisoners to summon help had been deliberately switched off in every cell “some years ago,” although the light warning system remained functional. Sheriff Munro recommended that the lights and buzzer system for prisoners attracting attention should be extended, “so that custody care assistants cannot hide from it.”
It should also be extended to the floor level above the cells, so sergeants in charge of the section can properly supervise custody care assistants, “ensuring that calls for assistance by prisoners are being answered within a reasonable time.”
She also recommended that, “The decision whether or not to carry out a strip search should take into account the fact that a prisoner has handed himself in voluntarily (with opportunity to conceal drugs on his person).”
In accordance with the definition by the European Court of Human Rights and most EU states, she said, “A young person up to the age of 18 should be automatically classed as a juvenile and highly vulnerable while he is in police custody.”
The sheriff recommended that Tayside Police draw up detailed job descriptions for male and female custody care assistants as, “There is at present a complete lack of clarity regarding their individual and joint responsibilities in relation to prisoners of both sexes.”
Custody care assistant Stuart Lewis faced separate court proceedings because of the answers he gave in evidence to the inquiry. He was held in contempt of court by Sheriff Munro after she lost patience with Lewis and his account of what happened on the night Mr Batt died.
Lewis spent two days in the witness box in May last year, insisting he had been carrying out “work-related activity” when he was in fact on the internet. The contempt case was heard before Sheriff Richard Davidson.
Sheriff Munro said the answers given to her by Lewis were “evasive, inconsistent, equivocal, implausible and incredible.” He was then warned about being obstructive and Sheriff Munro said he continued to give answers in much the same manner.
It was only six weeks later, after being recalled to the witness box, that he admitted he had been on the internet on at least 59 occasions during his shift. By then he had been confronted with evidence from an expert who had carried out an examination of the computer being used on November 28, 2007. He explained that by the time he came to give evidence last year he thought internet access had been removed from the computer before that date and he accepted he had given inaccurate evidence.
Sheriff Davidson noted that, from Lewis’s questioning by Sheriff Munro, depute fiscal Keith Robertson and solicitor for Mr Batt’s family William Boyle all thought the explanation for the earlier inaccurate evidence was “unacceptable and untrue.”
Sheriff Davidson found, “I am inclined to believe that his position was confused because of the knowledge of the true position, as disclosed by the expert report, and his inability to explain that to himself.” He held that Lewis had “purged” his contempt by telling the truth in his second appearance in the witness box and was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt about being deliberately obstructive.
Court orders restricted reporting of the latter stages of the fatal accident inquiry and prevented any report of the contempt proceedings until Tuesday.
For more on this story, read today’s edition of The Courier.
Sheriff Elizabeth Munro yesterday issued findings aimed at ensuring Tayside Police’s failures which contributed to the death of Kristoffer Batt should never happen again.
Mr Batt, who lived with his parents in Craichie, near Forfar, died on November 28, 2007 after surrendering himself at 4am that day in answer to a warrant issued for his arrest. He had taken diazepam (valium) before he handed himself in and had smuggled heroin into the cells, leaving the sheriff to conclude he was killed by the combined effects of the drugs he had taken.
The sheriff was highly critical of the conduct of custody care assistant Stuart Lewis, responsible for Mr Batt and other male prisoners.
She said, “He admitted falsifying records of cell visits that night. He deliberately spent long periods in a part of the cells area where he could not see the assistance light system.” This was because he was browsing the internet in the fingerprints office.
“He accessed the internet on at least 59 occasions during his shift that night. Despite having signed up to (Tayside Police) force policy that employees should only access the internet for business purposes, the sites he accessed were, almost without exception, nothing to do with his work.”
As a consequence, the sheriff continued, “There was a failure by Stuart Lewis to respond to Kristoffer’s light being on on two occasions the first time for 49 minutes and the second for over 15 minutes.
“On the second occasion, when he finally attended, he failed to ask Kristoffer why he had called for assistance and failed to switch off his assistance light, leaving Kristoffer without further means of calling for assistance. It is likely that Kristoffer had taken the heroin around this time.”Inadequate supervisionSheriff Munro found there was inadequate supervision of custody care assistants. In her summary she also said, “Kristoffer should have been strip searched before being placed in a cell.”
The reason he was not was because there was no information about him having admitted to abusing drugs available to the officers dealing with him. At the time a police computer had “lost its facility for transferring information from a previous occasion when a person had been in custody” to the basic computer record for that person.
“Tayside Police had done nothing to provide an alternative system which would have ensured that previous information regarding a prisoner’s drug problem was known to the sergeant assessing the vulnerability of that prisoner,” the sheriff said. This was despite manual records being kept in an area near where prisoners are first assessed.”