Three hour wait for police after stab threat (From Your Local Guardian)

Three hour wait for police after stab threat

9:46am Wednesday 16th July 2008 in

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An infuriated mum said police took nearly three hours to respond to a 999 call after three teenage girls threatened to stab her.

And instead of a patrol car arriving at her door she received a phone call from the police station asking if the vandals were still there.

Claire Daws, 28, from Duppas Hill Lane, dialled 999 at 3.45pm after catching three girls painting slogans on her garage door. When she confronted them they said that they would stab her.

She said: "My seven-year-old daughter saw three girls drawing on our garage door, they were probably only about 13-years-old. When I went outside to confront them they denied that they had done anything, even although I had caught them red-handed. The paint on the garage door was still wet."

“I could have cooked these girls a three course meal in the time it took the police to call me back. I could be laying there in a pool of blood for all they know."

Claire Daws

She told the girls to leave which they refused to do. "When I said I would call the police, they said: Call the police, we'll stab you and we'll stab them too.'"

She said that the girls did not pull out any knives but she was worried that they would carry out their threat in front of her daughter.

She called the police and when they had not responded by 6.30pm she contacted the Croydon Guardian.

She said: "I could have cooked these girls a three course meal in the time it took the police to call me back. I could be laying there in a pool of blood for all they know.

"They eventually phoned me back three hours later to ask if the girls were still there. When I asked them why it had taken so long they said that they were dealing with more urgent calls.

Maybe those girls were bluffing and they did not have a knife but how can the police be taking knife crime seriously when they don't come to a defenceless woman who has been threatened like this?"

When contacted for comment, a police spokeswoman said: "The correct procedure here if a member of the public believes they have had a poor service is for them to get in touch and it will be looked into.

"You must understand that we cannot start giving explanations through the pages of a local newspaper about why officers were late turning up."