Chief Apologizes For Mistake in Murder Case

The police chief of Abbotsford (BC) apologized to the entire community and to the family of a woman who was murdered woman, telling them a dispatcher erred by not sending police in response to a 911 call for help.

After a five-month investigation, chief Bob Rich said officers should have been dispatched to the home of Hendrikje Priester after a hang-up 911 call. Instead, the unnamed dispatcher talked to a man during a call-back to the house, and decided no police were needed.

Priester was found dead about 12 hours later and her common-law husband was later charged with manslaughter. Police have not said if the husband was the person the dispatcher spoke to during the call-back.

The town of 131.800 is about 45 miles southeast of Vancouver (BC).

Rich said he met with Priester’s family to report the findings of the department ‘s investigation and to apologize for how it was handled.

“It was very difficult for them to go through all the details with them, so I appreciated how open they were to taking the facts and to understand what had occurred that night,” Rich said. “We obviously are doing everything we can to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

He repeated the same apology during a press conference the next day. “On behalf of the Abbotsford Police Department, I want to express our apologies to the victim’s family,” he said. “I am confident that a full and complete review of the circumstances surrounding the call was conducted.”

Rich said the dispatcher fielded the call, heard the hang-up, and called the telephone number back. No one answered on that call and a second attempt. On a third call-back, a man answered and the dispatcher concluded that police weren’t needed.

“She did her best to find out what was going on, which is exactly what we ask them to do,” Rich said. However, he said the dispatcher should still have dispatched an officer.

“We have concluded that the procedures we have in place were not followed correctly and that an officer should have been dispatched,” said Rich.

Rich said the comm center handles tens of thousands of 911 calls each year, and not all of them receive a police response. “The operator’s No. 1 job is to determine when a police officer should be dispatched and when there should be a response and when there shouldn’t be a response,” he said.

He said the dispatcher received undisclosed discipline, and was reassigned to another unit of the police department.

When asked, Rich said it was impossible to know if a prompt response would have changed the outcome. “There’s a horrible consequence at the end of this and that’s that a woman is dead. I actually don’t know whether if we would have shown up that night we would have been able to prevent the death or not, but of course I’m acknowledging that’s possible.”

He added, “That’s the horrible question that we’re left with.”

Rich declined to release details of the 911 call or the incident, since the investigation and prosecution is continuing.

“We are sincerely sorry that this happened, we wish we could take it back,” Rich said, “but that’s not the way the world actually works. We wish we’d gone that night.”