Police Directorate eight months late

Norwegian heads of Police. Photo: Police Directorate

Police Directorate eight months late with instructions after triple murder

Eight months after the deadline expired, the Police Directorate begins work to provide better routines for alerting all emergency services in case of dramatic events.

 

VG writes Thursday that the Police Directorate (POD) has been sitting on their thumbs, doing nothing, since they were mandated in March 2016 – with a deadline of 15 January this year.

The Police Directorate was appointed by the Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning (DSB) to lead the triple warning of police, ambulance and fire departments. The mandate was clear: “to provide a national triple warning procedure that should be finalized, cleared for approval and implementation” before January 15, 2017, according to the newspaper.

Triple murder

– We’re sorry, of course, that we have not yet started this work, but at the same time, it must be clear that there are already three-way notification routines in place that are used every day. Therefore, there should not be an impression that there are no functioning triple routine routines in place. The national procedure we are going to work on, will further improve the regulations already in use, writes section head Jørn Schjeldrup in Police Directorate in an email to the newspaper VG.

The reason for the mandate was the killings on the Valdres Express bus on November 4, 2013. where it was a firefighter who eventually arrested the perpetrator. Police took a wrong turn and arrived at the scene one and a half hour late. The report that was issued in the wake of the triple murder revealed serious shortcomings in the cooperation between the emergency services. The murders could not have been averted, but crucial information was lost in the communication between the Emergency Central (AMK),  the police and the fire department.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today