111 call made, but cops otherwise engaged

CULLEN SMITH | 23rd April 2010

Trapped in an after hours medical centre with a burglar alarm sounding, Phil Keen phoned 111 seeking police assistance.

He's still waiting.

Mr Keen's 11-year-old son, Taynen, had sliced his finger with a pocket knife and he'd been turned away from the family's regular doctor because it was after 5pm, she still had patients to see and the practice nurse suggested he'd be better off going to the designated after hours surgery nearby.

Mr Keen said he opened the door to the Rangiora Medical Centre about 5.20pm and stepped inside before he realised the premises was in darkness. Then the door snapped firmly shut behind him, leaving Taynen outside and Mr Keen starting to panic.

"When the alarm went off, I thought 'oh hell, there's no one here'," he said.

He picked up the medical centre phone and rang for help.

After explaining his situation to the emergency dispatcher, he was told police were on the way.

Mr Keen said after about half an hour he heard a siren.

"I thought 'oh no, I hope they're not going to do an LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) style arrival with sirens screaming and guns drawn'."

When no one turned up, he phoned police again.

"They said I wasn't high on their priority list," he said.

Some 20 minutes later - 50 minutes after Mr Keen reported his predicament - a security guard arrived to set him free just before 6.30pm.

Mr Keen said he could now see the funny side, but he questions why no one appeared to be on duty at the Rangiora Police Station less than 500m away.

"I think it's diabolical that a town the size of Rangiora doesn't have a police officer on duty at that time of night and that a doctor's nurse refused to see a boy with a cut finger."

Mr Keen's regular doctor, Lorna Martin, said she'd already apologised to him.

Dr Martin said her nurse was aware she still had patients to see, had assessed the cut finger as "not too bad" and referred Mr Keen to Dr Alf Scraggs, the designated after-hours duty doctor, rather than keeping him waiting.

Requests to the Rangiora Medical Centre for comment went unanswered yesterday.

Sergeant Rene Pabst, of the Rangiora police, said Rangiora officers were escorting prisoners back to Christchurch after a court sitting on Wednesday and Kaiapoi police were dealing with a domestic incident and a reported assault.

"Unfortunately there was no one immediately available," he said. Everyone was tied up on other jobs."

Sergeant Pabst said if it had been a life-threatening situation, police would have been called out from Papanui.