Drug addict died in cell while guard surfed net

A TEENAGE drug addict died after snorting heroin in a police cell while a custody care assistant ignored his calls for help as he surfed the internet in a nearby room, a fatal accident inquiry has ruled.

Kristoffer Batt, 17, had smuggled the Class A drug into his cell in the headquarters of Tayside Police in Dundee after he handed himself in following an arrest warrant.

In a scathing fatal accident inquiry determination yesterday, Sheriff Elizabeth Munro listed a catalogue of individual and systemic failures that contributed to the death of Mr Batt, who was from Forfar.

A buzzer system, designed to allow prisoners to summon help, had been switched off for years. A red light system, which could also be used to summon assistance, stayed illuminated outside the teenager's cell until only minutes before he was found dead.

Sheriff Munro ruled that Mr Batt should have been strip-searched and classed as "highly vulnerable" given his history of drug abuse. The sheriff singled out for criticism Stuart Lewis, the "incompetent and negligent" custody care assistant who had been responsible for the teenager's care on the day he died, 28 November, 2007.

An investigation found that the former Sea Cadet took diazepam before surrendering to an arrest warrant at 4am on 28 November. Once in his cell at the West Bell Street station he snorted heroin he had smuggled in between his buttocks.

Sheriff Munro said Mr Lewis, who is still a civilian employee with Tayside Police, had falsified records of his visits to the police cells on the night of Mr Batt's death. He should have checked on the teenager at least once every hour. Checks on a computer in the force's fingerprint room showed that Mr Lewis had accessed the internet at least 59 times to visit social networking and sports sites.

Mr Batt was only found dead in his cell after day shift care assistants arrived for work. He would have survived for at least 20 minutes and "probably more than an hour" after snorting the heroin that killed him.

Sheriff Munro said: "Without the buzzer system, there was nothing Kristoffer Batt could do to attract attention."

She added: "Nevertheless, there was an assistance light system operational on the night of 27-28 November 2007 and it was the failure of Stuart Lewis, Custody Care Assistant, to fulfil his duties in connection with that system, which resulted in Kristoffer's requests for assistance being ignored for long periods.

"Stuart Lewis deliberately chose to position himself in the Fingerprint Office, for lengthy periods, where he could not see any assistance lights at all. He even failed to operate the system properly, when he finally did attend Kristoffer's cell at 0601 hours, in that he failed to deactivate the assistance light."

She said it "beggars belief" that all of the buzzers were switched off years ago.

Last night, Mr Batt's parents condemned the Tayside force's decision not to sack the custody care assistant following the investigation. They said: "We find it unbelievable that a man who falsified documentation and was using unauthorised internet access has not lost his job."

A spokeswoman for Tayside Police said: "The force will take time to consider the Sheriff's findings in full."