A police officer has been sacked after he failed to help report serious crimes including rape, domestic abuse and a suicide threat.
The Independent Police Complaints Commission found the 58-year-old officer, who worked at the Bow Command Centre in London, guilty of "gross misconduct" after it was discovered he had failed to properly respond to callers' pleas for help.
These ranged from the police officer failing to provide a police response to domestic abuse and assaults, rape, a suicide threat, potential armed break-ins and a road traffic collision.
IPCC commissioner for London, Deborah Glass, said the officer had "deliberately obstructed" a proper police response and had left members of the public in danger.
“When the public call 999 for help from the police, they should receive an immediate, professional and sympathetic response," she said.
"This officer not only did not provide that response, in some cases he deliberately obstructed their attempts to get help, and left some callers in continued danger.
"It is a matter of luck – and the persistence of those seeking help - that his actions do not appear to have resulted in serious harm to a member of the public."
She added: “It beggars belief that a police officer whose job was to help people in distress should have behaved in such an appalling and callous way. He has rightly been dismissed. It is however encouraging that other officers responded appropriately to the callers who received such a poor service from this officer.
The officer's actions appear to have come to light by chance.
In a statement issued on Tuesday the IPPC said the alarm was raised when a woman dialed 999 to report a domestic assault on the 26 July.
"On experiencing difficulties with the police officer through several attempts to get across the correct spelling of her surname, she ended the call in frustration," it said.
"The woman caller later brought her experience to the attention of a family friend who happened to be a call handler working at Bow Command Centre."
A subsequent internal investigation found that between 1 May 2009 and 26 July 2009 the police officer received approximately three thousand emergency calls. Of these, 141 were found to have significant performance issues, with 19 considered to amount to gross misconduct.