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A Nova Scotia woman says she regrets calling RCMP to report an erratic driver after a confusing ordeal resulted in an officer going inside her home without her knowledge.
Robin MacDougall was driving from Antigonish, N.S., to Port Hawkesbury on Highway 104 in June to celebrate Father’s Day with her parents when she noticed a vehicle ahead of her swerving on the road, slowing down and then speeding up again.
She called 911, and at the end of the call, the dispatcher told her to call back if she or the erratic driver got off the highway, MacDougall said.
MacDougall called back less than 10 minutes later before she took an exit for Port Hawkesbury and told the dispatcher the erratic driver was continuing in the direction of Cape Breton, she said.
The matter was no longer her problem, MacDougall thought — until she received a call from an RCMP officer while she was out to lunch with her parents.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, so there’s been a miscommunication and we were in your house,’” MacDougall said.
“I just couldn’t comprehend how we went from the highway to my house in the opposite direction.”
MacDougall and her partner, who was at work at the time, never locked their back door, which is how the officer got into the house.
She was still confused about why the officer was there and was concerned about her cats getting out of the house, so she called her friend.
Jade Lowe says she was running errands when MacDougall asked her to go to her home.
“The officer opened [the door] and he seemed a little frazzled,” Lowe said. “He kept apologizing.”
RCMP says dropped call led to home visit
MacDougall feels her privacy has been violated and doesn’t know what she’ll do the next time she sees a dangerous situation on the road, but the head of the RCMP detachment in Antigonish says her officers did nothing wrong.
Staff Sgt. Kimberly Hillier says another call from MacDougall was disconnected and the dispatcher couldn’t get back in touch with MacDougall, so an officer was sent to her home.
These were two separate matters being investigated by different officers who didn’t know they were related and they were only concerned about someone’s safety, Hillier said.
“We were not looking for an impaired driver at the residence. We were looking for a person in distress,” she said.
The Supreme Court of Canada stated in a 1991 decision that police have a duty “to take reasonable steps” to determine whether a dropped 911 call involves an emergency, Hillier said.
Dropped call disputed
There’s disagreement between MacDougall and Hillier about whether or not there was a dropped call.
“Our cell coverage is not the greatest. Sometimes our situation here in Eastern Nova Scotia is not always the best for getting through on your cellphone,” Hillier said.
MacDougall believes she missed the dispatcher’s attempt to call back because of poor cellphone service, but says none of the 911 calls she made were disconnected.
There’s no evidence she made a third call in between the other calls she made, she said. She asked her cellular provider for a call log, which doesn’t show a third call to RCMP.
Her phone is always connected to her vehicle’s Bluetooth so that would have come through the speakers like the other ones did, she said.
“I would have noticed, so I know for a fact that I didn’t make that call,” MacDougall said.
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