How long it takes for the police to arrive after you dial 911

[doc2rn]

I called them once on 911, took about 1 hour 45 mins. The dude being held at gunpoint the entire time was thanking them when they got there.
Told him I could bury him then cover him up with the maneur pile and no one would ever know.
Doubt he will ever shoot at my house again.

 

[romma]

About 25 minutes from the old house.

Now where I live I would estimate it might take 3 minutes. But by then in my neighborhood it would be too late.

I live in a bad neighborhood. Especially after dark.

 

[sh0rtyg1rL]

I live in the country.. we have a police station down road but if its after 9 they close or something i dunno.... but for the scranton police to come damn id say a good 30-45mins. i dont own any guns right now so i'd be screwed if it was a bad situation.

 

[Elza]

The one time I called one was there in right at three minutes. At about four minutes two others were on the scene. This is a great response time but a lot can happen in three minutes.

As an aside, the cop at the door was a good guy as well. When he came to the door I unloaded and cleared my AR. I left it on the kitchen table and opened the door. After I told him what was going on (the other two went in search of the clowns nosing around my windows) he looked at the AR. “20 round mag?” I answered “30.” He smiled and nodded his head. My kind of cop!

 

[ilbob]

A local agency (I don't recall which) actually sent a guy out to investigate a robbery in progress call several days after the fact. The official explanation was that somehow the call slip got lost at the 911 center while the computers were down so they went to some kind of paper based backup system. Somehow the piece of paper relating to the robbery got lost and was found several days later when a cop was finally dispatched to the incident.

One of my favorites though is the park district cops being repeatedly sent to the wrong park. I don't recall why it happened but for some reason anytime a call came in concerning an incident at a certain park, the cops were being dispatched to a different park. IIRC, it took several years to clear that one up.

 

[arflattop]

We have one LEO in our county. At night the nearest town (16 miles) takes over. Fortunately I've never had to call, so I don't know the response time. I'd say I'm own my own...............

 

[LostinJersey]

Local PD takes five minutes for emergency calls and ten minutes to an hour for the non-emergency calls. The town I live in is maybe 15 square miles with a population of about 15 thousand people. The PD has about 40 officers, but at one time there are maybe 5 officers and one or two detectives on duty.

 

[Old Grump]

10 min or 4 hrs.

I live on the north side of a large county and it is fairly sparely populated but I am between 2 small police departments, One is a village the other a small town. The sheriff is patrolling the southern part of the county where the larger towns and college campuses are. A non-emergency can be 35 minutes, (average) to 4 hours. Shots fired calls will draw units from neighboring departments within 10 minutes and state and sheriff will be there in less than 20 minutes. They are good about backing each other up but this is a spread out area lightly patrolled by small departments. Not to many in this area are without guns for hunting and some of us are veterans who shoot for fun and and or competition and in 10 years there have only been '2 shots fired' calls.

 

[AlaskaErik]

Of course that makes home security systems close to pointless here.

I agree. Had the neighbor's go off several times within an hour and nobody ever showed up. I live in a borough that's larger than 10 of the states and we might have four or five troopers on duty at any one time. I suspect many people would have to wait for an hour or more even if they were a priority call. And it could be days if you're off the road system.

 

[woodsja]

I found this. on the Department of Justice's website.

This gives you some more if you want.

We should probably disregard the 10 or fewer cases that the officer responded in a time period greater than a day but if included then officers respond to 33.6% of robbery, aggravated, and simple assault between 11 minutes and 1 hour

 

[never_retreat]

Depends if you tell the cops if you started shooting or not.
My house I'm going to guess 15 minuets, thats what it took when I called in a accident in front of my house. The volunteer emt's showed up faster from 4 miles away.

Or as my sig says
911 - government sponsored Dial-a-Prayer

 

[JWarren]

To my home, the police can get here in 25-35 minutes-- and that is GOOD. I am not faulting them at ALL.

I live 25 miles from the nearest police station. The one time that I've had to call them, they were there in 25 minutes.


-- John

 

[jakemccoy]

For my house, it takes less than 10 minutes. Anything more than 5 seconds to my bedroom door is too long. The time it takes for the cops to arrive in your driveway is meaningless. Do you remember what happened in the Cheshire, Connecticut case? Once the cops finally arrived, they hunkered down outside for a long while. Gun owners commonly know that the "call 911" concept is not a reliable method of home defense. I hate to see people who are setting themselves up to find out the hard way.

 

[The Tourist]

Yesterday my wife and SIL were working in the garden which abuts the Green Space in our town. This space grows totally wild, plants and trees, and no one goes in there.

As my SIL dug along the edge of this space, she uncovered a bone--one the size and shape of human rib bone.

Our cops were there inside of three minutes.

 

[Vern Humphrey]

As my SIL dug along the edge of this space, she uncovered a bone--one the size and shape of human rib bone.

Our cops were there inside of three minutes.

A lifetime too late for the former ower of the rib bone.

 

[jakemccoy]

If I remember correctly, I saw a statement from the US DOJ that the average violent crime lasted about 20 seconds and the average police responce time was 7 minutes. It didn't take me long to do the math on that one.

20 seconds for a violent crime must seem like an eternity to the victim.

 

[jakemccoy]

Cops arrive sooner if you say you're armed, sooner still if shots are already fired, sooner still is someone is shot.

 

[Clint C]

My brother lives in a town of about 5000. He lives in some low rent apartments with all kinds of people. Once the man above him was beating his wife, and he said he could hear the kids saying "don't hurt my mommy". He called the cops and it took them twenty-five minutes to get there (the police station is two blocks away) and there are always two cops on duty.

A While later he was outside grilling and a woman came out of the building screaming and running past him. About five seconds later a mexican man came running out after her with a knife. He again called the cops. It took them three minutes to get there.

Moral of the story. You say Mexican with a knife and they are on it.:banghead:

 

[ralphie98]

I called 911 last summer for a suspiscious person/possible burgulary in progress and I had 2 cars show up in under 2 minutes. Could be partly due to the fact that there were a lot of burglaries last year around that time and they were trying to catch the dudes. I was still pretty impressed with this being a good sized city of 60-70,000 people.

 

[ZombieHunter]

I actually had a conversation with a ranking officer in Northern Anne Arundel county recently. He explained to me that violent crime 911 calls are typically responded to in under 5 minutes. While this is respectable it's still "When seconds count, the cops are only minutes away."

However, non-emergency calls he told me were something that they got to when they got to.

 

[alsaqr]

I live in an OK county that is larger than the state of Rhode Island. Better have a self help plan because it could take a long time for a deputy to get there.

 

[scrat]

about 4 years ago i was driving into los angeles on the 101 when i got sideswiped. The guy was in a minivan full of people and actually tried to outrun me. I was in my bmw. Needless to say i was totally pdddd off. i called 911 and they put me on hold. i could not friggen believe it. i must have called about 5 times for what seemed like eternity before i got through. then the guy pulled off freeway and tried to loose me on the streets i was hot on his rear end. Then the chp finally pulled around the corner when i was right behind him.

Thats the day i finally lost all respect for law enforcement and 911. When we stopped i got out and it took everything i had not to go and beat the bjesus out of the driver. CHP saw it. told them everything that happened they knew i was following this guy for a long time. they were pissed that he did not stop either then at first they were pissed i followed but then when they saw my car they understood. i wanted to press charges for hit and run. They refused made the driver stay in there car. i had to stand behind mine. they exchanged info then. got all my information and then went to go talk to the other driver then the other driver drove away. When i saw that this time it took all i had to not say anything bad and not kick the crap out of the chp.
the chp's response was " well he did pull over"