what are the police response times in your area?

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carterbeauford

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I probably would not be posting this if my area did not experience what I consider to be unacceptable response times. Do not interpret it as cop bashing because I don't think this is any fault of the cops themselves, I listen to the scanner, and in the area covered by this barracks, they are stretched too thin. I thought this appropriate for S&T because my call to the police last night resulted from a suspicious vehicle near my house.

So I get home about 11:00PM to find a car parked along the road in front of my neighbors' house, next to my driveway. Area is in close proximity to I80, which explained the NJ plates. Windows fogged up, headlights on. I was armed at the time (1911 and P11) and briefly considered asking if they needed help, but I figured I'd really rather not. Called Pennsylvania State Police, Mercer barracks, who took my information and said they send a car. They asked if the vehicle was occupied, so I shined a 10 million candlepower spotlight on the vehicle from my deck and observed at least one person inside.

40 minutes after the call, the car leaves. I go to the end of my driveway and wait... 45 minutes after the call, two troopers show up. I advised them the vehicle left and thanked them for coming out.

I only have one other recent incident that occured near my house on which to average the response times, a near fatal traffic accident. Also took 45 minutes. However, they have a long history of long response times, this is nothing new. The barracks is 8 miles up the road from me, 10 minutes away, more like 7 or 8 minutes if they speed. Mercer County is not that big. My situation last night might not have been a priority, but a near fatal accident is.

So what are the times like in your geographical area? I think the only real variable in this equation is manpower, there are not enough troopers on patrol to handle the things that can and do require their attention here. If there is one accident on I80, all troopers on patrol are tied up immediately. Thoughts?
 
Sounds like prety quick time me , they usually take an hour or more to answer a non-life threatening call in my part of W Wa .
 
Last time for my home burgulary, 9 HOURS
Neighbors, 1.5 HOURS because I called the cops.

They are VERY SLOW TO RESPOND HERE, but you can find most of them at several restaurants here, if they are not busy.
 
Slow.They're all traffic nazis. Writing citations is more important than anything else.
 
In a northern section of Las Vegas, a highly scientific test with a sample size of one (1) determined that the average response time for an intruder-type call was approximately 10 minutes.

Not bad from a general perspective, but not bloody great from an omg-he's-got-a-knife-and-is-stabbing-me-ow-my-spleen-ooh-linoleum perspective.
 
You don't know what else was going on ! Response depends on a number of things .If it was a shooting in progress that would take priority but just a suspecious vehicle would not.
 
After reading this thread I had the same thought. A suspicious vehicle would probably always go to the bottom of the list. My daughter recently called one of those in and I think it was about 18 hours before they could get out to check it out. (in a much larger city than where I live)

When I saw the title I thought we were talking about something like domestic battery. I've always been curious as there's a couple down the road from us (about 1/2 a mile) who I think have fairly regular domestic battery incidents. The cops have to drive by my place to get there and I've always wondered how fast they get here. My guess is they're probably a minimum of 15 minutes away and probably closer to 30-45. (We're in the boonies, and it's 5-10 minutes to the closest town at high speed . .and we're serviced by the county sheriff in the largest county in Illinois . .so I suspect it would be luck of the draw)

I think the traffic citation comment above was an unfair shot. In Bloomington and Normal Illinois the cops have "quotas" of traffic citations that they are required to write. If they don't they receive some sort of black mark on their record and too many black marks and they lay them off. The cities use it as a revenue generation tool (well documented). If you talk to those guys they don't want to write the citations but it's forced on them by the powers that be.

Just my 02.

Regards,
Dave
 
Slow.They're all traffic nazis. Writing citations is more important than anything else.
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You sound like my cousins. The speed limits were way too low for people with their advanced driving skills. The cops were profiling them (they were white, I guess they thought the cops werely pulling over all white people) or unfairly setting up "radar traps" near schools zones at 2:30 pm. And the school zone mph when kids are present should be 35-45 not 15. (He was doing 52... but the kids weren't even in the street yet!) They both got tickets all the time and both had severe wrecks. One had a single vehicle rollover on the interstate because he said, he was changing radio stations. Eventually, they matured out of it, but it took a while and a few totalled vehicles. I'm not saying you are like them, just that there are quite a few idiots like that out there.

I used to work as a paramedic, of course, interacted with the local PD often. I didn't think much of the traffic type cops (motorcycles riders usually in my home town), but one senior traffic cop pointed out a very obvious point to me one time, in that town the lost hundreds of lives to stupid drivers (drunk or agrresive, whatever) a year. Murders were rare (and usually related to drug feuds) and all the other more "glamorous" violent crimes were even more uncommon.

And traffic tickets aren't revenue generators. Cops salary, gear, vehicles, etc alone cost far more than any cops ticket revenue. Then costs associated with court rooms, court personnels, defense attorneys (with some offenses) etc., then jail expenses etc. If traffic cops were revenue generators, every city in the taxaholic states (Mass, NY, NJ, heck all the northeast, the upper midwest, and left wing coast) would have them everywhere. They don't. Most departments devote 1-2% of their manpower to traffic enforcement. The rest are generally on patrol answering a never ending barage of "emergency" calls or assigned to investigations.

How many vehicular deaths are in your newspaper today? Burglary related deaths?

If you call with a burglar in or near your home you will get the best response the cops can give you in my experience. (Understand that burlaries that occurred some time ago, with no danger that someone is in the house, aren't emergency priorities at all even though it's quite devastating to the victim.) If the response time is slow, that will be due to insufficient manpower funding, not due to their desire to finish a traffic ticket.
 
Out here in the pineywood hills, anywhere from 30 minutes to 30 years ;)

Though if it was a serious emergency, we might get faster response from the next county over to the west. Just like the fire departments, they will do "mutual aid." State patrol will help out as well.

I've been told that if you have had a theft/burglary, then they won't even come out and look at your place but instead tell you to drive 25 miles into town and "fill out a report." :rolleyes:

They don't ever patrol our neighborhood. Usually the only time they come out here is for process service and occasional "domestic issues" (some guy took a shot at his sister a while back).
 
Response times are relative:

The farmer was going up to bed when his wife told him that he'd left the light on in the barn, which she could see from the bedroom window.

He opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things. He phoned the police, who asked "is someone in your house?" and he told them no. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available.

The farmer said, "Okay," hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again. "Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don't have to worry about them now cause I've just shot them all." Then he hung up.

Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the residence. Of course, the police caught the burglars red-handed. One of the Policemen said to the farmer: "I thought you said that you'd shot them!" To which the farmer said, "I thought you said there was nobody available!"
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In my apartment, it's immediate (there's almost always cops in the parking lot). At my work, I've never had to call, and at my job before that (in downtown Seattle) it was usually around 2 minutes from the time I hung up to the time the police arrived (I called quite a lot because I was a security officer), or about 30 seconds for fire department to show up. A couple times in downtown Seattle it's taken closer to 10 minutes if it's during graveyard shift.
 
Only called them once, for an escaped felon that my wife noticed passsing by. It took them over half an hour to get here, and we live less than two miles from the police station (their excuse was that they got lost... in a town of 100,000 people).

Police have the same place in personal protection that Social Security does in financial planning: nice if it really happens.
 
I've been told that if you have had a theft/burglary, then they won't even come out and look at your place but instead tell you to drive 25 miles into town and "fill out a report."
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That was the policy in Ellis County TX... and why not, they knew they couldn't get anywhere in time anyway. Too spread out.

Although I never tried Shovelhead's method, so my testing wasn't fully scientific.
 
I called the cops once in Northern San Diego because somebody was ransacking my neighbor's house. They asked is the owners were at home or if it was an unoccupied dwelling. I answered that the owners were not at home. No one was available to respond at that time. I said "OK" and, without hanging up the phone, hollered at FirstInLine to grab the shotgun, I was going to take the .357 because we had to go clear the house next door. Then I went to the door and waited. :evil: It took about 5 minutes for 3 squad cars to show up.

The response out here is about 30 minutes for my "He's coming through the door" call. I had him under control when they showed up. We are in the boonies in the largest county in the state.

Pops
 
The real issue is that 911/emergency services/etc do not release response statistics ... at least in LA. Everything else is just anecdotal evidence. I've known both situations anecdotally to be true. Twice it has been incredibly slow. Other times I've heard remarkably fast.

The only truth one way or another would be to get mean/median/ and standard deviations for All calls, calls reporting life threatening emergencies, and calls reporting "urgent" but not necessarily life-threatening issues (like the OPs situation), and junk calls asking where the nearest Denny's is...

Ultimately it wouldn't take TOO much for the government to come up with a mean +- stdev / 95% confidence interval of response times...
They record the time the call arrived at 911 - to the time it took before the dispatcher sent the call to a unit - to the time that the unit responded to the dispatcher - to the time that the first responder arrived at the scene...

All that data is available. Why hasn't this been done? Probably because it would freak the average American out...we'd all be horrified by the response times so it should just be left unknown.

Still with the Freedom of Information Act, it shouldn't be too hard to get at least summary data and come up with that figure ourselves. Maybe even shock a few people back to our perspective ... but more likely it would backfire and they'd just demand more police, more funding, and more control...

it may only worsen Nannyism.
 
I was told by a neighbor (small town 911 call gets you everything) and he said this was for a fist fight in the middle of the road.

Cops ~3 min
Fire ~ 5 min
Ambulance ~ 10 min

Never tried it myself
 
I live in the largest city in the state, population ~150,000. There's a fairly large police force for the size of the town from what I've seen, and they've got a nearly omnipresent patrol route; they're very good at it.

I can't speak for averages, but I can say this: of the several times I've called 911 (repeated neighbor spousal abuse, drive by), the response has been anywhere from anemic (beatings, at around 10 minutes) to about two minutes after the call was completed (drive-by).

Beatings all occured within two blocks of a large intersection in the center of town, and the drive-by occured in the 'downtown'/historical part of town.

Overall, I'd say their response was excellent - and it should be for how many police cars they've got about town. But in terms of "stopping crime" (also known as "protecting") it's not much good for anybody. Only time I can see their response time to 911 being useful is when there's someone trying to beat in a door while drunk or some other polonged event. Usually by the time the cops show up, the deed is done and they're 'cleaning up'.

I'd say a part of the slowness is probably due to 911 themselves. You try and get the pertinent information to them quickly so they can send cars - spousal beating, cops have been there before, address - and they tell you to slow down and ask you a series of questions so they can enter the information in their damn computer. Yes, thanks, I'm perfectly calm; now get the popo over here before someone decides to stop the abuser themselves...
 
what are the police response times in your area?

Prompt but useless after arrival. A couple of years back I heard some kids kicking around our Halloween decorations on the lawn. I ran out but naturally they were much quicker and were gone.
I called the PD and when the "officer" arrived and I told him what happened he asked me what did I expect on Halloween. I asked him if it happened again and I grabbed one of the little "miscreants" and held him would the officer contact the parents. He said that I would be arrested instead for grabbing the kid. Same old same old here in New Jersey. COC prevents further exposition of my views.
 
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Unless a deputy happens to be on patrol nearby (and I never, NEVER see a sheriff's car down in here), the bare miniumum response time has to be about half an hour due to our distance from them...!

And forget about it for non-emergency things - my brother's father-in-law locked his keys in his car last week. He called the sheriff's office and a deputy arrived about three hours later. Given that the car was RUNNING at the time, I think the guy would have saved gas money if he'd just have called and paid a locksmith to come faster! :D

Ambulance on the other hand? Good Lord - my grandmother had a heart attack a few months ago, and it took them ONE HOUR to arrive! :flame: Even with the "new 911 addresses" as opposed to Rural Routes, they couldn't find the house! At one point, they even wound up in the next COUNTY! :banghead:
 
My comment about traffic nazis was made because I also interact with them.:eek: I was a street cop and a deputy sheriff for 17 years,and am now a senior dispatcher. We have an organization that sets up road checks at the busiest possible times,tying up all officers ,and it's worse than pulling hens teeth to get them to leave a roadblock to respond to a domestic,or virtually any other call for service.
This occurs with such regularity that it's surprising that law suits do not occur. It's one more reason to believe that you rely on the Police to protect you you are in deep trouble.
It was much different when I was on the road. No,I do not like the direction that law enforcement has taken(at least in my own area) in the last few years.In the first place they have no means of protecting you.In the second place they have no interest in protecting you. Often enroute to a family domestic dispute,a fight a motel,or an accident,they will do a traffic stop. I've been there and much of it is nonsense and uncalled for.
I only know how it is where I live and work.It's the height of frustration for the dispatchers who are trying to the best job they can for the public.
I've seen it from both sides.
 
Non-Emergency 1-3hrs depends on type of call and if they decide an officer will call me and take a report over the phone, but whatever its not urgent right?:rolleyes:
Emergency 1-2mins

I asked him if it happened again and I grabbed one of the little "miscreants" and held him would the officer contact the parents. He said that I would be arrested instead for grabbing the kid
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now thats justice??
 
To be perfectly fair ,understaffing is a large part of the problem.The city department that I worked with in the 70's,now has less officers on the street than we had in those days on the day shift. We constantly have calls holding during the busiest time. A problem for the Administraive people who are only waiting for retirement!
However the problem is exacerbated by what I have already mentioned.
 
All that data is available. Why hasn't this been done? Probably because it would freak the average American out...we'd all be horrified by the response times so it should just be left unknown.
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There's no reason to have police forces remain inefficient monopolies. If you paid directly via subscription, you can bet you'd know what the response times of Tannahill Defense vs. Friedman's Flatfeet were, and you can also bet that they'd keep working to make them better.

Of course with the laws as they are, if they really enforced them everyone would be in jail, so maybe inefficiency is the way to go.
 
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All that data is available. Why hasn't this been done? Probably because it would freak the average American out...we'd all be horrified by the response times so it should just be left unknown.
Click to expand...

There's also the time dilation effect when someone is under stress. I've talked to firefighters and other LEO's who've responded within 5 minutes of getting a call, only to have the caller insist that it took them at least half an hour to get there. Five minutes may very well seem like half an hour when the adrenaline dump is hitting.

I would like to see a good solid survey done, though. It might convince more people to take responsibility for their own safety.
 
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