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

[MedWheeler]

Depends on what I call 'em for. I've never had to report a true emergency from the home I'm currently living in, but I have called in domestic disturbances on the same block. Being as I live about an eight-minute walk (if that) from the main police HQ in my city, I have a pretty substantial amount of confidence in a rapid response to any emergency I call in. We have a good department here.
Doesn't mean that I'm not "the first police" on my property, though.

 

[owlhoot]

Ha, we just got 911 service in my county. I don't know how well its working. And I don't care. There is one deputy on duty at night and the county is 50 miles long. I guess it could take up to an hour or longer. But nobody expects a quick response, so that sort of mitigates the need for a quick response.

 

[borntwice]

Cheer up, folks! Big government has your back - "when seconds count, the Police are only minutes away!"

 

[weisse52]

I guess my thought is what does it matter? If LEO quotes that it take 4.5 minutes to respond then I assume they are talking averages. I do not want my life to depend on which end of the average curve I happen to be at that moment.

I respect the police, but they are there to catch someone after the fact. They cannot be everywhere, and when I need them they may be no where to be found.

 

[easyrider604]

How long? In a real emergency, my answer would have to be, "too long".

Before the cavalry arrives, a man's got to do what he gotta do

 

[Zach S]

I'm so far out in the sticks I'd hate to think about it.

Taking a slight drift off topic, I feel I should mention that a coworker cut a couple fingers off one night at work. A couple EMTs/FFs got there pretty quick, 5 to 10 minutes. They put him on oxygen and poured rubbing alcohol on his fingers while we waited 40 minutes for the ambulance.

 

[AirForceShooter]

Answering my call for "shots Fired" it took 15 minutes for the LEO to arrive.
No lights or sirens.

AFS

 

[DMZ]

The dispatcher will probably ask, "Well, how many shots were fired?"

LEO arrival time well be in 1-2 hours if a deputy is on duty. If not, next day.

 

[ZeSpectre]

Bit of irony in my reply. We used to live about a block over from the cop-shop. Response time the one time we had to call them was about 15 minutes (because they were all out on calls on the other side of town).

Now we live further away, but right in the "patrol belt", so the cops and fire/rescue showed up in about 2 minutes for an injured person who fell in front of our house on the 4'th of july.

Still it was a bit distressing to live right in the center of town and still have to describe to the dispatcher exactly how to locate our house.

 

[Deanimator]

Here in Ohio, observed response time has been all over the place.

I called Cleveland once to report a car on I-71(?) with a limb on top of it after a violent storm. They seemed angry that I'd bother them with the call. I don't know if they responded at all.

A friend called the Berea PD several times one night to report a woman screaming in the park. When no cops ever showed up, we drove to the station to find out what the deal was. Turns out the park was in the Cleveland Metroparks Rangers' jurisdiction. Berea PD called them several times. I'd calculate their response time at around fifteen YEARS, since I don't believe they EVER responded. A couple of Berea cops coming off shift volunteered to walk the river bank with us, just to make sure nobody was in trouble.

A couple of years ago, a sleazy looking guy rang all of the doorbells trying to "social engineer" his way into my apartment building. An hysterical (and not just in THAT case) woman in the hall started shrieking at me to call the police. After a couple of minutes of asking her why, I walked down to the lobby and saw the "meth-billy" who rang the bells. I called the Rocky River cops. They were there in between five and ten minutes. Certainly not quick enough to save somebody's life from a violent attack, but I don't consider that a reasonable expectation in the first place. They're as good as any other Cleveland suburb and probably better than most.

I'm from Chicago. We called the Chicago PD ONCE to report vandalism that I observed from my bedroom window. NEVER AGAIN. When they learned that the perpetrators were White, they just packed up and left. You don't want them around anyway. Better just to deal with the criminals on your own. Calling the Chicago PD just brings more criminals to the scene.

 

[ZeSpectre]

They seemed angry that I'd bother them with the call. I don't know if they responded at all.

In my old neighborhood we had a dispatcher who tried to get folks to understand the real nature of a 911 call. She would answer the phone with "XXX dept 911, Dispatcher Smith, is anyone bleeding?" One day she had this long pause and a very serious voice answered "not yet, but he's about to start".

 

[MadMercS55]

I had someone break into my vehicle parked in my driveway a couple years back. The car alarm woke me, grabbed my .45 and keys and went outside. The alarm had a tendency to go off when the weather got very cold, and this was winter time. So, I was a little complacent. It took a second before I realized there was a guy dressed in black standing in the shadows beside my storage shed and my trunk was open with contents strewn about. I ordered the actor to the ground at gunpoint, he jumped the fence and fled into the woods behind my house. My wife had called the police at this point and I went back inside and secured the house, got dressed and waited for the police. About 15 minutes later, they arrive. I had hoped for an active break in, with an actor on foot in the area, they would have been a little faster. 15 minutes, and one officer response. We have a large dept here, so this struck me as odd. Guy was never caught, and I could have seen this situation going bad fast. It's one of many that make me try to handle my own problems as best possible with police response being a last resort. The safety of my family being paramount.

 

[sarge83]

The only time we have had the police respond to my neighborhood was when my MIL's security system has gone off a couple of times due to a malfunction.

First time the response time was 45 mins. The second time 20 mins.

 

[Zoogster]

The only time we have had the police respond to my neighborhood was when my MIL's security system has gone off a couple of times due to a malfunction.

In most of my state of CA policy is that officers cannot even respond to house alarms and security systems unless a call is placed to the home, and is answered by someone that says they do in fact need help.

Appearantly a massive portion of police time was spent responding to security alarms, dramaticly increasing the response time to other offenses and taking up a lot of officer time. Less than 2% of responses were valid alarm activations.
So the solution they came up with is the one I described above.
Of course that makes home security systems close to pointless here.

About the only thing they accomplish now is a deterent if they are the loud wake up the entire neighborhood type. If those go off on accident though the owner can be fined fairly heavily, or even be charged with disturbing the peace and noise violations.
As far as actual emergency response, it is no more effective than actualy having to dial 911 yourself, less in fact as it is relayed through an operator IF you answer the phone, and takes a few more seconds to actualy reach the police dispatch than if you dialed yourself.

Similar policies are appearing around the nation.

 

[AirForceShooter]

The dispatcher will probably ask, "Well, how many shots were fired?"

LEO arrival time well be in 1-2 hours if a deputy is on duty. If not, next day.


Dispatcher was shall we say doubtful until she heard the shots over the phone.

AFS

 

[DMZ]

That reminds me of a story..

Dispatcher was shall we say doubtful until she heard the shots over the phone.

AFS

I was living in central OR in a forested neighborhood where most lots were 3-5 acres in size and small hobby farms were numerous. A mixed bag demographically.

Anyway, there was a crazy drunk/drugged that lived adjacent to me. He was known to the Sheriff for mostly stuff like disorderly conduct. So he gets high and decided to do some shooting out in his back yard.

My kids were out playing when I heard the first shots. I ran outside and saw him with a semi-auto .22 rifle, plinking away randomly (there were houses about 300 yards down range from him). I got the kids in the house and called 911.

He had fired about 12 shots and as I talked to the dispatcher, he reloaded. The dispatcher asked me if I was sure it was gunfire. I walked outside and held the phone out as he began to blaze away some more. I asked her what that sounded like to her.

10 minutes later, about 3 cop cars show up (by my count he had fired off an entire box of .22 ammo by then and must have went back inside to take another hit or something) and arrested him for discharging a firearm in a residential area and reckless endangerment. Turns out he had plunked a couple of bullets through the window of a house with a young women and baby, nearly striking the women.

 

[Pilot]

Just add a one and dial "1911" first!

LOL!

 

[trashpickinman]

I've got a couple of stories, a little background first, I live right on the corner of an intersection that just happens to be on the dividing line of two cities, the East-bound lane is one city and the West-bound lane is another city. If I call to report a vehicle accident, I'm forced to tell them EXACTLY where the accident is, then I get transferred to appropriate city to tell them every detail again. Police response time can range from 2 or 3 minutes for an injury accident to about 30 minutes for a non injury, though we do have a fire station less than a mile up to road which can respond to injuries in about 2 or 3 minutes.

My parents had a car accident on the state line road between Kansas and Missouri, they waited for almost 4 hours for the Kansas City police to show up, but as they were on the Missouri side of the road they had to watch as several police cars from the city in Kansas drove by unable to do anything.

 

[Colt46]

Our county's goal:

50% of calls must have an officer on scene within 5 minutes of the call. If they fail that mandate they squirm and talk about additional funding, and hold town hall meetings to address the problem.

If you need cops there in a hurry then five minutes is way to long. Anything more is just laughable.

 

[Zoogster]

If they fail that mandate they squirm and talk about additional funding, and hold town hall meetings to address the problem.

No government agency will ever have enough funding, period.

Government in general plays with the gullible public with emergency services to gain additional funds when necessary.
Budget gets tough? There is thousands of things to cut, many pet projects not needed, but that would not get attention, that would not get an increased budget, approval for local fees and fines to increase revenue etc.
Cutting police or fire services will.
'Oh no they won't be able to take care of you without more money, everyone is going to be in more danger'.
It is often a bunch of political BS.

Government does not like to be forced to operate like an effecient business. They like to grow and grow, never cut the fat from the operations, and continue to grow. If you attempt to force them to shrink they respond by shrinking the things you will notice the most first to change society's mind.

In reality you only need so many police. Most crime is over in less than a minute, and much of the remainder before police arrive (and most of our history we made due with just a sheriff with maybe a couple deputies).
You can increase the size of the police 10x fold and they still won't arrive within those first couple minutes. You can save your local area a ton of money and have far less and they still won't arrive in those first few minutes.
Personaly I would rather add a few more helicopters to transport injured individuals than dozens more police.
The additional police won't change that much, the reduced time to reach the hospital just might.

Bottom line is the only people that are going to be present in most crimes are the people involved and maybe a couple passerbys. Well 95% of passerbys won't help. You can get beaten to death on the side of a busy road. Everyone knows someone else will deal with it.

Bottom line is people have to be able to defend themselves. Any law or restriction that interferes with that is creating half of the problem. A problem government insures you can be fixed by forking over increasingly large sums so it can grow.

 

[Rmart30]

Im out of the "city limits" ,live in the most populated co in the state and withen 20 miles of one of the top 3 populated cities.
As I was told we have no more than 2 state troopers working any given county at any time. The county sheriffs response time is usually 15 min + . Ive never called them in a 911 situation other than for auto crashes and thats what Im basing my time on.

 

[makarovnik]

I had an eight hour response one time and a couple of flat out no shows. I've had the 911 operator tell me they are "not coming" or "I won't even contact the officer because he's too busy". The least important call I've ever made was being threatened by a neighbor with a gun and a dog attack after Animal Control was closed (they keep banker's hours). Fact is the cops are afraid to respond to calls in my area. Lots of meth labs, crack heads, child prostitution, fist fights, domestic violence, gun shots etc. And I live in a "quiet" rural area north of Seattle.

Last fall no less than eight police vehicles showed up at my neighbor's house and he barricaded himself in and cops were in the yard with weapons drawn. The standoff lasted a couple of hours.

The cops are less than worthless in my area. You need to protect yourself. I find a shotgun is standard equipment on my street.

 

[Deanimator]

I had an eight hour response one time and a couple of flat out no shows. I've had the 911 operator tell me they are "not coming" or "I won't even contact the officer because he's too busy".

Unless it's specifically prohibited by state law, you need to tape those calls. Ohio is a one party consent state. If you're a party to the conversation, you can record to your heart's consent. I'll bet the local and maybe national news would have a great time with that kind of 911 call. It'd be a big hit on YouTube too.

 

[Grandpa Shooter]

When I lived in the Valley, the average response time was about 20 minutes. Once I moved, the vendor for gas heaters told me that there was no law enforcement in this rural mountain community and that people dealt with problems themselves. I didn't know how serious he was until I had to call 911. They never came! Luckily there were no drastic negative outcomes, but it sure wised me up.

 

[chris in va]

It was what...6 minutes at the Omaha mall shooting? And they touted as being 'fast'. A lot can happen in 6 minutes. Plus it takes a while longer for the police to figger out what to do.