(Dialing) 911 Is a Joke... or Is It? Let's Find Out (Guns, not phones, stop crime)

The issue is central to the gun debate. The anti-gun lobbies, while sometimes conceding that people can be allowed to have sporting guns, vehemently opposes gun ownership for personal protection. The lobbies insist that crime victims should rely on 911 instead. For a disarmed victim, the police response to 911 can literally be a matter of life or death. If the data show that 911 won't save your life when you're attacked by a criminal, then it would be difficult for government to claim the moral authority to disarm victims.

A major new report by National Academies of Science concludes that there is not enough empirical data to determine whether gun control enhances public safety, or whether gun ownership deters crime. The report calls for further data-gathering on firearms injuries. We suggest that gathering a type of related data is equally critical: how often 911 calls result in the interruption of a crime.

We searched for information on the percentage of times a crime-in-progress is interrupted following a call to 911. And we searched for information about how often citizens are protected from harm by police intervention.

There are all kinds of information available regarding 911 calls: numbers of 911 calls made, number of arrests made as a result of calling 911, and types of crimes called in. There are lots of data about 911 response times. For example, Priority One responses in Atlanta and nearby counties take an average of 9-15 minutes. In Washington, D.C., in 2003, the average police response time for highest-priority emergency calls was 8 minutes and 25 seconds. ("Ramsey defends 911 response," Wash. Times, May 11, 2004.)

There are precise data on events such as the two-hour shutdown of 911 in three of New York City's five boroughs on the evening of March 26, 2004 because of phone company problems. There are even data on how many 911 callers are put on hold; the New York Times reported that in Nassau County in 2003, eleven percent of 911 callers got a pre-recorded message and soothing music, rather than a human operator. ("Nassau 911 Callers Are Being Put on Hold," N.Y. Times, Sept. 14, 2003.) In contrast, 911 callers in Quebec City were redirected to an answering machine only about 0.2 percent of the time during a five-month period in 2003. ("Thank you for calling 911, please leave a message," The Record (Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, October 22, 2003.)

We looked through the vast wealth of criminological information at the U.S. Department of Justice website, and we looked through print-based resources. Not finding any statistics anywhere on violent crime interruption by the police, we asked the statisticians at the Department of Justice directly.

One day later, we received the following answer from the DOJ's Bureau of Justice Statistics: "I'm sorry but the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) does not collect data on law enforcement intervening or preventing crimes that are in progress."

The Canadian government does not gather such statistics either, even though the Canadian government vehemently insists that citizens must not use firearms to protect themselves or others. (The non-existence of the Canadian data was confirmed for us by M.P. Garry Breitkreuz, Deputy House Leader for the Official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament, based on his queries to the Library of Parliament and to Statistics Canada.)

Although we were unable to find the statistics for interrupted crimes, we did find a study of how many criminals are caught after perpetration of the crime. However, the most recent research is more than two decades old.

In 1977, the Kansas City (Missouri) Police Department examined variables affecting police response time to 911 calls. The study concluded that the factor which most hampered the effectiveness of the 911 system was not police response time, but citizen delay in alerting the system.

William Spelman (a Professor at the University of Texas's LBJ School of Public Affairs) and Dale K. Brown showed that the Kansas City results could be replicated in other cities. In their 1981 book Calling the Police: Citizen Reporting of Serious Crime, Spelman and Brown selected four additional other cities to study, each having significant regional, policing, and population differences: Jacksonville, Peoria, Rochester, and San Diego. Despite the differences, the outcome measures were almost identical among all four cities studied.

Spelman and Brown confirmed the Kansas City results: the most important reason criminals escape, despite a call being made to 911, is that the call is made too late. In other words, the police were exonerated. The police were not, in general, failing to respond quickly to 911 calls; the calls simply came too late to do any good. (Of course there are horror stories of negligent and torpid police response, but these disasters represent the exception, not the rule.)

The Spelman and Brown report had important implications for the allocation of police resources: putting more money into speeding up police response times to 911 would be too expensive and would offer insufficient benefit to justify the expense. As Spelman and Brown found, "arrests that could be attributed to fast police response were made in only 2.9 percent of reported serious crimes."

According to Spelman and Brown, if the crime was reported while still in progress, the arrest rate was 35 percent. If the crime was not reported while in progress, and the victim took 60 seconds to get to a phone, the arrest rate dropped to 10 percent.

Now of course making an arrest is not the same as stopping a crime in progress. If the police are called while a murder is taking place, they may (about 35 percent of the time) arrive in time to arrest the murderer, but not necessarily in time to save the victim's life.

Yet even if we made the artificial assumption that every arrest meant that the crime in progress was thwarted, we see that two-thirds of the time, the police will not arrive in time to protect you.

Nevertheless, the gun prohibition lobby, the District of Columbia government, and many government officials, insist that victims should not protect themselves with firearms. They must instead rely on 911.

That command ignores the fact that any criminal in control of a crime scene will not permit his victim to call the police, and that the neighbors may be unaware of the crime in progress.

Moreover, even if the police are alerted immediately, they still have to spend time traveling to the scene of the crime, although the victim may need help within seconds.

For example, on June 5, 2002, eighty-nine year-old Lois Joyner Cannady called the Durham County, North Carolina, 911 to ask for immediate police aid. She was killed before the police arrived on the scene. Police deputies came within minutes, but the killer was long gone.

Might the outcome have been different if Mrs. Cannady had reached for a gun instead of a phone? Two 80-year old women homeowners did just that, in Elbert County, Georgia. A News Channel 32 report stated that, according to Sheriff Barry Haston, "having the guns kept those women alive." Haston said, "In these two cases I'm actually glad they did because it could have been a different story if they didn't." There are many other reported cases of persons as old as Mrs. Cannady, or older, using firearms successfully for protection.

When potential crime victims (i.e., everyone) consider whether to adopt particular defensive measures (locks, guns, window bars, alarms, etc.), they must make trade-offs of costs and benefits. For example, window bars might prevent a criminal from coming in, but they can also block the exit in case of a fire. For citizens to make well-informed decisions about self-defense, citizens ought to know how likely it is that the government will rescue them in an emergency.

We cannot expect perfection from the police; after all, they travel by automobile or by foot, not by teleportation. We can expect that government or university researchers (many of whom are heavily subsidized by the federal government) would gather statistics directly relevant to life-or-death decisions.

Dave Kopel is Research Director, and Paul Gallant and Joanne Eisen are Senior Fellows at the Independence Institute.

It's not that great for health problems either. I had a relative who died while 911 tried to figure out who the responders should be. They had lived there, and paid prop taxes, for 30 years. The family took him to the hospital in the family car, and he expired on the way.

In a harms way situation, whether the police get there in time or not, when you call 911, what do the police bring ?

A Gun !

might as well have one yourself.

BUT, if that's all you are allowed to have to protect yourself, it's time to move to Texas, amigo.

My plan is southern Oregon in a few years. Shall issue is the law of the land; the climate and geography are closer to what I am used to, and it it is closer to my wife's consulting business which she will maintain in retirement.

The Portland area is far too liberal for my taste, but the state as a whole has a bad rap on this board. The have shall issue, they just passed a property rights ammendment which is very favorable to property owners, there is no sales tax, and property taxes are controlled.

"Moving van drives up, loads up, and drives off. Neighbors think someone's moving out and don't suspect anything."

A long time favorite around here too. First folks really need to get to know their neighbors. Second, it would be a good idea to get a dog. Third, teach that dog how to shoot.

Interrupted crimes? There are no interrupted crimes, no crimes prevented by 911 or the police.

Although i agree 99.999 % with this statement, there is the occasional exception to the rule.

last summer here in louisville a city cop happened to be a couple blocks away in the cruiser when the report came in. HE heard screams ,busted through the door and head shot a BG as the perp was fixin to execute the homeowner in her kitchen floor.

911 was her saviour that night, but I WONT call til Im armed first.

>A long time favorite around here too. First folks really need to get to know their neighbors. Second, it would be a good idea to get a dog. Third, teach that dog how to shoot.

Absolutely right about the dog blogbat! We've also had robberies reported in the paper where the burglars are downstairs, and the homeowner is upstairs and hears the two of them whispering.

During the same time frame as the burglary reports above: My wife is at home, and someone rings the doorbell. The dog as usual runs to the door barking, and my wife sees someone running off. NO DOUBT casing the neighborhood for homes WITHOUT DOGS.

And that's who they hit in the first paragraph above - someone without a dog.
The day the liberals outlaw dogs, we are in trouble. Unless we can teach cats to bark.

No, but we could incorporate a cat into some sort of trap mechanism, so that as the intruder came through the door, the cat, tied to say an ironing board, came down with claws fully extended "raaaaring". That would definitely be a depends moment ;)

You know in the UK, they have outlawed guns for personal protection, along with knives, bats or anything else the state would deem capable of use as an "offensive" weapon. I'm sure dogs are next. Or maybe the animal rights wackos will do that for us, sí?

It was hard enough getting the wife to let the pistol in the house

My wife doesn't object at all.
One evening, I was out attending a meeting one night and decided to stop for a drink afterwards so I called to let her know that I would be a little late. She asked where the shells were for the 12 guage. I reminded her that the .45 was right there in the bedroom. She replied that the 12 guage was much better for defense against an intruder in the dark.
I couldn't argue with her logic and told her that they were in the den closet.

I never try to sneak in at night. If I am too late, I call ahead.

"My wife doesn't object at all.
One evening, I was out attending a meeting one night and decided to stop for a drink afterwards so I called to let her know that I would be a little late. She asked where the shells were for the 12 guage. I reminded her that the .45 was right there in the bedroom. She replied that the 12 guage was much better for defense against an intruder in the dark.
I couldn't argue with her logic and told her that they were in the den closet.

I never try to sneak in at night. If I am too late, I call ahead."

With a darn good explanation for being late as well!

Call 911 and then call Pizza Hut, see who gets there first.

Rather than Pizza Hut, call your neighborhood "family" owned Italian restaurant.

If they know you well enough, you can leave the police out of it entirely, and your problem will just "disappear" (though you might want to avoid ordering sausage on your pizza for the next couple of weeks).

I have a 7/8 shepard. She is a great guard dog. Barks at all motion . Charges the door. Friendly to family. Problem is getting someone to dogwatch that she will let come in the door. My son hasn't used his keys in 3 years and side door is left unlocked. Lots of dogs in the neighborhhod . No problem with crime at my house The local teenage boys are scared of my dog with good reason. I know junkyard dogs that sound friendlier.

There are downsides, The barking annoys neighbors and she can not be left free since she may decide that anyone that is on the block is an invader.

The entire law enforcement system/mechanism in this country grows more and more defunct every year. It's not at all geared, primarily, towards prevention, rather "mop up" actions. If you want to prevent or deter crime, you have to do it yourself via vigilance, alertness, and preparedness including being armed to such an extent that the risks to the perp are greater than the rewards from a cost/benefit standpoint.

The judicial system is another peach of a story all by itself. The country club system there seems only preoccupied with providing its lawyers and judges incomes and employment in perpetuity than anything else. They're infinitely more concerned with their procedures than with common sense, truth, and essential facts.

Off topic question. On the Federal 9mm box it says "Not for Law Enforcement Use". What's up with that? Are the police restricted as to what sort of ammunition they use? (Other than in certain excessively politically correct jurisdictions). Are they similarly restricted to low capacity magazines?

Or is this some sort of marketing ploy to contrast with ammunition marked "Law Enforcement Only"?

or flee to your room with your wife, and snatch up your .45-calibur handgun you keep in your closet.

One of my .45 caliber handguns sits at my left hand as I type this. Sometimes I've also got my M-1 Carbine or serious social purposes shotgun on my right. The other .45 is on the nightstand in the bedroom (when it's not traveling with me of course). Of course I have no small children (or any children at home) to worry about.

Unless we can teach cats to bark

Or get some really big cats. I'm told cheetahs make good companions, if you have room, or access to someplace, to let them run.

A 'retta 92FS is a nice weapon, but when it comes to malefactors unknown invading my home and waking be from a sound sleep, the proven principle of applying overwhelming force comes to mind.

Time to step up, pdel... Carbon-15 97S

sub6

Better watch out if you move to oregon they do have that assisted suicude law on the books and if you wife decides she wants to retire from you as well as work but doesnt wantot go through the expence of a divorce she can easily arrange your "suicide" :-) which is why I think oregon gets such a bad rap on this board

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.