Posted on 07/25/2007 12:30:01 PM PDT by Spktyr
(CBS 11 News) DALLAS When you dial 9-1-1, how quickly do you expect a police officer to respond?
Some crime victims in Dallas have waited for hours for police to arrive on scene.
A CBS 11 investigation found that the problem is widespread.
When a crime has been committed against you, there's usually a sinking feeling.
"I opened the door, and the first thing I see was the T.V. was missing," said Dallas resident Jonathan Cardenas.
"When I pulled my drapes back, the door was wide open," said another victim, a 94-year-old woman.
Then there's usually an instinct to seek help.
"I just called the police right at that moment," said Cardenas.
The moment the Dallas Police Department receives an emergency call, the clock starts running.
For the 94-year-old victim, who wanted to remain anonymous, that call came from her alarm company. Her home was burglarized. The thieves stole a jewelry box and escaped before she returned home or police arrived.
It took police an hour and 38 minutes to respond to the call. "It's too long, entirely too long," she said.
In Cardenas' case, police took 2 hours and 17 minutes to respond to a call. By the time police arrived, he says he had already gone to his mother's house for safety.
"They say they protect and serve. I don't believe none of it, because they don't really do that," he says.
For Chad and Brooke Lindsey, it took 4 hours for police to respond.
The alarm company called police as soon as a break-in triggered their alarm.
"We were at the Atlanta airport getting ready to take off to come here. We were taxiing on the runway," Chad Lindsey said. The couple flew to Dallas, stopped at a friend's house and drove home.
When they arrived home, they found their car, jewelry and other belongings gone.
Police records show an officer responded at 12:56 a.m. That's six minutes after the Lindsey's say they returned home.
Chad said he was shocked and upset, "Why did it take so long to get someone here?" That's a common question and a widespread problem.
To determine the scope of the problem, the CBS 11 Investigators obtained records for all 911 calls in the month of May with a two hour or longer response time. We discovered there were 4,005.
We took our findings to Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle.
"Any calls that take more than two hours is indicative of a problem," Kunkle said.
Kunkle stresses that most of these 4,000 calls are likely not for life-threatening emergencies, classified as priority ones and twos. A call from an alarm company is considered a priority three, so it's often held until the other calls are answered.
"The least important calls will always be delayed if there's a more important call that needs to be answered," Kunkle said.
Chad Lindsey thinks that practice is dangerous.
"What if we were home and unable to respond to the alarm company calling?" he said. "There is no way the police know that we were not here, trapped."
Officers we spoke to off-camera say it's a gamble they must take because the department is desperate for more manpower. Kunkle said response time is fundamentally a capacity issue.
"I think all of us are frustrated by the fact that we don't have more officers," Kunkle said. "We're trying to put as many officers as we can out in the field. We're paying overtime, and we're hiring officers... We have more officers than we have ever had before in the history of the department."
Dallas City Council has committed to bolstering the department's roster.
Kunkle said other factors will also improve response time, including a new dispatch system, set to launch in late-summer, and an additional patrol station in south central Dallas. But he admits the numbers we uncovered are unacceptable.
Senior Corporal Lester Page agrees. Off-duty, he participates in the Town Creek Homeowners Association in northeast Dallas.
"One thing that as citizens of Dallas we do deserve is a police department that can readily respond to the calls that they request," he said.
Ernie Kluft, the chairman of the crime watch, said he wishes he could count on his tax dollars to fund adequate security.
"Would we do it as much if we had tremendous response time? Probably not," he said. "But we're a long ways from having the response time that we would require, need or feel we'd want for our families,"
Kunkle says response times have improved. In the most dire cases, he says the department is close to its goal of eight minutes. He also says improving response time is a top priority, and they're hiring new officers every six weeks to help with their objective.
Our number of lengthy response times, 4,005, represents about seven percent of the department's monthly calls. But to some taxpayers, that's 4,000 reasons for criminals to outsmart the law.
"The burglars, the thieves, know they don't have to worry about it," said Lindsey. "They were not concerned in the least. They knew the police would not show up."
Typical of government: seize a private function, make it a government institution, over time service degrades, but the institution becomes so ingrained in the culture and minds of voters that even though it costs government far more to pay for the private service it displaced, the voters cannot envision life where they would provide the service themselves, even if it were ten times better.
Think: Public Education. Anyone who wants to try vouchers is accused of wanting to “deny children vital funds”, or similar nonsense.
Think: Social Security.
Warning, warning, warning!!: the same exact conversion of Health Care is just one election away from reality!
Dallas cops and sheriffs are in a tough position. They get political pressure to be ‘PC’, hands off the friends of politicos, make sure the rich are safe, and do buck their commanders. MEanwhile they hear the complaints and know they have no way to deal with them. I know some of these men and women and most are looking to transfer or hold out for retirement. No wonder Dallas leads the FBI crime stats. But atleast the bars are no smoking and cops have to patrol for that!
Problem here MR Kunkle, is that 99% of the dummies answering 911 calls haven't got enough sense to determine what is and what isn't a life threatening emergency.
Government agencies have government priorities, in short, they are only political animals. Private business can only function by giving a priority to making a profit. Government should stick to government: courts, military, etc. When it weighs into areas that are the realm of private affairs or of business, then it cannot do well.
(Similarly, we must never allow business to perform a government function.)
Funny but true... We had a bookkeeper stealing money a few years back, and the police said they couldn’t come out for a couple more DAYS, then my boss said, well if you don’t come and arrest her TODAY then there will be a murder to deal with as well, and the officers showed up in about 10 minutes to arrest her.
Another sensible precaution is to move to a small town. Someplace with about a dozen cops on the entire force. You call them, most any night, over a rustling in the bushes, and they will ALL show up. Anything for a little excitement.
Have you heard the audio of the woman who called 911 because the fast food joint got her order wrong and she wanted a police officer to come down and fix it.
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