“Figures released [on Wednesday] as part of the semiannual Mayor’s Management Report showed police response times slowed by 42 seconds to 9.1 minutes in the 2012 fiscal year, which ended on June 30,” nypost.com reports. “For most of the mayor’s tenure, cops were able to reach crime scenes in less than 8 minutes. In 2007, they made it in just 6.9 minutes. That changed in 2011, when the average response time zoomed to 8.4 minutes.” Hang on . . .
First, NY PD and NYC have a long history of fudging crime data. Read between the lines here:
City Councilman Peter Vallone (D-Queens), chairman of the Public Safety Committee, said the wait times for non-emergencies may be even longer than what’s on the record.
“I don’t think those numbers reflect the delays that occur,” said Vallone.
He recalled that two of his chiefs-of-staff got into separate car accidents and each had to wait hours for cops to show up.
“These numbers show the increased strain on the police force we have, which is trying to respond to more calls for help,” said Vallone, an advocate for increasing the size of the NYPD.
That would be the same City Councilman Peter Vallone who received a $38k campaign contribution from AFSCME, the union representing the NYPD. And even his peeps can’t find a cop when they need one.
Second, the 911 response time is an average.
Paul Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman, attributed the latest increase to a spike in non-critical calls that drove up the overall average.
Response times to critical calls, such as a robbery in progress or a man with a gun, remained flat at 4.6 minutes.
“We don’t respond to them as quickly,” Browne said of the noncritical calls, which he identified as complaints where there’s no immediate threat of injury such as trespassing or graffiti.
Not to return the fudging issue (much) but I’d like to see a list of what the NYPD consider critical and non-critical calls; and how and when they’re classified as such. And then I’d like to talk to the people who fill out the paperwork. And then I’d like a new identity.
Third, I reckon anything under ten minutes is pretty damn good, given the city’s population. There are millions of rural Americans who’d die for that kind of emergency response. Have died. Will die.
Which begs the question: what happens in that nine minutes or so between the 911 call and the cops’ arrival to The Big Apple’s unarmed population? Nothing good, I imagine. Not to mention what happens before they drop the dime. [h/t Eddie Devir]