In today’s world, having quick police and ambulance response time is critical to minimizing risk in a mass shooting or other public emergency situation. Every moment delayed by trying to find a safe place to contact 911, conveying information to a dispatcher, or waiting for help to arrive means more time for a threat to grow worse and harm to spread.
Getting a quick response and resolution to your emergency may sound simple, but it’s not. According to the Justice Department:
Several studies have established that if the police take less than 5 minutes to respond to a call involving crime, the probability of making an arrest is 60 percent. When the time exceeds 5 minutes, the arrest probability drops to approximately 20 percent. These findings assume that police have been promptly notified of the crime and no delays occur in the reporting, dispatching, responding continuum. Police departments have taken steps to ensure that delays do not occur in areas over which they have control, but most citizens delay calling the police to the point that the value of a rapid response time is negated. Research has shown that the median delay for citizen reporting is 10 minutes and that almost three-quarters of calls relating to crimes are delayed beyond the 5-minute figure.
What’s more, police agencies around the country are struggling with rising response times.
In Oakland, dispatcher response times have risen to incredibly high levels to an average of 55.8 seconds in 2023, an increase from 28 seconds in 2020.
In New Orleans, average response times rose from around 50 minutes in 2019 to nearly 146 minutes in 2022, a 95% increase, and they nearly doubled for high-priority calls like shootings or robberies in progress, from 15.3 minutes to 32.4, according to an analysis of 15 law enforcement agencies across the country. It also found that in Nashville, Tenn., police response times rose nearly 30%, from 44 minutes to nearly 74 over the same period.
Staffing Crisis
There are many factors that influence police response times, including staffing levels, the number of officers needed to respond to a call, the volume of other high-priority calls and geographic distances. Multiple studies have found that staffing levels are the biggest variable in how long it takes police to arrive at a crime scene.
The Police Executive Research Forum has surveyed more than 200 member law enforcement agencies over the past several years and found that resignations spiked 40% in 2021 and 14% in 2022 before decreasing in 2023. Hiring similarly declined following the COVID-19 pandemic and criticisms over high-profile incidents involving police but has since recovered.
“For the first time since the start of the pandemic, agencies reported a year-over-year increase in total sworn staffing,” the organization wrote in releasing its updated 2024 figures. Small and medium-sized agencies now have more sworn officers than they had in January 2020, the organization says. In large agencies, staffing levels are still down more than 5% from January 2020.
Another variable in response times is how 911 calls are routed to dispatchers.
There are an estimated 240 million 911 calls placed in the U.S. each year. According to the National Emergency Number Association, 93% of counties with 911 coverage have the ability to directly route such calls to the proper public safety access point for the caller’s location, with the equipment and database information to display the address and phone number without having to ask for it. This is called “enhanced 911” but it is not synonymous with wireless 911.
For wireless 911 calls, call takers typically automatically receive the mobile phone number and can work with the service provider to identify the subscriber in case the connection drops. They sometimes also receive the caller’s location to route the call to the proper public safety access point.
But some agencies have a two-tier system in which one person receives the 9-1-1 call and then transfers it to an appropriate police, fire, or medical dispatcher
The bottom line: more time elapsed before police can arrive on the scene of an emergency.
A Better Way
We designed our SmartSOSTM platform to provide a faster, more direct way to notify first responders of an emergency. It’s the only emergency monitoring and response platform in the U.S. that connects directly to law enforcement and other first responders.
SmartSOS can integrate with your existing security and communications systems, and it works independently of the host facility’s internet connection or WiFi signal. At the push of a wireless panic button, our platform delivers real-time information — origin, location and nature of the emergency, including any brandished weapons — directly to police dispatch and other first responders. So there’s no need to find a phone and a safe place to dial 911, be routed to a different dispatcher or answer questions about the nature of the emergency.
After first being activated, the platform continues to send information including floor plans, video streaming, and door-lock access controls to help first responders assess the situation and plan their response. It reduces the time needed to trigger a response from 10 minutes or more to 10 seconds.
That’s critical in an emergency when time is everything.
Contact us to learn more about how we can streamline police response to your facility and strengthen your onsite security.