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Jan 31, 2008 10:11 pm US/Pacific
CBS 13 Investigates: 911 Response
Reporting
Sam Shane
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―
When you call for help how long does it take for police to show up at your door? It depends on where you live. If something goes wrong and you pick up your phone and call 911 you probably expect the police will be at your home in a matter of minutes.
When people pick up the phone and call 911, when do you think they expect to see a police officer? Elk Grove Police Chief Robert Simmons says probably within moments.
Our CBS 13 investigation showed that if it's a non-emergency call in two local cities, it can often take hours even days for local police to respond to non emergency 911 calls.
We went to four police departments, Roseville, Sacramento, Elk Grove and Stockton. We requested their 911 phone call records where response times were at least an hour or longer, during a three month period from May first of 2007 through July 31st of 2007. The response times in Roseville and Elk Grove were much different than in Sacramento and Stockton.
Sacramento resident, Greg Tyson says he turned around and came back and his car was stolen, so he goes in the house and called 911.
According to 911 records, on July 12, 2007, it took Sacramento police more than 12 hours to respond. Tyson waited for an officer the entire day. Then more than 12 hours later still no police. Tyson's phone rang. It was the police to take a report over the phone.
Should it take them 12 hours to respond to you? "I could've even dealt with a couple of hours, but the whole day?" Tyson said.
I don't mean to diminish what you've been through but we went through some records for a three month period, do you know 12 hours is nothing. There are people who are waiting 25 hours, 35 hours, in one case 66 hours.
Tyson says that's terrible and that's money coming out of checks every month.
Deputy Chief Sam Somers with the Sacramento Police said, "I agree, that's not good customer service and we want to improve upon that."
He admits his department needs to respond quicker to non-emergency 911 calls. It took Sacramento police at least 10 hours to respond to non-emergency 911 calls on 87 separate occasions during the three months we investigated.
"On the violent crime our officers do an outstanding job and we respond to them very well. It's these other ones that actually impact a lot of folks on the property crimes that we need to improve our ability to deliver service."
If Sacramento Police need to improve their response time, Stockton police are right there with them. Of the four police departments we investigated, only the Stockton Police department hesitated to cooperate. They finally turned over their records after a series of letters and phone calls from CBS 13 producers. Their 911 records show that from May 1 to July 31 of 2007 it took Stockton Police at least 10 hours or longer to respond to 911 non emergency calls on 76 separate occasions.
Stockton Police Chief, Wayne Hose said, "We don't want anyone to wait near ten hours, I mean that's terrible."
Hose admits the slow response to non-emergency calls by his police force is concerning. But he says in cities with violent crime, like Stockton, police simply cannot respond as quickly as they can in smaller bedroom communities.
"They will respond to calls that we don't send people to, we can't send people to a barking dog call on a busy Friday night, that's going wait hours, it's just not a priority."
During our 3 month investigation the police departments in the smaller, bedroom communities of Elk Grove and Roseville routinely responded to 911 non emergency calls in less than two hours. But they will also tell you the 911 system is not fool-proof. It still attracts random, nonsensical calls which take up valuable time and resources like when one woman called wondering how to cook a turkey.
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