Old Blue Collar Joe
Sarah Louise Kerrigan
They decided not to respond (send a trooper) to those situations where the victim is not in immediate danger. Unless you work under the paradigm that your property
is you, that is consistent with protection of your life and person.
He makes the claim that they respond to 70% of their calls. Other cities don't even hit 50%, some even 30%. Are you claiming that over 30% of all crimes don't call 911 until after the crime has been committed?
Many legitimate 911 calls are not an emergency / life threatening / needs an immediate response kind of call. I'm pretty sure if you just looked at calls like, "My dad stopped breathing" or "There is an intruder in my house" the rate of response would be MUCH higher. However calls like "I woke up this morning to see someone smashed my mailbox (or Halloween pumpkin) last night" or "my neighbor's dog barks too much during the day when they are at work" do not require an immediate roll out. Possibly also included in these stats (I don't know) are duplicate calls for the same issue.
And then of course there are the obvious crank calls and accidental calls. Don't ask me how but once I managed to call 911 when I was half asleep and bumped the phone. I can't remember the details now other than it was an accident. It was while I was managing apartments (and thus called 911 more often) so possibly they were the last outgoing call I made and I bumped redial). I didn't even realize the call had gone through but then they called me back. After talking to me a bit they determined it was a mistake and didn't send a car out. For one thing, I think they could check my previous calls that backed up I was the manager. My point being it was a 911 call in terms of total number of calls they received but no one responded on scene because there was obviously no need.
I used to think 911 was only for life threatening emergency type stuff. I've been surprised at a few of the things cops have told me just to call 911 for. And sorry, my brain isn't coming up with any solid examples at the moment. I just remember at the time questioning the officer and thinking, 'Really? That is something I should route through 911?" I think it had to do with something that was not an emergency but that was a way to get an incident number assigned to it.
Sort of related - I did a Google and realized a number of places have real time maps you can pull up of where 911 calls are being responded to. The one I brought up was for Seattle fire and medic. Not sure if there is much like that for criminal stuff. I still thought it was interesting though.
Mind you, I just see 911 as another tool in the toolbox. It doesn't replace what I might do on my own for self protection. In my case I believe if I had an intruder and called 911 they would come but due to distance are not likely to arrive in a timely manner.