Tag: 911 is a joke

Interesting caseout in Pasadena:

Oscar Carrillo was arrested on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter after he told a 911 dispatcher that 19-year-old Kendrec McDade, whom police fatally shot, was armed.

From The Detroit News:
The average response time for dangerous runs in Detroit is 24 minutes from the time a 911 call is received, according to statistics released in April.

Nationwide statistics are not available, but Atlanta, Ga., police have an 11-minute average response time and in Washington, D.C., police respond in an average of eight minutes.

So late last night a saw a man (who was not a worker) walking on the elevated subway tracks around a parked subway train. I saw him duck under the train and go to the other side. Perhaps a graffiti guy. But I don’t know. I figured he was up to no good. As the poster tells me, I saw something, so I said something.

I called 911 and said there was a guy walking on the tracks by a parked train and gave the location and name and phone number.

They called back once to confirm my location.

They called back a second time to confirm which tracks I was talking about.

They called back a third time to confirm that this individual was actually on the tracks and thus the MTA’s responsibility.

Then they called back a fourth time to ask if I could still see the individual on the tracks.

Once I said, “No,” she thanked me and hung up before I could add, “Because I’m now inside!” Not to mention I couldn’t see the guy when I called the first time because he was on the other side of a train.

I’m pretty sure there was no response.

You may know Flint, Michigan, from “Roger and Me“. In many ways, Flint is typical of America’s struggling small cities. It’s 2000 population, just over half African-American, was 125,000 (so it’s probably down to about 110,000 right now). Flint has about 35 homicides a year, disproportionatly concentrated in its north side ghetto. Thirty-five homicides puts Flint in the same league as Baltimore, at least when it comes to murder.

Michael East, Saginaw, Michigan police officer and author of the excellent Beyond Hope?, sent me this link responding to the mayor’s plan to lay off police officers.

Now I don’t know Flint Mayor Dayne Walling from Adam, and I’ve never been to Flint, but if the police officer in the video is being straight with us, that tow deal sounds shady.

What I find more amazing is the fact that Mayor Walling wants to reduce the police force to 120 officer. That’s a rate of 109 per 100,000 citizens. By comparison (don’t hold me to these numbers, they’re rough and corrections are welcome), New York city had about 410. Baltimore 450. Chicago 500 (Does Chicago really have more officers per capita than NYC now? That’s news to me). Los Angeles, always on the low end, has about 260 officers per 100,000.

Flint’s 120 police officers for a city of 110,000 is scarily low! Especially for a city with a lot of crime. Remember, as a rule of thumb, at any given time 1/6 of officers are working and 1/2 of those are on patrol That’s just 10 officers for any given shift!

Flint needs more cops. That’s clear. But of course, given their dire straights (and it’s not like I’m giving Flint any money), perhaps this a great opportunity for something truly radical!

How about unplugging Flint’s police force from the 911 system? Alas, the mayor says he can reduce response time, so I don’t have much hope.

A dozen officers on the street simply cannot answer 911 calls and do anything else. Period. So what is more important? Chasing the radio or real police work. I say real police.

What if one city would let polices officer actually be police officers, free to patrol and prevent crime (mostly on foot or bike) instead of being slaves to the radio, serving as glorified report writers, and chasing every last prank call to 911. Response time matter for fire and ambulance. Very rarely for police.

Why not try it? It’s not like Flint has much choice.

From the Washington Post:

Correction

Thursday, December 3, 2009

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number.

If an adult is missing, there’s little for a police officer to do. Adults are adults; they don’t have to come home for bed time. And if they’re drug addicts, they might just choose to “disappear” from prying family members. And besides, the last thing you want to do as a cop is serve as some stalker’s private dick.

But 11 adults killed and decomposing in a house and backyard in Cleveland? This is a failure of the system.

Here’s the story in the New York Times and the by Mark Puente in the Plain Dealer.

I’m more skeptical of officers who went to that house and smelled death. Officers know that smell and while the first reaction may be to get far away, the second reaction should be, “why does the house of a convicted sex offender smell like dead bodies?”

Probably every officer who took a call for a missing women did a minimally proper job. Each one got a 911 call for a missing adult drug addict. Each one had little sympathy and besides, what can you do? They’re adults. What should you do?

But where was the neighborhood beat officer? Where was the officer on foot that neighbors could talk to? Where was an officer who was in a position to put two and two together? One missing adult addict isa non-event. A half-dozen might just make you go, hmmmmmm. Eleven missing addicts and house smelling like death? This seems like a puzzle that shouldn’t have taken Sherlock Holmes to figure out.

But apparently nobody was ever in a position to see the big picture because the police department isn’t set up that way. In a rush to handle incidents, nobody ever noticed the problem.

So the public saw an uncaring police department while police saw an uncooperative public. This is inevitable when a system wants cops in cars instead of on foot and favors rapid response over slow deduction.

Police can zoom to an incident (not that you would zoom to a missing-person call) but to see the big picture, to recognize the problem, you need the insight and community input you’ll never find inside a patrol car.

I love any story about how f*cked up 911 is. This one at Pepper Spray Me is a good one.

And here he reminds you why grammar is important.

But not usually when police are under fire.

Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis on Friday denounced as “reprehensible” — and demanded severe punishment against those responsible for — a 911 dispatch delay that left an off-duty police officer to fend for himself while being shot at from a car filled with alleged gang members.
…
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that Orozco has launched an internal investigation to find out why up to eight minutes went by before police were dispatched to assist the off-duty officer.

The story by Fran Speilman in the Chicago Sun Times.