Residents who called NOPD through September of this year had to wait an average 73 minutes for police to dispatch an officer their way. That's nearly four times as long as it took in 2011, when the average dispatch time was 15 minutes, according to an analysis of NOPD calls for service by NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and WVUE Fox 8 News.Note that the response time was formerly fifteen minutes, which was nothing to brag about.
And, mind you, that's an average. For really bad shit, like murders or armed robberies, plan on waiting ten or twenty minutes or so. When something bad has happened and the perp is long gone (property crimes, mostly), a NOLA resident will wait four hours.
As Deb noted, part of that is because the NOPD had to do a massive house-cleaning. Getting rid of the bent and brutal cops took far less time than hiring and training their replacements.
3 comments:
It would probably be smart for a career criminal to call in and report the crime he's about to commit... for the purpose of clearing out any police presence in the area for long enough to be safe. He just needs to couch it in terms of being a poor black person wanting protection.
This is a basic problem in New Orleans and other third-world cities--Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Washington DC, etc.. The problem is that the 911 system is over-utilized by people calling in for so many ridiculous things (ask any EMS professional who has worked in an urban center) that police cars and ambulances are routinely sent to stupid calls, making people with actual needs wait. Part of the problem is a population made up largely of ignorant people or people who think that they've got everything coming from goverment, and the other half is city officials who try to cater to that population by passing rules barring 911 call-takers from refusing to send emergency units to people who call no matter what the reason given and some even bar first-responders from refusing to transport anyone who calls and demands a ride to the hospital even if it's not an emergency. There are only so many emergency responders available, and when they get monopolized by the same people who routinely call for non-emergencies, other people suffer and sometimes die.
I did that job once. I can tell more stories than you'd like to hear.
New Orleans:
Getting rid of the bent and brutal cops took less time than finding new bent and brutal cops.
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