response time.

[g31]

I am a Police Officer in Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.A. It is a crime ridden city of about 180,000. I got a little chuckle out of your response time of a couple of days to a week. I know that is how it has to be down under due to land mass, but we get complaints logged in against us if we dont show up within the hour for priority 2 calls. Intresting stuff

[Sleuth]

It's not just Down Under. I live in a sparsely populated area of Arizona. If I call 911, response time under 45 min. is considered excellent! In some parts of our county, not on the Indian Reservations, 2 hours is a good response. In Indian Country, it can be much longer. And these times are for days, when the deputies are on duty. Nights, add time for someone to get up and get dressed.

[g31]

What if you have suspect confronting you with a weapon and you call for the P.D. Does the response time speed up, or do you have to handle it on your own, till the P.D. shows up much later. Just interesting to see what procedure is out in the stixs compared to working in the getto.

[Sleuth]

The times I gave were for an 'expidited' response. The Sheriff's Dept is spread thin (40 deputies for a county (including the Indian Country) bigger than Rhode Island. We are expected to handle things until the SO arrives. And at least 2 deputies live "close" to me - there are areas where the nearest deputy lives 40 miles away.

Actually, the Indian Reservations have their own police forces - but they also have huge, uninhabited areas with long response times.

This is why I kept a couple of pairs of cuffs when I retired, and my ranch gun is in 7.62 NATO. The biggest meth lab in the state was about 4 miles from my place.

[co911]

Yes Sleuth but in parts of Sydney, (Blacktown, Campbelltown, Bankstown), response time is not measured in terms of hours, but in days. I have a buddy who works at Blacktown and they take three DAYS to respond to burglaries. If you were to apply US law enforcement ratios to New South Wales, the dept would need to double in size to 30,000 officers to be comparable.

[Ex-plod]

In London they want emergency calls attended within 12 minutes but when you have 18 officers covering a borough like Wandsworth thats a pretty tall order.
During the "troubles" in Ulster the RUC would not give arrival times to calls in case it was a set up for the officers to be assasinated by the IRA.:eek:

[Cockney Corner]

It's 20 minutes for immediate response round our way. If you've suffered a burglary, and there's no reason to think Billy Burglar is about any longer, it's going to be a wee bit longer unfortunately.

[Ex-plod]

In London you are lucky to even see anyone after a burglary, telephone reporting that's the way to go!!:eek: :eek: :eek:

[ViceSgt]

I work for a large department in southern California. If you call is for a life threatening emergency, in most cases, you will have at officer at you door in under 5 minutes. On the other hand, if someone breaks into your house & the crooks are long gone, it may be an hour or two till we show up as responding to crimes in progress is a big priority.

[sheriff3399]

We have to respond in 10 minutes (prio 1 & 2). Lower prio means a longer response time. New is that forensic visit all houses which had been break in. They hope to gather DNA from crooks so they lift the arrest rate a little higher.

[ChrisF202]

My local agency (Suffolk County PD) is said to respond to violent crimes in progress withen 8 minutes or less. However, I have heard of some cases where it took 45 min or more to respond to a domestic in progress. Some of the East End town and village forces have a response time of like 5 min tops.