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You CAN fight city hall....
If you're DC's 911 service. CIty councilman hears woman screaming outside his house, calls 911, and gets jacked around.
"Roughly 1,000 calls a week to D.C.'s call center are being monitored for quality, Quintana told the public safety panel, chaired by Councilman Phil Mendelson. But council members said they hear the same complaints over and over - of police who don't show up, of call takers who are rude and ask too many questions, and of phones that are never answered."
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On occasion, similar complaints have been heard about the City of Detroit's 911 service.
The problem is probably not as endemic as in the DC service, but police response times inside city limits are poor. (In suburbia, it varies according to municipality, but is generally better.) There is at least one story that got public attention of a child calling because his parent was experiencing a medical emergency, and the child being berated by the 911 dispatcher for making the story up.
I wonder what the incentives are for 911 dispatchers to do a better job sorting the prank calls from the real problems.
I do know that police response time is heavily affected by public respect for the police, which is heavily affected by police reputation, which depends partly on response time and partly on effective curtailing of crime. I doubt that the DC police receive much respect from the average DC resident; I know that the Detroit police have a spotty reputation inside the city.
Part of the problem with respect for the police is that it can be very dependent on personal experience. I went to Virginia Tech: the police didn't prevent what happened. I regularly see cops whizzing by me on the highway (or even tailgating), yet the time I call in to let them know there's a very drunk driver who needs to be pulled over before he enters the two-lane Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel in about ten miles, there are no cops to be seen.
I used to have a very high opinion of the police; I'm apathetic at best and I think I'd be inclined to even be slightly hostile for anything other than an obviously-justified traffic stop.
"The Second Amendment: For Every Wrong There is a Remedy" Bravo! Well said indeed Rudy.Let us hope there will be that remedy available in the future!
Blessings
Elle
A few 'secret shopper' callers with pretend issues to test out the 911 operaters' responses and nonperformers weeded out could go a long way to improving service. Their public employees unions would scream bloody murder.
"People constantly say they call 911 and an officer either doesn't respond or an officer responds late," said Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans. "Somewhere the system is still not working even after all the money we've put into this."
The Second Amendment: For Every Wrong There is a Remedy