Market research indicates that most adults (42%) who eat at McDonald’s and similar fast-food restaurants expect to receive their food within a maximum of five minutes after ordering, while for seven percent of respondents, the “fast” in “fast food” means right away, with no waiting. Only five percent of customers would be willing to wait up to 15 minutes for their order (there was no option for a longer time). Delays are detrimental to business, as more than a third (36%) of fast-food customers indicated they had switched to a different fast-food restaurant or stopped visiting a specific location because of what they felt were excessive wait times.
The same expectations, with greater justification, could just as easily apply to calling 911. Unlike getting robbed, carjacked or burglarized, though, no one is likely to expire due to a delay in getting their burger or chicken sandwich.
The case of Dylan Johnson, a resident of Chatham County, Georgia, serves to highlight the difference between the two. Johnson reportedly called 911 for urgent help last February regarding a crime taking place at his residence, where his wife was alone with their baby. Expecting a prompt police response, he was instead put on hold because, according to a news report, the call center employee was more interested in ordering breakfast.
“After three separate calls and waiting nearly six minutes, I finally got through to a dispatcher,” Johnson said. “Then I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard her placing a McDonald’s order while I was trying to report a break-in at my home.” The recording of the 911 call obtained by a local news station reveals the dispatcher clearly saying “McGriddle, mm-hmm,” before coming back on the line to speak with Johnson.
The “Priority 1” breakfast call thankfully resulted in no harm, although by the time law enforcement officers arrived at the Johnson home the intruder had left the scene.
Johnson’s experience is probably not that unusual. A news report from early last year refers to ongoing citizen complaints regarding the County’s 911 service, including long wait times and unanswered or “abandoned” calls (callers who hang up before a dispatcher responds, possibly due to wrong-number calls or frustrations over wait times).
As law enforcement agencies across the country continue to struggle with staffing and funding challenges, response times to 911 emergencies are on the rise. One crime analyst reviewed “call to service” information that 15 law enforcement agencies make available, covering the period between 2019 and 2022. In 2019, only one agency had an average response time for all types of calls that was under ten minutes; the rest ranged from a low of almost 20.8 minutes to a high of almost 66 minutes. In all but one jurisdiction, the average response time increased between 2019 and 2022, sometimes very considerably. In New Orleans, for instance, the already high average of 50.8 minutes in 2019 had almost tripled to 145.8 minutes in 2022.
In an article on The Crisis in Response Times, the National Police Association points out that the “reality of overburdened agencies is that anything less than a violent event in progress may get bumped so far down the list that delays of hours can occur” – hours, not minutes.
Unlike the fast-food customers who can simply patronize another restaurant if the service delays at their stand-by establishment get to be intolerable, citizens don’t have any real choice over how their jurisdiction handles emergency calls, or whether or how quickly help arrives.
For all of the moralizing by gun control advocates who decry violent crime at the same time they press to curtail the rights of responsible gun owners, the law enforcement environment as it exists today means that citizens have to be prepared to act as their own first responders. “This is not a caution rooted in despair,” notes the NAP, “but rather a call to be prepared as much as possible for the threat of crime, medical emergency, fire, and harsh weather. As fast as the heroes want to be, the old saying is true – when seconds count, responders are only minutes [or maybe even hours] away.”
I don’t know why anyone would expect different. Have these people never met any dispatch employees?
Thankfully, dispatch jobs will soon enough be done by AI tools. The bank of morbidly obese losers with god complexes will be no more.
AI programed by left wingers?
No thanks.
It’s coming whether you want it or not. It will be taught using “authoritative sources.”
‘You Don’t Need a Gun,’ They Said…’Just Call 911,’
A real story. Happened about two years ago to someone I know. Due to the recognizable name and location, to protect their anonymity I’m not going to give the real names and location or date;
It was almost 8 AM Saturday morning. Joe had just arrived home from handling an overnight emergency at work. He was welcomed home with hugs from his three young daughters and his wife Cheryl, his young daughters eager to get moving ’cause Joe had promised them a day out with shopping too. And although tired and wanting to do nothing but go to sleep Joe had promised the girls a day out this Saturday, so Joe showered and changed clothes and off the family goes to breakfast. So it was a day out… breakfast, a movie the girls wanted to see, late lunch, and then to a soccer game to watch his 14 year old daughters latest crush-she-denied-having play, a little shopping, then some lite dinner, a trip to a local Urban Air Trampoline park for the kids, and then home. It was a little after 10 PM and Joe was exhausted by the time he opened the door and stepped inside while Cheryl and the girls got their shopping loot from the car… but he wasn’t exhausted any more when he saw the three guys in the hallway and two of them charged at him with machetes. Joe drew and fired at point blank range barley managing to get the gun pointed at one of them before he fired. It had all happened so quickly but he hit one of them and put him down. Joe was barely inside the door, the door still open behind him as he backed away firing and out the door while hitting another bad guy who had just opened up a pretty big gash to the bone on Joes arm with his machete, then Joe while backing away tripped back and fell back out the door.
Cheryl, hearing the commotion and shots and seeing Joe back out the door bleeding and falling, immediately executed their pre-planned and practiced ‘danger close’ plan – get the kids out of harms way and engage the threat to cover their escape. The kids were sent running down the street to neighbors homes as planned, the 14 year old herding her 9 and 10 year sisters out of harms way and down the street while calling 911 on her cell phone. Cheryl moved to help Joe and engage the threat. Drawing her firearm she shot one of the attackers, one Joe had already shot, as the attacker lunged through the door towards her husband, swinging the machete and bearing down on Joe who is bleeding badly from a previous slash in the initial encounter inside. But Joe had come back up and fired as Cheryl fired. The bad guy fell and wasn’t moving any more.
Total time of incident: By home security surveillance – less than 25 seconds from when Joe opened the door to Cheryl shooting the one bad guy.
Police arrived due to the 911 call, ~8 minutes after it was over. Two bad guys dead, the third had been slightly wounded and ran but got caught a couple of days later.
‘You Don’t Need a Gun,’ They Said…’Just Call 911,’
Over 98% of firearms in legal private ownership that are used for defense incidents (defensive gun use, AKA DGU) to protect against injury/loss, in or outside the home, are successfully used with no injury/loss to the victim defender, or other victims or bystanders, and are used in defensive gun use to successfully stop or deter the violent crime. (note: DGU includes brandishing and warning of gun use for defense)
On the other hand…over 95% of crime victims without a firearm suffer injury/loss, some are killed outright or later die (over 82%), as a result of the violent crime.
The violent criminal mindset, although awful, somewhat makes sense–their thinking: a victim who fails to resist vigorously and effectively is okay with or even deserves their victimization.
That kind-of makes sense once you recognize that violent criminals by their very nature do not respect other people by default. Thus, if your baseline is zero respect for your victim, your victim can only EARN respect through vigorous and effective resistance. Once the victim has earned respect, it is easier for the violent attacker to break off.
Crenshanda Williams, really?
Swedish
And the questions they ask… good grief… the operators get infinitely more details than necessary.
It’s the ancient question. If you call for a cop, and call for a pizza, which one will arrive first?
We all have to be OUR OWN first responders.
Heck, this is as true for ambulance and firefighters as it is for cops!
The police arrive just in time to draw a chalk outline around your cold corpse. Ummm, no thanks. I’ll make sure the perp is the one who gets the silhouette.
“Only five percent of customers would be willing to wait up to 15 minutes for their order”
The “Fast” part of “fast food” is why people will voluntarily endure the barely edible confections offered by those types of establishments in the first place. If the “fast” is as illusory as the “food” part…what’s the point?
As far as 911 is concerned, the general consensus for as long as I’ve been alive has been “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
Or as a long retired gun blogger once put it: “Your safety and security is your responsibility, the constables are only there to mark where the bodies ended up.”
another sneaky spammer – ‘Alpheus’ has a link in his name to a web site.
I live in a semi-rural area and police wait times here are generally long. But there is very little crime. Why? Because virtually everyone around here is armed. Practice is common, as shooting near ones home is legal. Perhaps the rest of the country could take note.
Waiting for 911 assistance, and police response is just the price of living in our democracy. Some you win, some you lose, some get rained out, some shouldn’t have even been scheduled.