Priority 1 response time - 8 minutes 13 seconds
Priority 2 response time - 22 minutes+
You can show this to anyone that thinks they don’t need a gun because they can just call the police. Sure, if you are willing to wait 8 minutes. These numbers will just continue to get worse as the nation beats law enforcement down and throws them under the buss every single time they have to make a quick decision.
There are many factors affecting this. More so lack of personnel and the increasing trend for the field units to be saddled with mental cases and other cases that the management doesn’t want to simply say, it’s not a police function and not respond. So when a shift is short or units are tied up on a call and a car has to travel extra time across zones areas to get to a call, traffic is a factor, it all adds up.
I agree, people need to be more self reliant in many different ways, but that is another topic.
“When seconds count, the police are only minutes away”
Agreed on all points.
It’s worse here. Politics have made policing very inefficient. We have enough people, but not enough money, and too many people with vested interest who are unwilling to change the system. Surprise, surprise.
I live in a suburban county of nearly a million people, and only a little over half the towns even have PDs. The sheriff’s offices in PA do not have full police powers, so towns without a PD have to rely on the State Police. Often, a single trooper will be the only police officer for two or three towns, and that includes some densely populated boroughs! Response times in those towns could be an hour or more, even with the trooper less than 5 minutes away. Also, even towns that do have their own PDs are perpetually understaffed as PDs are just so expensive to run and they can’t afford to hire the appropriate amount of officers (or so the towns claim). Some towns have taken to forming regional police, but even then, the towns doing so are usually very small and have the same problem trying to staff the regional PDs properly. Basically, they’re left with the choice of an understaffed regional PD or a single state trooper.
The law allows for county PDs, and one is already in existence (though Philly PD is technically one as well). A county PD would give the towns the option to contract with the county for police services for less than the cost of maintaining their own PD, and would give them a full spectrum of law enforcement services (patrol, investigation, SWAT, etc). The problem is, the police chiefs fight tooth and nail against any and all attempts to form county PDs. They know an option to contract with the county means they go from being chief of One Horse Town PD to officer-in-charge of the county PD’s One Horse Town station, or it could mean forced retirement. It also means there’s less of a chance to ensure that only friends and relatives get a shot at jobs with the department. The only time they even let town PDs to merge into regional PDs without a fight is when their is only one chief in question, and it’s clear that the departments that don’t have a chief are going to fold anyway if they don’t regionalize. Also, a lot of town officials want a chief they can call at 3 am and threaten to fire if he doesn’t drop the charges against the mayor’s son who just got pinched for DUI, so they oppose county policing as well. With all this, the only county PD in the state is restricted to duties on county property and backup to municipal PDs (though the county officers do actually have countywide jurisdiction regardless of municipal boundaries). What I would like to see happen, but never will, is for the state to pass a law that all towns MUST have municipal police, and if they can’t afford to have a PD or to staff one properly, they have to contract with the county (which I would prefer to be the sheriff as I like the idea of an elected chief LEO, but that’s another can of worms). It’s ridiculous here.
The good thing is that for the time being, we’re one of the best states in the Northeast for gun laws (hopefully that doesn’t change anytime soon). Outside of Philly and the inner ring suburbs, nobody even blinks if you tell them that you carry. Also, the police know they are understaffed and officers usually actively encourage people to get CC permits and training.
I don’t know what county your in but in mine just about every township has a PD. Right outside of Philly. The very few that don’t are incorporated into the bigger towns. For instance the towns of Ivyland, Northampton and Holland are Northampton township and are patroled by Northampton township police. The towns of Jamison, Furlong, and Hartsville are all Warwick township. All these towns fall under one zip code and patrolled by one large department. Newtown has its own as does Feasterville, Southampton and Upper Southampton. Even Pendel has its own PD and they are a 2sq mile town.
The sheriff’s office in Pa is part of the court system so they are not cops in the traditional sense. They do warrants, prisoner transfer and court security. They however are not prison guards.
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Ivyland still has its own PD, though I know that Northampton does patrol them as well. Jamison, Furlong, and Hartsville are all part of Warwick; they’re not separate boroughs. Central and lower Bucks and Montgomery municipalities pretty much all have their owns PDs, though many of them are still very understaffed. The northern parts of both counties are pretty much all under the State Police, with the exception of places like Pottstown, Perkasie, and Quakertown. However, again, they’re understaffed and response times are very slow. PDs would be larger and less expensive if the towns shared the cost with the county
The sheriff’s office in Pa is part of the court system so they are not cops in the traditional sense. They do warrants, prisoner transfer and court security. They however are not prison guards.
I know, and a major part of that is politics. Harrisburg would have to pass new regulations granting the sheriffs general police powers, as both the statutes and court cases have repeatedly said that sheriffs and their deputies are law enforcement officers, but not police officers. County PDs could be formed without any further legislation. However, I just like the idea of an elected chief LEO and wish that PA would have the sheriff be like sheriffs in most of the other states.
The understaffed part where correct is not exactly accurate. Since they all kinda blend and merge into each other. Warwick is 11sq miles, has 12k people and about 20 cops. Northampton has 26 sq miles, 40 people and 43 cops
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True, and there’s a lot of overlap. The Municipal Police Jurisdiction Act gives officers a lot of leeway in conducting their duties. For example, if you’re speeding in Township A and an officer lights you up just before you cross the line into Township B, he can continue to follow you into Township B and conduct the stop. In a lot of other states, once you cross town lines, they can’t follow you without permission from that town. There’s a lot of mutual aid going on too, as well as region task forces.
Still, the individual PDs are still understaffed. My township’s PD has about 30 officers at full strength, and is down at about 25 right now. According to a long time officer there, their current authorized numbers are set from about 20 years ago, when the population and density were must less than where we are now. He said they need to have 5 or 6 more patrol officers at least, but the township wants to actually reduce the size of the PD, and as of now, has no plans to fill the vacancies. The township above me just laid off a bunch of officers and they even wanted to fold the PD completely, but the State Police wouldn’t allow it as even they are down quite a few troopers. Nobody wants to pay for police, less and less people want to become police, nobody gets hired unless they know somebody…the whole thing is a mess.
Well the media and the BLM crew make it hard to be gung ho.
Welcome to Vietnam Policing, where if you don’t care, we don’t care.
Those are really good response times. Regardless of response times, anything can happen in a matter of seconds and you have to be prepared to contend with a problem before police arrive on scene.
It pays to know how to shoot effectively, perform first aid, grapple and run from trouble. In a given situation, you may have to perform all four tasks.
DPD is somewhere like 600 officers short of where they need/desire to be. This is mainly due to budget.
Another aspect is the officer to population ratio, the city I use to work for had 100K residents and some times on deep nights we were rolling with 10-15 officers on the street. The Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke analogy applies here.
It’s not just the shortage, it’s moral, bad pay, and terrible administration. To make things worse, the DAs office is falling apart as well. That county is working over time to run off any quality law enforcement.
This.
I think those are honest figures, but you always have to take into account how response time stats are derived. From the 911 callers perspective, response time starts as soon as they call 911. This includes hold time, if applicable, to speak to a call taker/dispatcher up until a car pulls up and an officer meets them.
From the typical commanders standpoint, they tend to gloat about how low their response time is at community meetings based on stats gathered from when the dispatcher assigned the call to an available car. This doesn’t take into account hold time with 911, time to actually take the call and assess the situation, availability of units to actually be available to respond to the assignment, arrival/drive time etc.
DPD’s pay is not all that bad and they have one of the top retirement systems in the business. High turn around is a symptom of low moral which is comprised of everything from mandatory overtime, performance reviews, et al. But yes budget, man power, and piss poor leadership all contribute to the problem.
I had hopes that once Craig Wakins was booted that Susan Hawk could change things around. But I guess she is no where to be found . . .
Well, I’m kinda thankful I didn’t pursue employment with them during their last hiring cycle. Hopefully things start improving for them.
Budget, liability, morale, staffing levels and most of the world hating you exist until somebody scratches their car or their neighbor parks too close to their driveway and they are too lazy to ask them to move it. Response times can vary so wildly just because so many factors can skew the data on such things. My last employer until we finally got about 1 officer for every 1500 residents we would roll a weekend overnights with 3 people for a town of 45,000 people. You had to be very selective on what you stopped since if you were tied up the town now only had 2 officers and the county was normally too busy for any help.
Its hard to want to excel when your admin won’t stand up for you or even your state or governor agrees to a contract and then won’t fund the budgets because they did not get their way in arbitration.
In my opinion it is a noble profession but one that I cannot recommend to my sons, its amazing how much respect they have for people that put themselves at risk or in uniform to protect others. Makes me wish most people had a tenth of the amount of respect a 7 year old can have.
Sorry rant over, I could not see myself doing anything else but like a lot in this line of work some days its hard to hold your head up.
Well said.
Which is why a lot of people are leaving for the suburbs and getting a 10K+ annual raise immediately.