Book Description

The procedures and results of a response time analysis study, which was designed to assess the value of police response to a variety of incidents, are summarized. The two primary objectives of this Kansas City, Missouri, study were: (1) analysis of the relationship of response time to the outcomes of on-scene criminal apprehension, witness availability, citizen satisfaction, and the frequency of citizen injuries in connection with crime and noncrime incidents; and (2) the identification of problems and patterns in reporting crime and requesting police assistance. The study design/data collection process continued over a 3-year period. Data were collected by civilian observers, communication tape analysis, and telephone and personal interviewers. Observers accompanied officers in the field to collect data on travel times and on-scene activities, while tape analysts collected dispatch times by timing verbal exchanges recorded on communications unit tape recordings. Victims of crimes and citizens who reported crime and noncrime incidents were interviewed to obtain reporting time data and to identify the problems encountered and patterns followed by those citizens reporting incidents or requesting police services. To analyze the relationships between response time and outcomes, three intervals in response times were considered: citizen reporting, communications dispatching, and police travel time. Variations in these intervals were then analyzed to see how they affected the probability of making an on-scene arrest and contacting a witness on scene, and how they affected recovery from injuries sustained during the commission of crimes. In addition, to see if the length of response time affected citizen satisfaction, police dispatch and travel times were again analyzed, along with other factors (such as citizens' social characteristics, expected response times, and perceptions of how long response took) considered to be possible determinants of citizens' satisfaction. Results indicated that reporting time was longer than either the time taken to dispatch a call or the time taken to travel to a call, and was nearly as long as the combined time taken to dispatch and travel to a call. For a large proportion of the crimes discovered some time after the incident had occurred, response time was found to be unrelated to the probability of making an arrest or locating a witness. For those crimes involving a victim or witness, reporting time was the strongest time determinant of arrest and witness availability. Citizen satisfaction was more closely related to citizens' expectations and perceptions about response time than to actual response time.