San Diego police response times improve but fall short of targets

SAN DIEGO –

For the first time in more than a decade, San Diego Police Department response times dropped slightly last fiscal year, but officers still take too long — sometimes hours — to get to calls.

Although police have long arrived within minutes for emergencies such as fatal shootings, response times for all other call types have exceeded the department’s benchmarks for many years. That decades-long trend has reversed in fiscal year 2023, according to city budget documents released last month.

According to the president of the San Diego police union, the news may not be as good as it seems.

While officials attributed the decline in part to fewer officers leaving the department – a welcome change during one of the worst staffing shortages in the agency’s history – the number of calls officers responded to also dropped by about 30,000.

That could be partly due to a slight drop in crime over the past year, but it could also be a sign that persistently long wait times have led to fewer people calling police in the first place, said Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association.

“Have they decreased because crime has decreased? Or have people simply realized that ultimately they are not going to get a timely response from the police, and they know that and have given up,” Wilson said.

In fiscal year 2023, it took police an average of 33 minutes to respond to Priority Level 1 calls, which include serious crimes such as domestic violence and child abuse. While that’s several minutes faster than the year before, it’s more than twice the department’s target arrival time of 14 minutes. And it’s nearly three times as long as it took police to respond to those types of calls a decade ago.

The department cut its response time to Priority 2 calls, which include less serious crimes such as trespassing and prostitution, by 25 minutes in the last fiscal year. But officers still needed more than an hour and a half to get to such situations. The department’s goal is to be on the scene in 27 minutes, according to city budget documents.

Officers were also able to respond more quickly to Priority Level 3 calls – minor crimes or non-urgent requests for service such as loud parties – last year. The average response time was about an hour and 40 minutes. That’s nearly 50 minutes faster than last year, but officers aim to respond in less than an hour and 20 minutes.

Only response times for Priority 4 calls, which are forwarded when no higher priority calls remain, increased in 2023 — from about 94 to 96 minutes, just above the department’s goal of 90 minutes. The last year the department met all of its response time benchmarks was 2013, data show.

Police officials have long linked response times to total headcount, so it makes sense that times have improved over the past year while fewer officers are leaving the department. Although the agency is still working to fill more than 180 vacancies, the department’s turnover rate dropped 15 percent, from a staggering total of 241 in fiscal year 2022 to 176 in 2023.

The number of career changers has also increased slightly in the past year, from 10 to 12. Although this is not a huge increase, officials from other authorities already have experience and are therefore a particularly valuable addition.

“This means they will be ready to become a full-fledged resource for the department much faster than a recruit hired without experience,” said police spokesman Lt. Dan Meyer.

Long response times could impact public safety and relationships between officers and community members, police and community leaders said.

Police officers who do not arrive on time may miss an opportunity to prevent a crime or catch a suspect. And long wait times can jeopardize the preservation of evidence and make it harder to solve cases. When the police are late in responding to calls from the public, it can also lead to a feeling of insecurity and mistrust among residents.

“The police cars (in San Diego) say ‘Protect and Serve,’ but the police are not serving unless they are consciously focused on fast response times,” says Francine Maxwell, a longtime resident of southeast San Diego and former president of the San Diego branch of the NAACP.

Maxwell noted that some people are already hesitant to call police for certain crimes – such as domestic violence. If the department’s arrival times don’t continue to improve, it will become even more difficult to build a trusting relationship between community members and officers, she said.

Wilson agreed.

“If we cannot answer these important calls in a timely manner, it undermines public confidence not only in the police and law enforcement, but in the entire criminal justice system,” he said.

The department has implemented a number of strategies over the years to address long response times.

Overtime has long been used to increase staffing levels, as with departments across the country. A recent city audit found that San Diego spends about $50 million annually on police overtime.

Some emergency calls are now handled online, eliminating the need for officers to respond. Some non-injury accidents and identity theft reports, for example, are routed to the department’s online reporting system, allowing officers to focus on responding to other calls.

The department has also hired civilian employees to perform certain duties related to the investigation of nonviolent crimes for which officers are currently responsible and is seeking to hire additional employees.

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