Tracking police response times | NewsRadio 740 KTRH

As crime spirals out of control in the United States, cities that have “defunded” the police are also facing another consequence of their poor decisions. Slow response times.

The city of Dallas is still struggling with slow response times, according to a new report.

“It’s kind of a nationwide effect that we’re having right now,” said Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers Union. “We have problems recruiting and retaining agents, so everyone is understaffed, and when you’re dealing with higher staffing, call volume in big cities like Houston, the response time will be slower »

That said, response times here in Houston are much better than in Dallas.

“When you look at Houston, we have an area of ​​677 square miles,” Griffith told KTRH. “With only 5,000 officers, and of those, less than half are on patrol, that’s going to give you a longer response time. Now, ours is better than Dallas’.

Right now it takes about 6-6:30 for a code 1 which is the highest priority, code 2 is somewhere in the range :10 to :11 minutes, and for everything else you You can expect to wait between: 15 minutes to an hour depending on the incident. But if you call the police, you will get an answer.

One thing that would really improve response times here in Houston, which are still some of the slowest since the 90s, would be to hire more officers. Whether or not this will happen remains to be seen.

“We have a lot more people in the city of Houston now,” Griffith noted, “If we’re short 2,000 to 3,000 officers, we’re not going to catch up to that number anytime soon. It’s going to take years.”