Feature Article |
The Dead of Night
By Gregory Gilderman
THE 911 SYSTEM WAS founded on the two great principles of law enforcement: incapacitation and deterrence. That is, if police could get to a crime quickly enough, a criminal would be arrested, locked away, and unable to commit more crimes. And if enough criminals were incapacitated due to rapid response, the word would get out, and crime would be deterred.
A corollary to this was the notion of "police omnipresence." According to this theory, randomized patrol by police squad cars would instill in a neighborhood an overall sense of police presence and authority, and thus make a potential criminal think twice before breaking the law.
What no one anticipated was how long it takes people to call 911. Crimes that actually get reported — only around 50 percent of violent crimes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics — overwhelmingly aren't brought to the attention of police until well after they've happened. George Kelling, one of the first criminologists to study 911, has described some of the scenarios. A wife is attacked by her husband, and she calls her sister first to see what she should do. A man is punched in the jaw and kicked on the sidewalk until he gives up his wallet, and he's in shock for 10 minutes before he makes it to a phone. Shots are fired on your block, and you're waiting in the bathroom until it's quiet long enough for you to come out and call the cops. You're a cashier in a store, and you get held up. You want to call the cops right away, but you wait till you're sure the gunman is gone before picking up that phone.
All of this results in an average reporting delay of 41 minutes. This number factors in the many serious crimes that aren't discovered by victims until hours after they've occurred — including many types of theft. But even if you eliminate the long reporting delays for theft, you find that a lot of victims of violent crimes wait five minutes or more to call the police. That's more than enough time for most perpetrators to flee. The first serious study of 911 showed that the probability of arrest due to rapid response was three percent.
When the study was published, in the mid-'70s, law enforcement officials across the country were stunned. It not only contradicted the entire premise of modern policing; it called into question the massive budget allotments for computers, telephone lines, radios and squad cars. The National Institute of Justice funded further studies in four cities — Rochester, Peoria, San Diego and Jacksonville — and the results didn't change: The rate of arrest due to emergency calls was 29 per 1,000 — 2.9 percent. The answer was the system Philadelphia and other cities have today: "enhanced 911." Enhanced 911 shows the phone number and address of the person calling. Police then prioritize calls to ensure that the most urgent situations are addressed first. Operators in some cities attempt to divert non-emergency callers to social service agencies.
All of which has made no difference. "Omnipresence" turns out to be nothing but fanciful speculation, as Kelling discovered that the passing of a squad car, even in a high- crime neighborhood, is an event most people simply don't remember. Violent crimes still start and end in a few seconds, and the robbed, raped and assaulted still wait a few critical minutes before calling the cops.
Politicians are the first to trumpet tiny reductions in 911 response times. But what do those reductions mean? That a Form 7548A was filled out in a parked squad car 10 seconds earlier? It seems strange that after decades of research, mayors and councilmen, police commissioners and editorial boards remain obsessed with tiny fluctuations in 911 response time. That Stephens got us to 13th and Lehigh in less than one minute means nothing if the 911 caller who heard the screaming woman waited even five minutes to make the call. I suspect the folks living in dangerous areas know all of this intuitively, hence the 1990 Public Enemy song "911 Is a Joke," and hence the suspicion that even though calling the police is the best available option for addressing crime, the police, even as embodied by outstanding patrol officers like Dennis Stephens, can't catch the criminals, and that even when they nab one here or there, they are acting arbitrarily, or worse.
A corollary to this was the notion of "police omnipresence." According to this theory, randomized patrol by police squad cars would instill in a neighborhood an overall sense of police presence and authority, and thus make a potential criminal think twice before breaking the law.
What no one anticipated was how long it takes people to call 911. Crimes that actually get reported — only around 50 percent of violent crimes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics — overwhelmingly aren't brought to the attention of police until well after they've happened. George Kelling, one of the first criminologists to study 911, has described some of the scenarios. A wife is attacked by her husband, and she calls her sister first to see what she should do. A man is punched in the jaw and kicked on the sidewalk until he gives up his wallet, and he's in shock for 10 minutes before he makes it to a phone. Shots are fired on your block, and you're waiting in the bathroom until it's quiet long enough for you to come out and call the cops. You're a cashier in a store, and you get held up. You want to call the cops right away, but you wait till you're sure the gunman is gone before picking up that phone.
All of this results in an average reporting delay of 41 minutes. This number factors in the many serious crimes that aren't discovered by victims until hours after they've occurred — including many types of theft. But even if you eliminate the long reporting delays for theft, you find that a lot of victims of violent crimes wait five minutes or more to call the police. That's more than enough time for most perpetrators to flee. The first serious study of 911 showed that the probability of arrest due to rapid response was three percent.
When the study was published, in the mid-'70s, law enforcement officials across the country were stunned. It not only contradicted the entire premise of modern policing; it called into question the massive budget allotments for computers, telephone lines, radios and squad cars. The National Institute of Justice funded further studies in four cities — Rochester, Peoria, San Diego and Jacksonville — and the results didn't change: The rate of arrest due to emergency calls was 29 per 1,000 — 2.9 percent. The answer was the system Philadelphia and other cities have today: "enhanced 911." Enhanced 911 shows the phone number and address of the person calling. Police then prioritize calls to ensure that the most urgent situations are addressed first. Operators in some cities attempt to divert non-emergency callers to social service agencies.
All of which has made no difference. "Omnipresence" turns out to be nothing but fanciful speculation, as Kelling discovered that the passing of a squad car, even in a high- crime neighborhood, is an event most people simply don't remember. Violent crimes still start and end in a few seconds, and the robbed, raped and assaulted still wait a few critical minutes before calling the cops.
Politicians are the first to trumpet tiny reductions in 911 response times. But what do those reductions mean? That a Form 7548A was filled out in a parked squad car 10 seconds earlier? It seems strange that after decades of research, mayors and councilmen, police commissioners and editorial boards remain obsessed with tiny fluctuations in 911 response time. That Stephens got us to 13th and Lehigh in less than one minute means nothing if the 911 caller who heard the screaming woman waited even five minutes to make the call. I suspect the folks living in dangerous areas know all of this intuitively, hence the 1990 Public Enemy song "911 Is a Joke," and hence the suspicion that even though calling the police is the best available option for addressing crime, the police, even as embodied by outstanding patrol officers like Dennis Stephens, can't catch the criminals, and that even when they nab one here or there, they are acting arbitrarily, or worse.
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