Crime & Safety

First District Emergency Response Slowest In County

Statistics released from a CountyStat report show that the national standard for response time is seven minutes. It takes longer than that for responders to answer to the first district.

 

It takes emergency responders longer to answer emergency calls in the first police district than any other district in the county.

Emergency call response times around the county are close to the national standard, allowing seven minutes from the time a call is answered to the time a responder arrives on scene.

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However, in the first district, which contains Potomac, Rockville and North Potomac, it takes an average of seven minutes and 55 seconds for an officer to respond to a call, according to a CountyStat report given to the Montgomery County Public Safety Committee at a meeting about police staffing and crime trends. Most of this difference is due to the travel time of getting to an event, which takes five minutes and 13 seconds.

Fifth district emergency response times fare a little better than those of the first district, at seven minutes and 47 seconds.

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On average it takes five seconds for responders to answer 9-1-1 calls, and one minute and 54 seconds to process the call for the county. The average time it takes an officer to be dispatched to an event is between 41 seconds and 43 seconds throughout the county. It’s in the average travel time that county-wide response times differ, ranging from three minutes and 46 seconds for the third district, which holds the lowest response time of the county, and five minutes and 13 seconds for the first district.

According to police department notes on the report, “response time disparities are in direct correlation of square miles in a district and population density.”


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