NCJ Number
71108
Date Published
1979
Length
40 pages
Annotation
This report provides a synopsis of a study which focused on assumptions regarding rapid police response as an effective operational strategy and on the identification of problems which account for citizen delays in requesting police service.
Abstract
This synopsis combines the findings presented in reports which focus on the study's individual aspects. Civilian observers, communication tape analysts, and telephone and personal interviewers collected data on 7,101 calls for assistance in Kansas City, Missouri, between March 1975 and January 1976. Of these, 949 involved Part I crimes, 359 involved Part II crimes, and 5,793 involved noncrimes. Response time was conceptualized as consisting of three major intervals: citizen reporting time, communications dispatching time, and police travel time. Results indicated that, on the average, reporting time was longer than the combination of the time taken to dispatch a call and the time taken to travel to an incident. For both Part I and Part II crimes, the length of reporting time was the strongest predictor of on-scene arrests and of the availability of witnesses. Response time was found to be unrelated to the probability of making an arrest or locating a witness for a large proportion of Part I crimes that were discovered after occurrence, although the length of reporting time had some impact on the probability of a witness's being contacted for Part II 'discovered' incidents. Apathy was the strongest determinant of the length of reporting time for crime incidents, whereas in noncrime incidents, citizen doubts about the effectiveness of police involvement were the major factor. Although incidents which involved injuries had shorter reporting, dispatch, and travel time, the length of these intervals had no apparent effect on the length of a victim's stay in a hospital. Finally, citizen satisfaction with police response time was more closely associated with citizens' expectations about response time than actual response time. Citizens were also more likely to be dissatisfied if they thought faster responses could have made differences in the outcomes of incidents. Data tables, a glossary, and a list of seven references are included. For related documents, see NCJ numbers 46852, 47076-77, and 71109-10. (Author abstract modified)