GILROY
– The average Gilroy resident can expect police to respond to an
emergency within five minutes of a 911 call, according to data
provided by the Gilroy Police Department.
GILROY – The average Gilroy resident can expect police to respond to an emergency within five minutes of a 911 call, according to data provided by the Gilroy Police Department.
However, residents who live in the central core of the city average police response times that are 1 minute and 40 seconds faster than those of residents in the northwestern section of the city.
“We are constantly monitoring the different beats and response times to make sure that we have equal coverage for the entire city,” said GPD Capt. Scot Smithee. “You can tell from this data that we are pretty close, but certain circumstances make the response to some beats faster.”
In order to monitor its response times, the GPD breaks down its data by its four beats throughout the city. A beat is a designated area of the city specified by the GPD for patrol purposes.
GPD beat 2, which covers the central area of the city west of Monterey Street between First and Seventh streets, records the quickest average response time – 4 minutes and 11 seconds – due to its centralized location, Smithee said.
“If the beat officer patrolling (beat 2) is already at a call in progress, then the officer from one of the other three beats who responds is usually within the surrounding area (of beat 2) because of its geography,” Smithee said.
The GPD always has at least one officer on patrol in each of its beats, but when two calls from the same beat area come within the same time frame, officers from adjacent beats are forced to respond – thus increasing response times.
Smithee said the 5 minute and 51 second average response time in beat 3 – the slowest time of the city’s four beats – is due to its geographical isolation to the other beats. Beat 3 covers the northwest part of the city west of Monterey Street and north of First Street, and when there are multiple calls in the area, it takes longer for neighboring beat officers to respond.
Beat 1 – the area south of Seventh Street – has an average response time of 5 minutes and 17 seconds; beat 4 – the area east of Monterey Street and north of Old Gilroy Street – records an average response time of 5 minutes and 33 seconds.
“Lots of factors go into defining the beats,” said Phylis Ward, the GPD’s crime analyst who compiles the response time data. “But the main factor in deciding the (beats) is call volume, not necessarily geography.”
Unlike the Gilroy Fire Department, the GPD does not have a requirement in its service contract with the city outlining maximum response times, Smithee said.
“We’re different from the fire department,” he said. “They have more guidelines because they have (residential fire) insurance issues to deal with.”
In 2001, the last year for which the department has available data, each GPD beat averaged more than 9,500 dispatch calls – totaling 38,245 calls for the entire city.
Every time someone within the city calls 911, the GPD’s Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD) tracks the call and records it in a data base. It is then up to the city’s dispatchers stationed in the basement of the Gilroy Police station to receive the call and dispatch officers accordingly.
According to CAD data, it takes 2 minutes and 4 seconds from the time an original 911 call is received until police are dispatched to the scene for the average police call in the city, which is factored into the the total response time.
However, high priority calls such as assaults or robberies in progress receive special screening from dispatchers, and police officers are usually dispatched immediately, Ward said.
If a call for a non-violent offense such as vandalism is received at the same time as a high priority call, it will drop on the priority response list, and it will likely take officers longer to respond, Ward said.
“It takes time for the dispatcher to work through the call information with the person on the phone depending on the type of call,” Ward said. “The more urgent the emergency, the faster they try to respond.”
Once dispatched to a call, the GPD averages a 2 minute and 80 second response time to the scene of an emergency.
