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Police Operations and Data Analysis Report, Morgan Hill, California
113
High-Priority Calls
The department assigned priorities to calls with 1 as the highest priority. Table 8-19 shows average
response times by priority, with an additional line for injury accidents. The CAD system assigned a
priority 1 to fire and EMS calls. Because they are handled differently by the police department,
Table 8-19’s first line only excludes fire and EMS calls, and they are included just above the total in
a line marked with an asterisk.
TABLE 8-19: Average Dispatch, Travel, and Response Times, by Priority
Priority
Dispatch Travel Response
Calls
1
2.7
4.8
7.6
233
2
6.6
6.6
13.2
628
3
10.5
8.2
18.7
5,030
4
16.5
10.4
26.9
2,094
1*
4.0
4.8
8.8
218
Weighted Average/ Total
11.3
8.4
19.8
8,209
Injury accidents
1.7
3.6
5.3
28
Note:
The total average is weighted according to the number of calls within each priority level. There were seven
calls without a priority assigned.
Observations:
High-priority calls had an average response time of 7.6 minutes, lower than the overall
average of 19.8 minutes for all calls.
Average dispatch delay was 2.7 minutes for high-priority calls, compared to 11.3 minutes
overall.
Average response time for injury accidents was 5.3 minutes, with a dispatch delay of
1.7 minutes.
Hourly averages sampled fewer than 10 calls for each hour between 1:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.
In these cases, a few unusually long calls can seriously affect an hourly average.
For high-priority calls, the longest response times were between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.,
with an average of 11.4 minutes. This was due to one call with a response time greater than
30 minutes. For high-priority calls, the shortest response times were between 3:00 p.m. and
4:00 p.m., with an average of 5.8 minutes.
Average dispatch delay for high-priority calls was consistently 5.1 minutes or less, except
between 1:00 a.m. and 2:00 a.m.