Police response time refers to the time it takes for police to arrive at the scene of a reported crime*. This post was going to compare police response times (RTs) in the ten most dangerous US cities with the RTs of the safest cities (link). Unfortunately, none of the dangerous cities had decent RT data, except for Oakland, California. As it turns out, Oakland had the highest violent crime rate of the group, as well as the worst crime clearance rates - just 1% for robberies in 2023 (link).
Now the charts. First, Oakland’s violent crime numbers from 2019-2023:
Oakland’s police response times for the same period:
Ok, as crime goes up, so do response times. That makes sense. How about police staffing?
Ugh, more crime, slower response times and fewer police: not a recipe for crime-fighting success. Of course, there’s more to fighting crime than police response, Of course, there’s more to fighting crime than police response, such as what happens to suspects after they are caught. But that’s a topic for a different post.
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* Police response time is sometimes measured as the time between the crime and police response. Oakland PD did not define RT in their reports but it appeared to be the time between dispatch call and arriving at the scene.
Links: