South Chicagoans demand faster police responses

Sun-Times:

South Chicago residents descended on a City Council committee today to complain about a slow police response to gun violence that has made them prisoners in their own homes.

The Police Committee took no action on the proposal by Ald. Sandi Jackson (7th) that would have mandated the temporary re-deployment of officers to her far South Side ward and other high-crime areas.

But, the message from South Chicago residents was delivered loud and clear.

“You hear shooting from 96th and Calhoun to 102nd and Calhoun. It’s back-and-forth, back-and-forth. You call the police. There’s a [squadrol] two blocks away just sitting there. Thirty minutes later, the police come. It’s too late. Everybody [has] scattered. The crime has taken place,” said Pastor Amos Bradford.
...
Chief of Patrol Eugene Williams responded to the barrage of complaints with the same claim Deputy Police Supt. Dan Dugan made to aldermen last spring: No police cars are available to respond when South Chicago residents call 911, in part, because they call for too many non-emergencies.

“We have to stop dispatching so many calls to police officers on the street. We are one of the few — probably the only major city — that responds 60-plus percent of the time when someone picks up the phone and says, ‘I want the police,’” Williams said.

“We can’t respond to calls of, ‘My eight-year-old refuses to go to school.’ We get those calls. We get 10,000 calls-a-day. What we have to do is transition to what other major cities have already done. That is to say, we’re not gonna be able to respond to that many calls so we can keep our people available” for the real emergencies.

Last spring, Police Committee Chairman Isaac Carothers (29th) used disparate figures for “radio assignment pending” calls in North and South Side wards as “Exhibit A” in the case for beat realignment, something that hasn’t been done in Chicago since 1985.

Via CapFax morning shorts!

Question: Do you percieve that police response is slower than it should be? Especially if the call involves anything from a violent crime to breaking and entering?