A new report from the city’s Office of Inspector General is critical of the Chicago Police Department and its incomplete data when it comes to tracking its emergency response times.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said her office was hoping to conduct an examination of CPD’s emergency response times to understand if disparities exist in certain parts of the city – because residents have complained to her office about being underserved or ignored by police.
“This is really fundamental to CPD’s role as a public safety agency. How quickly the police respond when people need help. That’s what drives how safe people feel,” she said.
Witzburg told NBC 5 Investigates Wednesday that her office’s examination could not be completed because CPD’s data is incomplete.
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Specifically, the OIG report alleges that officers have been failing to mark themselves “on-scene” when responding to calls. Of the calls reviewed in the OIG's report, Chicago Police marked themselves “on-scene” just 49 percent of the time.
“In more than half of the instances, the police are not recording the time that they arrive on the scene of the emergency. And that means that we cannot adequately assess response times,” Witzburg told NBC 5 Investigates.
According to her report:
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“CPD’s response time data is substantially missing and CPD lacks monitoring systems that could enforce data entry responsibilities. CPD must bolster its data collection of all response status timestamps to enable more accurate and thorough analysis of the efficiency and equity of 911 response times...”
Chicago police did not respond directly to NBC 5 Investigates’ questions.
In an emailed response, a spokesperson pointed us back to CPD’s responses contained in the OIG report
While CPD agreed to certain recommendations including calls to review its policies, consider future audits and improve technology – CPD said it may not be able to “fully adopt” all recommendations to comprehensively examine their response time data due to limitations in technology and available personnel.
While Chicago police are planning to implement a new computer assisted dispatch system that will incorporate GPS and can automatically mark an officer “on-scene,” Witzburg says that doesn’t address the need for providing additional training and better equipment for all officers.
