'Why aren't you here?': Reality of 911 responses don't always meet expectations in Salt Lake City

SALT LAKE CITY — When you call 911, how quickly do you expect police to respond?

After reviewing an entire month of emergency call logs, the KSL Investigators found expectations from residents don't always line up with reality. And while the Salt Lake City Police Department has made strides in recent years toward lowering response times, that reality varies from day to day, depending on several factors.

'Why aren't you here?'

Dispatchers fielded call after call from residents asking for police to respond to Sunnyside Park on Sept. 28, 2024 — four calls, in total.

"My mind honestly was like, 'Why aren't you here?'" Jordan Michel remembers.

Michel and others called after a drunk driver hit a truck in the parking lot and kept driving.

"He came into a park where there's dozens of people, young families, kids, you know, our lacrosse game had just ended," she said.

Michel found herself stepping in front of the driver's car to try to stop him from driving away and potentially hurting or killing someone.

"I was just like, 'Stop. You will not be driving today,' and he kept, he gunned it towards me, and I put my hands on his hood," Michel said.

Recordings of the 911 calls from the park reveal a dispatcher cautioned against getting in front of the driver's vehicle, advising callers to instead call back and let police know which direction he headed if he were to drive away. When one caller asked how long it would be until an officer could respond, the dispatcher said she didn't know.

"He's driving towards people," a caller is heard telling the dispatcher. "I don't know why it's taking so long," he's heard telling another witness.

"This is the third person that's called you guys," Michel is heard telling dispatch in one of the calls. "We need help."

A Salt Lake City police officer arrived 14 minutes after the first call.

"I was so panicked in this situation. Never had I called 911 like this before," Michel said. Her expectation was that when calling 911, "They immediately reply. Like within minutes you can get here."

Earlier in the morning on that same Saturday, I had also called 911 from a Sugar House parking garage. When I parked my car there just before 10 a.m., I noticed a man lurking nearby. When I returned more than an hour later, he jumped out from behind my car.

I got away and called for help. A dispatcher told me police were on the way. But as I waited for that help, seconds turned into minutes, and minutes turned into hours. Three hours and 23 minutes passed from the time I dialed 911 until an officer was available to respond. By then, the man who'd been lurking was long gone. And so was I.

After that experience, KSL Investigators decided to dig into the current state of 911 response times in Salt Lake City, asking residents to share their experiences. We also submitted a public records request for call logs during that month. After analyzing them by priority and the response times, we found response times vary widely.

'A demand for police services'

"We know that they expect the quickest and safest response possible, and we want to live up to that expectation," said Salt Lake City Police Communications Director Brent Weisberg.

According to data provided by the department, September was one of its busiest months in 2024, with 13,050 calls for service. That was slightly down from August, which was 13,617 calls, the busiest month of the year.

The department publishes average and median response times online every month. The KSL Investigators looked through the agency's 911 call logs for the entire month of September, finding individual response times vary — sometimes significantly.

According to Salt Lake City police policy, the department organizes calls into three priority levels. Both priority one and two calls require immediate attention. In-progress and major crimes take top priority. Priority three calls are considered non-emergency calls requiring prompt attention.

My call was labeled a priority three call. Weisberg said it came in as officers had already been dispatched to 10 other calls in the prior 45 minutes. And in the hours I waited, officers responded to 88 other calls for service.

Many of those calls were for higher priority incidents, including an accident with injuries and the drunk driver in Sunnyside Park, a priority two call.

"When we look at our response times, and we have seen the tremendous improvement that we've made over the last several years, yes, we are very satisfied with our response times," Weisberg said. "Do we know we have more work to do to continue to improve that? Absolutely."

'The onus is on us'

Weisberg said staffing impacts response times. The department is funded for 630 sworn officers. Last month, they had 33 vacancies. The department is still trying to recover from a staffing crisis in 2020.

"We know the onus is on us to fill our vacant positions," Weisberg said.

But once they do, will that be enough?

"Clearly, there is a demand for police services," Weisberg acknowledged.

He said the department needs to conduct a new staffing analysis, noting Salt Lake City's population is unique, swelling during the daytime and on weekends, by a significant amount, as people from all over the valley venture into the city limits for work and recreation.

"Calls for service are likely not going to slow down anytime soon," he said.

Weisberg said the department is working to use the resources it has efficiently. That includes implementing a police community response team.

"They are not police officers, but they are specialists," he explained. "So non-sworn individuals who can handle lower-level calls for service, freeing up our officers to handle those higher priority calls for service."

He said the department is also working to deploy new technology that will automatically update callers on their emergency response.

"When someone calls 911, if an officer is going to be delayed because they've been diverted to another call for service, that program should then be notifying the person who made that 911 call, essentially letting them know that the officer has been diverted to another call for service," Weisberg said.

He said the department hopes to fully implement the new technology this year.

'We need a quicker response time'

The department's goal for priority one response is an average of 10 minutes. They hit that goal nine months last year. September's average of 10 minutes and 49 seconds was the slowest of the year.

The department hasn't set a goal for responding to priority two and three calls. During the month of September, the average response time for priority two calls was 16 minutes and 22 seconds. For priority three calls, the average response time was 54 minutes and 48 seconds.

For my call, the department's response time was more than three times longer than that average.

At 14 minutes, officers' response to Sunnyside Park was faster than average during September. And still, to callers, it didn't feel fast enough.

"We need a quicker response time," Michel said.

When asked whether her experience made her less confident calling 911 in the future, Michel said, "A little bit, yeah. I hate to say that, but yeah, absolutely."

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