Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Alarm comparison

Since I'm blogging about false alarms this week, I thought it might be worth exploring how we compare to other police departments. There is no national source of data on this, but fortunately it's among the hundreds of items the benchmark city chiefs share with each other in our annual survey. Here's how we compare on false alarms per 100,000 population with our 20 benchmark city members:


Looks like we are in pretty good shape, relatively speaking. So, summing up this short series:


1. False alarms are a common police dispatch, and consume some significant resources. They also hold the inherent risks of emergency driving.

2. Their numbers have fallen significantly since 2002.

3. A substantial number of false alarms are caused by employees.

4. There are some premises that account for a startling number of false alarms.

5. Compared to other cities, Lincoln's false alarms are low.

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7 comments:

  1. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2008 at 8:24 AM

    More musturd and onions here.

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2008 at 8:29 AM

    This graph looks inherently like the officers per 1000 population graph.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2008 at 11:57 AM

    TO: Scanner Listener
    September 9, 2008 5:48 PM,
    You give us "busy Body's" ah bad name. How you get to pretend to tell the Chief of Police how to do his job is one of the seven wonders I guess, or perhaps an Officer told you that there are eight? Also, Scanners are for snoops, Monitors are for busy bodies.
    JJ

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tom CasadySeptember 10, 2008 at 12:00 PM

    Anonymous 8:24-

    Yeah, you're right, I know. Sometimes I even bore myself. It's not easy cranking out content every day, though, so give me a little slack.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2008 at 12:08 PM

    This kind of stuff doesn't bore me at all! I read this blog for information first, entertainment second. That's why I ask such wonky questions. You've got to qualify and quantify to get a baseline, and you can monitor changes from there. How can you know how you're doing, if you don't know where you are and where you've been?

    ReplyDelete
  6. AnonymousSeptember 10, 2008 at 1:29 PM

    Hey Chief, I'll give you some slack. Anybody can ask an officer about trends in calls, but it takes good stats from a chief to see where Lincoln stands against other cities. Keep up the blogging for my education and amusement.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousSeptember 11, 2008 at 4:23 AM

    This will make one sick. But it is true. DO NOT FORGET THE ENEMY.
    http://www.lvrj.com/
    news/28232384.html

    ReplyDelete