Slow roll?

I received the following email Saturday night:

“I work at Ameritas at 5900 O and we happened to hear a collision at Cotner
and O St (approx 11 am on Friday). We were not witnesses, but saw the
accident from our building immediately after the collision.

I immediately notified our switchboard operator to contact 911 (she was
the second citizen to report the accident).

I was concerned and disappointed that it took more than 10 minutes before
the first police response and there was NO fire or ambulance response. Of
course, it was some distance from where we were so I don't know if there
were injuries, but it did appear that at least one person was pinned in
their vehicle.

I do not know the policy for response, but since the intersection is a
busy one, considering the time of day and the fact there were multiple
cars involved, I'm curious as to why this did not get more (and faster)
attention by fire/police. And, the fact that two fire stations (Cotner
and A and Cotner and VIne are so close).”

I hate to let people down. I checked the dispatch record, and to me it looks like our response time was within acceptable norms. So here is the response I sent:

“Fire apparatus and ambulances are dispatched to traffic crashes only when injury is involved. In this crash, fortunately, no one was injured. Usually there are several first-hand reports from the scene (it’s common to get cell phone calls from the people actually involved), but when there is doubt, it has been my experience that the 911 Center always errs on the side of caution, by dispatching a full medical response. I assume that the information was clearly reported from the scene that no one was injured, and that is why the Fire Department was not dispatched.

As to the police response, the officer who was assigned arrived in 13 minutes. I do not know where she responded from, but I note that about half the patrol force was engaged in other incidents at the time of this crash. She works on the Southeast Team, which encompasses the entire City to the south and east of 27th and O Streets. We do not respond to traffic crashes with lights and sirens, in order to avoid creating a greater risk by our emergency response than the risk that exists at the crash scene.

I think a 13 minute response time to a non-injury traffic crash is pretty good in any city of a quarter million. Keep in mind that your police force is the smallest per capita in the State. To give you some perspective, if we were the same size per capita as Omaha, Lincoln would have 440 officers rather than our 317. If we were the same size per capita as Grand Island, we would have 423 officers--105 more than the 317 Lincoln police officers authorized in our budget. Among all the cities in Nebraska and the surrounding states, we rank as the 180th smallest of 194—right in between Thornton, CO and Marion, IA.

Thanks for the feedback. We will try to do the best we can with the resources the citizens of Lincoln provide. I am sorry we failed to live up to your expectations.”