CHP 911 Answer Times Get Worse

Statistics from the California Highway Patrol show that it’s taking significantly longer to answer 911 calls during the past three months, even as the comm centers are included among those for mandatory employee furloughs because of a state budget deficit. The CHP uses the NENA call-answering standard of 10 seconds for 90% of calls. The San Francisco region CHP comm center met that standard just 52% of the time during April, and other centers answer rates have fallen: Sacramento went from 81.5% in Jan. to 73.2% in April, and the Los Angeles center went from 97% to 70%. Officials say part of the change resulted from eliminating a pre-screening feature from 911 calls. Read more about the CHP answer times here.