DC Council Member Questions Police Response

A District of Columbia council member who stopped her car to inquire into someone lying on the sidewalk received an obvious answer from two bystanders—they pointed a handgun at her and told her to leave. In fact, the man on the ground was being robbed, and councilmember Yvette Alexander said it took too long for officers to arrive at the scene. She submitted her story to the District’s committee on Public Safety and the Judiciary, who is looking into several complaints about slow police response times. In this case, a calltaker answered Alexander’s 911 call reporting the incident within five seconds, and an officer was dispatched two minutes and 37 seconds later. It took an officer another 10 minutes to arrive, compared to the department’s average of seven minutes and 14 seconds for priority incidents. Alexander said the Office of Unified Communications told her that the officer was given the incident as an “unconscious person” instead of a robbery just-prior. Read more and listen to the two 911 calls from Alexander and the victim here.