The average time it took Salt Lake City police officers to respond to critical 911 calls improved slightly last month, according to data released by the Salt Lake City Police Department this week.
In January, officers responded to high-priority calls in 10 minutes and 13 seconds on average, according to the department’s report, compared to January 2021′s average of 11 minutes — an improvement of 47 seconds.
Last month’s average response time was also 33 seconds faster than December’s, and 7 minutes and 21 seconds faster than in August, when Salt Lake City officers took more than 17 minutes to respond to high-priority calls, which can involve serious or life-threatening injury.
At the time, Police Chief Mike Brown found the figure so alarming, he thought it was a mistake. Employees spent 250 hours reviewing the data, which confirmed in October that the August average was correct.
In 2021, officer response times to all calls were generally longer in the summer and fall and shorter in the winter and spring, with August’s and September’s times the longest of the year, according to police data.
Salt Lake City officers also received more calls for service in January compared with the same month in 2021, Brown said in the department’s news release. The release did not specify how many more calls police received in January 2021, but noted that last month, police saw almost 10,000.
“This means our officers are fielding more calls and they’re getting to these calls faster,” Brown said.
Brown did not cite a specific reason this week why response times have gotten quicker, but he said in the news release that response times are typically influenced by several factors, including staffing, call volume and call times.
Shortening officer response times was listed as a goal in the city’s updated crime control plan, announced in November.
The plan also included diverting people away from 911 if their call is considered lower priority, giving them the option to either file a report online or over a non-emergency line.
Police spokesperson Brent Weisberg noted that in October, the department launched its Telephonic Shift Program, which has fielded 2,551 lower-priority calls as of Jan. 24. These are calls that do not require an officer to respond in person, for needs such as thefts that are not currently in progress, vandalism, minor crashes, lost items, found items and some public nuisance crimes, he said.
“Without this program, those are calls that likely would have needed to be handled by patrol officers in the field making them unavailable for other, more emergent calls,” Weisberg said.
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