The effects of patrol workloads and response strength on arrests at burglary emergencies

A Study on Securing Safety via Application of the Blind Spot Metrics for Report Cases of the Police

“…Research in this stream studied an effect of the response time on arresting of perpetrators. The main argument was that shortening the response time increased the probability of arrest at the scene [1,7,8]. In [8], the authors found a negative relationship between response time and burglary arrests after controlling significant incident characteristics such as workload, time of incident, whether a perpetrator was caught etc.…”

“…The main argument was that shortening the response time increased the probability of arrest at the scene [1,7,8]. In [8], the authors found a negative relationship between response time and burglary arrests after controlling significant incident characteristics such as workload, time of incident, whether a perpetrator was caught etc. Analysing data from Houston Police Department, [1] found a similar result.…”

“…In academic circles concerned with policing and security research, response time has been a core research subject for decades [6,3,1,7,8,9,10,4,11]. Response time refers to "the amount of time occurring between the time a police unit on the street received a call from the dispatcher and the time when that unit contacted the citizen involved" - [12].…”

Staffing Levels are the Most Important Factor Influencing Police Response Times

“…Secondly, Sherman (2013) asserted that delays in crime reporting typically render subsequent police response speeds inconsequential. However, these arguments preceded relatively strong emerging evidence that rapid police response can impact specific types of police outcomes such as arrests (Cihan et al, 2012;Coupe & Blake, 2005;Rief & Huff, 2023) and survival in serious car crashes (Blanes i Vidal & Kirchmaier, 2018;Liu, 2022). Further, law enforcement and criminal apprehension duties are just one component of overall policing services, and the ability to quickly respond to non-criminal and non-life-threatening events is still a crucial public safety goal (MacLean, 2020).…”

“…While much of the police response equation lays outside direct control, workload, directives for unstructured proactive work, and patrol staffing are all within the scope of managerial control. Coupe and Blake (2005) show that manipulating the workload of officers affects response to burglary calls, suggesting that police managers interested in improving rapid response can reduce the amount of assigned work, or redirect proactive patrol, so that officers are more likely to be immediately available when a call arises.…”