10 Questions Need Answered (Please See Ten Questions Attached along with Supporting Documents)

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American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

TOWARD EQUITY AND EFFICIENCY IN LAW ENFORCEMENT:

DIFFERENTIAL POLICE RESPONSE

Robert E. Worden The University at Albany

State University of New York

Differential police response (DPR) strategies involve efforts to systematically differentiate among requests for police service in terms of the forms of police response that are optimal. DPR strategies pro- vide for a wider range of response options than the traditional one of dispatching a patrol officer as quickly as possible. Response alterna- tives include delayed responses by patrol officers to some types of calls, as well as a variety of "relief" responses: dispatching civilian per- sonnel instead of sworn officers, taking reports of some types of crimes by telephone, or asking complainants to walk- or mail-in their reports (see Farmer, 1981). The adoption (or extension) of DPR is typically prompted by increases in the demand for service relative to patrol re- sources, which result in an inability to respond quickly to all calls for service. 1 Indeed, differential response is one means of strategically managing cutbacks in police service (cf. Levine, 1978, 1979, 1985a), as it identifies classes of service requests for which an immediate mobile response is not essential-for people's health and safety, for protecting property, or for the apprehension of offenders-and for which a de- layed or some other kind of response is adequate. Furthermore, a DPR strategy is, under most circumstances, an essential prerequisite to the implementation of proactive police technologies, such as directed pa- trol, community policing, or problem-oriented policing, because it en- ables administrators to not only expand but restructure patrol officers' time so that they may engage in other tasks interrupted only by urgent calls. 2 The objective of DPR strategies, then, is to use police resources

2 American Journal of Police, Vol. XH, No. 1 1993

more efficiently, in that police service may be performed equally well (or perhaps better) with fewer resources.

However, police administrators who contemplate the use of a DPR strategy are often concerned about the receptivity of the public to any but immediate mobile responses by sworn officers. Citizen satisfaction with the police is of intrinsic importance, of course; it might also have implications for the levels of citizen cooperation and coproduction on which the police can draw, and which are essential in order for the po- lice to accomplish their objectives (see Whitaker, 1980; Rosenbaum, 1988:370-375). Thus when police administrators adopt elements of DPR, they often do so with misgivings, assuming that citizens are satis- fied with nothing less than rapid responses. Moreover, the potential benefits of DPR may not be fully realized, insofar as delayed or relief responses are not used for problems for which they may be appropriate.

Furthermore, one thoughtful critique of DPR points out that the ef- ficiency of DPR may be purchased at the price of equity, inasmuch as delayed or relief responses may represent a greater burden for low-in- come or minority groups than for other socioeconomic groups (Mastrofski, n.d.:25-26, 28). If this is true, then decisions about whether and how to implement DPR must take into account a trade-off between efficiency and equity (cf. Thurow, 1970).

The purpose of this paper is to further clarify the nature of the trade-offs between efficiency and equity that may be involved in im- plementing a DPR strategy. It first outlines the empirical and norma- tive questions that must be addressed in an assessment of the trade-offs, and briefly review the extant empirical evidence that bears on these questions. It then presents new empirical evidence that bears on these issues, based on an evaluation of DPR tactics in one police department. It concludes that DPR is both efficient and equitable according to rea- sonable standards.

EFFICIENCY, EQUITY, AND DPR

Efficiency

The efficiency with which police services are provided has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions, which (roughly) correspond to objective and subjective dimensions (cf. Ostrom, 1973). The quantita- tive dimension of police efficiency encompasses activities and outputs,

American Journal of Police, Vol. Xli, No. 1 1993 3

which can (usually) be enumerated. The qualitative or subjective di- mension of efficiency reflects the value of police activities and outputs to society, which is very difficult to quantify. Surveys that ask citizens to evaluate police services provide some information about this dimen- sion. 3 The efficiency of DPR strategies can be assessed-albeit rather loosely-on both of these dimensions. DPR enables a police agency to perform the same level of activities at a lower cost, if it must (or chooses to) cut back on its patrol force. Or an agency could conceiv- ably perform more activities, responding to a larger volume of calls for service, or having its officers undertake more activities on their own initiative, with no greater expenditures. Along this quantitative dimen- sion of activity, then, DPR could be expected to enhance efficiency. If citizens' evaluations of police activities, which include but are not lim- ited to handling calls for service, improve or remain the same, then DPRwould have either a positive or neutral effect along a qualitative dimension of efficiency; if citizens' evaluations decline, ceteris paribus, then DPR would have a negative effect along this dimension.

The efficiency of DPR strategies is supported by a substantial body of empirical research. Indeed, DPR strategies, in their most fully developed forms, build on previous research to match each of several different kinds of police responses with important features of citizens' calls for service. First, previous research has shown that a rapid police response is rarely instrumental in apprehending offenders, locating witnesses, or preventing serious injury, due largely to the time that elapses between an incident (such as a crime) and the report thereof by a citizen (Pate, et al., 1976; Kansas City Police Department, 1978; Spelman & Brown, 1981; Cordner, Greene, & Bynum, 1983). Other research, furthermore, indicates that citizens' satisfaction with police service is affected less by response time as such than by the response time relative to citizens' expectations (Pate, et al., 1976; Percy, 1980); this has been taken to suggest that citizens will accept response delays if they are told to expect a delay (Farmer, 1981:8-9; McEwen, Connors, & Cohen, 1986:41-42). One could therefore expect that in many cases, delayed responses by patrol units can be provided with little or no degradation of objective or subjective service quality; given limited re- sources, some calls inevitably will be delayed, and a DPR strategy serves to identify those for which delays are least (if at all) costly.

Second, previous research has also shown that reported crimes are unlikely to be solved unless the victim or a witness can offer a descrip- tion of the offender or some other leads (Greenwood & Petersilia,

4 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

1975). In many departments, cases for which such information is lacking are not even assigned to detectives for follow-up investigation (Eck, 1983). Those cases can thus be handled without dispatching a patrol officer, either by taking the crime report by phone or by having the citizen submit the report in person or through the mail, with little or no cost in forgone apprehensions. Reducing in this way the volume of calls for service to which patrol units must respond may mean that they can respond more quickly to those calls for which a rapid response is needed, especially as the ratio of calls to patrol personnel-and with it the likelihood of call saturation-increases. It also means that officers will have more time for proactive work.

Citizen satisfac tion with such relief responses depends on their expectations. Some research indicates that crime victims tend to be better satisfied when they see police officers conduct a thorough search of the crime scene, and when the police complete a report of the of- fense (Parks, 1976; cf. Poister & McDavid, 1978; Percy, 1980); this suggests that "an important aspect of fair treatment [as citizens see it] in citizen-police encounters is the extent to which the police take ac- tions that conform with their role as public servants and with the role of citizens as clients who have a legitimate right to certain services" (Tyler and Folger, 1980). However, other research shows that victims' expectations of police depend on the nature of the offense: among vic- tims of less serious property crimes, such as crimes that are typically eligible for relief responses, 69 percent were satisfied with a low level of investigative effort, while among victims of serious property crimes, such as burglary, only 45 percent were satisfied with a low level of ef- fort (Brandl & Horvath, 1991:300).

4

Third, although extant research provides no systematic evidence on the matter, one could reasonably suppose that some types of calls for service can be handled as well by non-sworn personnel as by certi- fied police officers. For example, the Santa Ana (CA) Police Depart- ment uses "police service officers" (PSOs) to perform a number of functions, such as traffic investigation, that are performed by sworn personnel in other departments; but PSOs, whose salaries and benefit levels are lower than those of police officers, do the work at a cost savings of 40 percent (Skolnick & Bayley, 1986:25-28). Similarly, the Greensboro (NC) Police Department has "community service special- ists" dispatched to handle noise and other disturbances, public drunk- enness, and reports of missing children and runaways (McEwen, Con- nors, & Cohen, 1986:94-95). Other examples of civilian personnel

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 5

who can be dispatched in lieu of patrol officers are evidence techni- cians and animal control officers.

Finally, many calls to the police can be-and routinely are-referred by operators to specialized police units or to other agen- cies, although in many police department administrators exercise little control over the use of referrals (Scott, 1981). DPR procedures can formalize and structure this practice, providing information and direc- tion to operators; police administrators might thereby be able to stan- dardize and extend the use of referrals.

The most comprehensive empirical evaluation of DPR strategies is based on a field test sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and implemented in Greensboro, North Carolina, Toledo, Ohio, and Garden Grove, California (McEwen, Connors, & Cohen, 1986). 5 The evalua- tion was as methodologically rigorous as the results were favorable. Utilization of relief responses-and thus the savings in patrol officers' time-varied across the three sites: in Garden Grove, 22.3 percent of the calls for service (exclusive of those in which the caller wanted only information) were eligible to be handled through some form of relief response, while comparable estimates in Greensboro and Toledo were 19.4 percent and 15.5 percent, respectively. The evaluation estimated that in Garden Grove, the use of relief responses for selected types of calls could have spared patrol officers nearly 500 hours on those calls during a one-month period, while other personnel would have spent 162 hours handling those calls. The staffing for relief responses is not costless, of course, but at all three sites, staffing for the relief responses was less expensive and more productive than patrol personnel.

Furthermore, the implementation of DPR at these sites seems to have had little or no adverse effect on citizen satisfaction. At each of the three test sites, citizens whose calls for police service were eligible for a delayed or relief response were interviewed by phone to ascertain their satisfaction with call takers and with other personnel with whom they had contact. Some of those citizens had received an immediate mobile response by sworn officers, and their levels of satisfaction rep- resent benchmarks against which the responses of other citizens can be compared. Analyses of these survey data show that about 90 percent or more of the citizens were satisfied or very satisfied with how their calls were handled, regardless of the form of police response-immediate mobile responses, delayed mobile responses, telephone reports, civilian responses, or even walk-in reports. 6 Levels of satisfaction did vary some across forms of police response: citizens who received a delayed

6 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

or relief response were less likely to be very satisfied, and more likely to be merely satisfied; they were also slightly more likely to be dissatis- fied. The more striking result, however, was that such small propor- tions of citizens were dissatisfied.

Equity

DPR strategies raise intriguing but thorny issues of equity. The implementation of DPR could be expected to have distributional con- sequences-i.e., it might affect the level of service provided to differ- ent social groups. When some types of calls are designated to receive delayed or relief responses, the people who make these calls are given what is arguably a reduced level of service. If some racial and income groups are disproportionately represented among those who make these types of calls, then DPR might impose a greater burden on those groups than it does on others. Or, if some groups are less satisfied with alter- native responses than other groups are, then DPR would represent a greater burden for those groups. Such consequences are often over- looked by administrators, whose service delivery decisions are usually based on technical professional criteria (see Levy, Meltsner, & Wil- davsky, 1974; Lineberry, 1977; Mladenka & Hill, 1978; Jones, et al., 1978; also see Aberbach, Putnam, & Rockman, 1981; Gruber, 1987).

The traditional "first call, first served" practices of police depart- ments result in a distribution of police resources-socially and spa- tially-in proportion to the levels of calls for service, both as service is provided to individuals who ask for it and, because patrol deployment schemes usually seek to equalize workload across districts or beats, as patrol units are allocated among neighborhoods. Such distributional consequences have, on their face, a distinctly democratic character; Mladenka (1977) calls it direct-dialing democracy. As Mastrofski (n.d.:30) points out:

With the possible exception of fire and emergency medical service, there is no more client-oriented local government undertaking than police patrol. For the cost of a phone call virtually anyone can summon one of the state's most power- ful agents. It is one of the few aspects of government service where both the poor and the wealthy have a roughly equal probability of getting public service at their doorsteps. The

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

telephone has become the most powerful grassroots mecha- nism for shaping the allocation of police resources, because the bureaucratic decision rules for patrol assignment are de- signed in most departments to equalize the workload and thus distribute officers in direct proportion to demand. As the "invisible hand" that parcels out police service, the reactive approach serves a far more diverse and "representative" clientele than any of the alternative strategies proposed. To the extent that this clientele "misrepresents" the general pop- ulation, it does so on the basis of direct and more-or-less un- ambiguous expressions of need.

According to this line of argument, to abandon the traditional response practice is to undermine the democratic character of police resource allocation.

But this democratic appearance is belied by a quasi-market reality, since demand does not reliably reflect need (cf. Jones & Kaufman, 1974). Some needs for police service are never voiced in a call for ser- vice (or in any other form). Moreover, any call for service represents a demand, but different types of calls represent different levels of need for intervention by a sworn police officer; some calls for service can be handled-i.e., some needs can be met-by other personnel either at the scene or at the station, and other calls can probably be handled as well or better by other agencies. 7 A choice among standards of equity is a normative one, and an adequate treatment of those issues is beyond the scope of this paper. But with respect to police services, a compelling case can probably be made for the standard of need.

Moreover, this critique of DPR is predicated partly on the as- sumption that police service is provided only to individuals in the con- texts of police-citizen encounters. It consequently emphasizes those police services whose benefits are predominantly private in nature, to the exclusion of those whose benefits are more collective in nature. Elinor Ostrom (1973:100) has observed that "some police services are received primarily by a particular individual and are not simultaneously available to other individuals. Thus, the benefits produced are rela- tively separable." But she adds that:

some types of police output are available for joint consump- tion only. When a patrolman stops a speeding motorist or ar- rests a suspected bookie, the service is not provided to a par-

8 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

ticular person or family. There is no victim or special bene- ficiary. No separable benefits exist (Ostrom, 1973:101).

Similarly, many of the benefits of proactive policing accrue to a col- lectivity rather than separate individuals or households.

It is difficult to trace the distributional consequences of police ser- vices that are of a collective nature, because it is difficult (for both so- cial scientists and citizens) to ascertain the impacts of such services.

8

But the distributional consequences of DPR do not depend upon the ways in which departments use the patrol resources that are thereby saved. Whether the savings are used to absorb cutbacks or to facilitate the implementation of proactive police strategies, these are separate de- cisions-decisions made possible by the implementation of DPR. The equity of DPR does not hinge on the equity of community policing, or Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or any police program to which re- sources might be diverted. DPR makes it feasible to direct police re- sources to problems of greater need.

There is, however, another basis for concern about the equity of differential police response: that not all socioeconomic groups are equally receptive to delayed or relief responses. Unfortunately, as Mastrofski (n.d.:26, 28) points out, the evaluation of the NIJ field test failed to adequately explore this possibility. The evaluation included "baseline" (pretest) surveys of people whose calls for service had been classified as non-emergencies, in order to establish a benchmark level of satisfaction and to ascertain callers' receptivity to alternative re- sponses. Respondents' prospective willingness to accept alternatives was analyzed in terms of their demographic characteristics, including age, income, sex, and length of residence; each characteristic bore a statistically significant relationship to the willingness to accept one or more of the individual alternatives in at least one site, although many of the differences were not substantively large (McEwen, Connors, & Cohen, 1986:ch. 11). Regrettably, data on respondents' race were not collected. The omission of race from the survey instrument is espe- cially unfortunate in view of the substantial evidence that blacks' ex- pectations and evaluations of police differ from those of whites; there is ample reason to hypothesize that blacks would be less receptive than whites to the response alternatives (e.g., Jacob, 1971; Schuman & Gru- enberg, 1972; Furstenberg & Wellford, 1973; Durand, 1976; Flanagan, 1985). Furthermore, respondents' (retrospective) satisfaction with al- ternatives during the test phases was not analyzed in terms of any de-

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993 9

mographic characteristics, so one can only speculate about the extent to which different social groups evaluate their experiences with DPR dif- ferently.

9

DPR IN ONE CITY

We may be able to gain insight into the trade-offs that DPR strate- gies actually entail through an empirical examination of the use and consequences of DPR tactics in one city-Lansing, Michigan. The empirical analysis replicates the evaluation of the NiU field test, in that it measures and analyzes citizen satisfaction with delayed mobile re- sponses to calls for service and with telephone reporting of crimes. The research design is not as sophisticated as the NIJ evaluation was, because the study was originally undertaken primarily to provide post- hoc information on the basis of which one agency could assess its pro- cedures. Nevertheless, analyses of these data shed further light on the issues discussed above.

Lansing is a medium-sized city, with a population of approxi- mately 130,000. As the capital of Michigan, Lansing is home to many state agencies, but the city also has a broad (if eroding) industrial base, of which Oldsmobile has been the mainstay. According to the 1980 census, 80 percent of the city's population is white, and 14 percent is black; the median age is 26.9; 28 percent of the city's households have incomes below $10,000, and an additional 30 percent have incomes below $20,000; and 69 percent of the housing units are single-family structures. One-fifth of the labor force is employed in manufacturing, one-fifth in wholesale or retail trade, and one-fourth in professional and related services.

The number of calls for service handled by the Lansing Police Department (LPD) has increased steadily and significantly. The LPD recorded 53,928 calls for service in 1973, 68,181 in 1978, 84,127 in 1983, and 116,835 in 1988.10 During the same period, the authorized number of sworn personnel has decreased, from 261 in 1973 to 253 in 1988 (after peaking at 283 in 1979). 1 1

In June of 1988, the LPD revised its call classification system and operational procedures, in order to refine the criteria on the basis of which calls were prioritized, and to expand the types and numbers of calls that were eligible for delayed responses. Call priorities are now based largely on the seriousness of the reported problem, whether the

10 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

problem is in progress and, if it is not, the length of the reporting delay, and the potential for death, injury, or property loss. Thus, calls eligible for delayed mobile responses include, for example, less serious per- sonal crimes that occurred 15 minutes or more before the report, prop- erty crimes that occurred five minutes or more before the report, noise disturbances, parking violations, and some requests for assistance. Civilian complaint board operators (CBOs) are expected to inform callers that a police unit will arrive at the scene within approximately one hour. The patrol unit that is assigned to the district in which the call originates is dispatched as soon as it is available; if it is not avail- able when the call is received, then the call is "stacked" on that unit. When response delays exceed one hour, CBOs are expected to recon- tact callers, as circumstances allow, and advise them of a further re- sponse delay.

The department's procedures also provide for a method of taking telephone reports of some types of crimes, particularly larceny and vandalism. Reports of these crimes may be taken by CBOs when citi- zens call, provided that the amount of property damage or loss is under $1,000 and that there are no known suspects, no witnesses, no descrip- tions of suspects or their vehicles, and no other evidence. These re- ports are among those classified as NRF (No written Report Forth- coming), meaning that they receive no follow-up investigation by de- tectives. (Reports of these and some other types of crimes that are taken by patrol officers in the field are also classified as NRF if they meet the criteria above.) There is, then, no separate telephone report unit (TRU), as there is in Toledo and in Greensboro, which would re- quire that TRU staff recontact callers; hence no additional staffing is required, and no delay in this form of police response is necessary. 12

Methods

Most of the data for this analysis were collected through a tele- phone survey of people who called the LPD between March and May of 1989, and whose calls were eligible either to be treated as NRF complaints or for delayed response. On selected days of each week during the data collection period, all of the identifiable parties whose reports of crimes were classified as NRF were drawn for the NRF sam- ple; the sample thus includes those whose reports were taken by offi- cers as well as those whose reports were taken by CBOs. Of the 452

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993 11

cases sampled, interviewers contacted 302, of whom 243 completed the interview; 179 of the respondents had had their reports taken over the phone by a CBO. 13 On days selected for the delayed response sample, calls that had been assigned a low priority were drawn from each of two strata: calls for which the response delay exceeded 30 minutes, and calls for which the delay was 30 minutes or less. All of the former and (roughly) an equal number of the latter were included in the sam- ple. Of the 785 cases drawn for the delayed response sample, inter- viewers contacted 454, of whom 325 completed the interview.

14 Since the delayed response sample intentionally overrepresents calls for which the delay was relatively long, the cases in that sample are weighted for analysis to render the sample representative of the popu- lation of calls from which the sample was drawn. The natural variation in response delays (many calls eligible for a delayed response need not be stacked and patrol units are dispatched quickly) permits one to con- struct a comparison group, consisting of calls to which the police re- sponse was-in effect-immediate.

The survey instruments provided for a brief interview that focused on the nature of the problem about which the respondent called the po- lice, how the call was handled by the operator and (in appropriate cases) by the officer(s), the respondent's satisfaction with how the call was handled by the operator and the officer(s), and the demographic characteristics of the respondent.

Efficiency

Delayed Responses. In practice, most calls that are eligible for de- layed responses are for "cold" crimes (especially property crimes), public nuisances (especially noise and other disturbances), and traffic problems (especially parking violations). Together these types of calls comprise more than two-thirds of the calls that are assigned a low pri- ority.

According to LPD data on the times of call receipt, dispatch, and arrival, the median delay for low-priority calls is 16 minutes.

15Re- sponse times are less than ten minutes in over one-third of the calls, and between 10 and 20 minutes in an additional one-fourth; delays ex-

12 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

ceed 45 minutes for 15 percent of the calls, and 60 minutes for only nine percent of the calls. 16 It is clear, then, that while the operational procedures for call prioritization and dispatch allow for routine delays of up to one hour, delays of such length are not routine. Indeed, it is probably a mistake to assume that delayed response procedures will in- eluctably result in lengthy delays for a substantial number of calls.

17

Most citizens whose calls are assigned a low priority are satisfied with the ways in which their calls are handled. More than 90 percent of the survey respondents expressed satisfaction with the performance of the CBO, and over 80 percent expressed satisfaction with the perfor- mance of the officer(s) (see Table 1). Of those who were dissatisfied with either the CBO or the officer, no more than one-fifth (or less than three percent of all respondents) cited poor response time as a reason for their dissatisfaction.

18

These results are largely congruent with those of the NIJ field test. Comparisons of satisfaction levels in Lansing with those reported for the NIJ field test sites must be made cautiously, since there are (known and unknown) differences across the cities in the composition of the populations and, moreover, there are differences across departments in the types of calls eligible for delayed response and hence in the char- acteristics of the people surveyed; these differences could have signifi- cant effects on aggregate levels of satisfaction. To the extent that such comparisons can be validly made, they show fairly consistent support for the inference that response delays per se do not detract significantly from citizens' satisfaction. Satisfaction with operators in Lansing is nearly identical to that in Greensboro and quite comparable to that in Garden Grove; compared with respondents in Toledo (which is demo- graphically the most similar to Lansing), more respondents in Lansing were very satisfied (33.8 percent to 14.7), fewer were merely satisfied (59 to 82), and more were dissatisfied (7.3 to 3.3). Satisfaction with of- ficers in Lansing was substantially lower than it was in any of the NIJ test sites, where the percentage of dissatisfied respondents ranged from 3.9 to 7.3. In light of the reasons for dissatisfaction cited by the Lans- ing respondents, these differences could be quite plausibly attributed to what officers do-and do not do-after their arrival, rather than to any delay in arrival. 19

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 13

Table 1 DELAYED RESPONSES: CITIZEN SATISFACTION

AND REASONS FOR DISSATISFACTION

Raw Raw Weighted Frequency Percentage Percentage

Satisfaction with operator Very satisfied 107 34.4 33.8 Satisfied 175 56.3 59.0 Dissatisfied 22 7.1 5.8 Very dissatisfied 7 2.3 1.5 Don't know 5 -- -- Refused 1 .... Not applicable 8 -- --

Satisfaction with officer(s) Very satisfied 119 45.2 46.2 Satisfied 94 35.7 34.5 Dissatisfied 31 11.8 12.9 Very dissatisfied 19 7.2 6.4 Don't know 9 -- -- Not applicable 53 ....

(e.g., no contact) Reasons for dissatisfaction with operator* Had to argue to get

desired response 4 13.8 15.0 Operator unconcerned,

disinterested 5 17.2 24.6 Operator asked too many

questions 2 6.9 11.3 Poor response time 7 24.1 21.8 Operator discourteous 5 17.2 12.4 Other 7 24.2 14.9 Reasons for dissatisfaction with officer(s)* Not courteous 10 20.0 20.4 Not able to solve problem 9 18.0 22.2 Incompetent, didn't know

what he/she was doing 1 2.0 1.0 Used poor judgment,

did wrong thing 10 20.0 5.0 Didn't care, not understanding 16 32.0 39.9 Poor response time 3 6.0 3.3 Could have done more 6 12.0 12.7 Other 4 8.0 7.2

*Total percentages exceed 100 because some respondents identified multiple reasons.

Furthermore, as previous research has shown, while citizens' satis- faction bears some relationship to response time, it is much more

14 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993

strongly related to the response time relative to citizens' expectations. Table 2 shows a cross-tabulation of respondents' satisfaction by police response time and by respondents' expectations-i.e., whether the po- lice response time was slower, faster, or about the same as they had ex- pected. Citizens who expected the police to arrive more quickly were substantially less satisfied than were those whose expectations were either met or exceeded by the celerity of the officers' arrival. This finding underscores the importance of having operators inform callers of the length of anticipated delays. It also suggests that, so long as callers are told what to expect, satisfaction levels could remain high even if a larger proportion of calls received delays of up to an hour.

Table 2 DELAYED RESPONSES: CITIZEN SATISFACTION

AND POLICE RESPONSE TIME*

Satisfaction with Operator % Very % Very

Satisfied Satisfied Dissatisfied Dissatisfied

Response time was ... Slower than expected (72) 17.2 58.8 17.5 6.5 About the same (125) 31.7 64.8 3.5 0.0 Faster than expected (73) 46.6 49.0 3.0 1.4 Police response time 30 minutes or less (141) 32.1 63.0 3.9 0.9 31 - 60 minutes (75) 39.8 48.2 8.0 4.0 More than 60 minutes (60) 35.0 46.4 15.2 3.4

Satisfaction with Officers % Very % Very

Satisfied Satisfied Dissatisfied Dissatisfied

Response time was... Slower than expected (70) 19.3 41.2 23.1 16.5 About the same (119) 42.6 38.0 13.0 6.4 Faster than expected (71) 67.1 25.0 7.3 0.6 Police response time 30 minutes or less (126) 46.9 33.7 14.2 5.2 31 - 60 minutes (62) 43.4 40.6 9.5 6.5 More than 60 minutes (53) 54.8 24.4 11.4 9.4

* All percentages are weighted. Unweighted sample Ns are in parentheses.

Telephone Reports. Telephone reporting procedures in the LPD serve to divert a substantial number of offense reports from the dispatch

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993 15

queue. (All but a tiny fraction of the offense reports that are taken by CBOs concern either a larceny or vandalism; larcenies comprise 59.2 percent of the sampled reports, and vandalism comprises 39.7 percent.) Based on the data collected for this study, one would estimate that ap- proximately 320 calls per month are handled by CBOs as NRF com- plaints. If the average larceny or vandalism call consumes about 30 to 45 minutes of a patrol unit's time, the diversion of these calls from the dispatch queue "saves" 180 to 240 unit-hours per month.

20

These figures reflect the degree to which this DPR tactic has been implemented by CBOs. CBOs seldom fail to take offense reports over the phone when, according to existing procedures, they may be handled in that fashion. Of the 221 respondents whose reports were taken by either officers or CBOs and classified as either larcenies or vandalism, 177 told the interviewers that they had sustained losses under $1,000 and that they had no information about the perpetrator(s). Of those 177 cases, 154 (or 87 percent) were handled by CBOs over the phone. Some of the remainder might not have been eligible to be taken by phone (e.g., if there was evidence to be processed at the scene). More- over, some errors in classification are inevitable, given the fragmentary and ambiguous information that sometimes is all that is available to CBOs, and it is certainly better to err by dispatching a unit than to err by failing to dispatch a unit.2 1 Full implementation of DPR is impossi- ble (and undesirable) given the ambiguity and uncertainty of the task environment, and patrol units will be dispatched for some calls that could be handled over the phone (cf. McEwen, Connors, & Cohen, 1986: 202); but this tactic can nevertheless divert a substantial number of calls for service.

Most callers whose problems can be treated as NRF complaints, and whose calls are handled over the phone, are satisfied with the ways in which their calls are handled (see Table 3), and very few are dissatis- fied because an officer is not dispatched. 22 Again, comparisons with the results of the NIJ field test must be made cautiously, all the more so given the procedural differences between Lansing (where CBOs take reports themselves) and the other cities (where call takers refer the calls to other units). Satisfaction with telephone reporting is somewhat lower in Lansing than it is elsewhere. The proportion of Lansing re- spondents who were very satisfied is equal to or less than those in the test sites, while the proportion that was dissatisfied is slightly higher.

16 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993

Table 3 TELEPHONE REPORTS: CITIZEN SATISFACTION

AND REASONS FOR DISSATISFACTION

Frequency Percentage Satisfaction Very satisfied 63 35.6 Satisfied 99 55.9 Dissatisfied 10 5.6 Very dissatisfied 5 2.8 Don't know 1 -- Not applicable 1 -- Reasons for dissatisfaction Did not send an officer 6 42.9 Operator unconcerned, disinterested 4 28.6 Other 5 35.7 No reason given 1 --

Equity

Delayed Responses. About 20 percent of the calls eligible for a de- layed response were placed by representatives of institu- tions--convenience stores and a variety of other business establish- ments, schools, etc. The rest of the calls were placed by private indi- viduals, who as a group are demographically similar to the adult popu- lation of the city as a whole: 77 percent white and 17 percent black; 28.7 percent had incomes under $10,000, and an additional 26.2 per- cent had incomes under $20,000, while 26.6 percent had incomes over $30,000. Thus the most immediate consequences of the procedures for delayed responses are distributed proportionately across demographic groups.

When levels of citizen satisfaction are broken down by the char- acteristics of citizens, as in Table 4, one can determine which groups of people are more or less satisfied with delayed responses; one can thereby begin to examine the distribution of perceived costs across de- mographic strata. Minorities were about as likely as whites were to be less than satisfied with the operator, but somewhat more likely to be very dissatisfied; also, minorities were less likely to be very satisfied, and correspondingly more likely to be merely satisfied. A similar ob- servation can be made about those in the lowest income group

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 11993 17

(although the highest level of dissatisfaction is found in a higher in- come group). These results indicate that satisfaction with the operator varies across demographic groups primarily in the intensity of satisfac- tion rather than in the proportions satisfied or dissatisfied. But these patterns hold regardless of response times, and are not attributable to delays. The correlation between satisfaction with operators and income is .08, while the partial correlation, controlling for response time, is .09. The correlations between satisfaction and dummy variables for blacks and other minorities, respectively, are .08 and .10, while the partial correlations are .09 and .08.

Satisfaction with officers displays greater variation but less co- variation; that is, while larger proportions of respondents were dissatis- fied or very dissatisfied with officers than with operators, the break- downs by demographic groups show few consistent patterns. Whites and blacks were about equally satisfied with the officers, although other ethnic groups-mostly those of Spanish origin and American In- dians-were considerably less likely to be very satisfied, and consider- ably more likely to be very dissatisfied. Respondents at either end of the income scale expressed the greatest dissatisfaction with officers. But again the differences are not a result of response times; the partial correlations of satisfaction with income and race are virtually identical to the first-order correlations (both -.065 for income, -.03 for black, and .10 for other race).

Telephone Reports. Compared with those whose calls receive a de- layed response, and with the population of the city, callers whose com- plaints are handled over the phone are disproportionately white and af- fluent: 87 percent white and 6.8 percent black; 31.7 percent with in- comes under $20,000, and 41.1 percent with incomes over $30,000. Thus the burden of this relief response is not borne disproportionately by minorities or by those with lower incomes; to the contrary, it is borne disproportionately by whites and those with higher incomes.

Table 5 shows cross-tabulations of citizens' satisfaction by their characteristics. Blacks were more satisfied, and other ethnic groups less satisfied, than whites were (but the percentages for nonwhites are based on small numbers). The lowest income group was appreciably more dissatisfied than higher income groups were. Otherwise no sig- nificant patterns emerge from this analysis.

18 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

Table 4 DELAYED RESPONSES: CITIZEN SATISFACTION

BY CHARACTERISTICS OF CALLERS*

Satisfaction with Operator % Very % Very

Satisfied Satisfied Dissatisfied Dissatisfied

Individual (258) 33.7 58.3 6.4 1.6 Institution (53) 33.9 62.4 2.7 1.0

Race White (193) 36.2 55.7 7.1 0.9 Black (43) 25.7 65.5 4.8 4.0 Other (14) 15.0 74.7 5.2 5.0

Family Income Less than $10,000 (69) 22.4 71.7 3.3 2.6 $10,000 - $20,000 (59) 42.3 51.0 4.8 1.8 $20,001 - $30,000 (45) 32.4 49.6 16.6 1.4 Over $30,000 (64) 42.5 50.7 6.9 0.0

Gender Male (91) 39.1 51.2 6.9 2.7 Female (166) 31.1 61.7 6.2 1.0

Age 5 and under (60) 26.0 62.7 8.1 3.2 26 -35 (93) 32.8 59.8 6.2 1.2 36 -55 (75) 35.0 58.1 6.2 0.7 Over 55 (27) 53.4 36.9 7.3 2.5

Satisfaction with Officers % Very % Very

Satisfied Satisfied Dissatisfied Dissatisfied

Individual (221) 46.1 33.0 13.6 7.4 Institution (42) 47.0 42.4 9.4 1.2

Race White (168) 48.1 31.5 13.4 7.0 Black (36) 41.3 36.1 17.4 5.2 Other (14) 19.9 51.9 5.2 23.0

Family Income Less than $10,000 (57) 44.5 29.8 22.6 3.0 $10,000 - $20,000 (55) 52.1 31.6 5.2 11.1 $20,001 - $30,000 (37) 44.0 38.5 9.7 7.8 Over $30,000 (56) 47.8 28.2 16.4 7.5

Gender Male (76) 45.9 35.9 13.0 5.2 Female (145) 46.1 31.5 13.8 8.6

Age 25 and under (54) 40.2 43.5 12.1 4.2 26 - 35 (85) 40.2 27.9 22.6 9.3 36 - 55 (59) 50.4 36.9 6.3 6.4 Over 55 (24) 59.1 30.8 2.5 7.6

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

* All percentages are weighted. Unweighted sample Ns are in parentheses.

Table 5 TELEPHONE REPORTS: CITIZEN SATISFACTION

BY CHARACTERISTICS OF CALLERS

Satisfaction % Very % Very

Satisfied Satisfied Dissatisfied Dissatisfied

Race White (141) 35.7 55.7 5.7 2.9 Black (11) 27.3 72.7 0.0 0.0 Other (10) 10.0 60.0 20.0 10.0 Family Income Less than $10,000 (28) 18.5 59.2 14.8 7.4 $10,000 - $20,000 (23) 30.4 65.2 4.4 0.0 $20,001 - $30,000 (32) 34.4 56.2 6.2 3.1 Over $30,000 (65) 38.5 53.8 4.6 3.1 Gender Male (85) 34.5 58.3 4.8 2.4 Female (87) 36.8 52.9 6.9 3.4 Age 25 and under (40) 30.8 66.7 2.6 0.0 26- 35 (49) 26.5 55.1 10.2 8.2 36-55 (52) 38.5 53.8 5.8 1.9 Over 55 (18) 38.9 55.6 5.6 0.0

EQUITY AND EFFICIENCY?

Differential police response makes it possible for the Lansing Po- lice Department to use its resources more efficiently. They enable the LPD to handle a growing volume of calls for service with no increase in patrol resources, as some calls are diverted from the dispatch queue, and the remaining calls-to which immediate responses cannot be as- sured-are prioritized to ensure that rapid responses are given to calls for which they are necessary.

Furthermore, it is fairly clear that DPR in Lansing has had no sig- nificant detrimental effect on citizens' satisfaction with the police re- sponses to their requests for assistance.23 Most citizens whose calls for service are eligible to receive delayed responses by patrol units are not dissatisfied, even if response delays are an hour or more. Also, most

20 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

citizens whose crime reports are taken by operators over the phone are not dissatisfied with this form of response. Moreover, of those (few) citizens who are dissatisfied, most are dissatisfied for reasons that are not directly related to DPR procedures. Hence it appears that DPR, as it is currently practiced in Lansing, has no substantial effect on the qualitative dimension of police efficiency.

24

DPR in Lansing is also equitable. Calls for service are prioritized on the basis of need: some calls require the intervention of a sworn of- ficer, and some of those require immediate intervention, while others can be handled over the phone by CBOs. The resulting distributions of delayed and nonmobile responses are not skewed against disadvan- taged segments of the population. Delayed responses are distributed equally among demographic groups-i.e., in proportion to their repre- sentation in the population, while telephone reporting is a burden (if it is a burden at all 25) that is borne disproportionately by white and espe- cially by affluent people. Furthermore, while there are differences among demographic groups in satisfaction with police service, these differences are apparently not the results of DPR.

To allow demands for police service (in the form of 911 calls) to determine the allocation of police resources is not, under the most likely circumstances, equitable. Demands are not all equally needful, and some needs are never translated into demands; when police re- sources are not sufficient to meet all needs, demand-driven allocation is likely to result in inequities. 26 This is especially true, perhaps, for agencies, like police agencies, that deliver services both to individuals and to collectivities. Private markets supply public goods at socially suboptimal levels because the effective demand understates the social value of those goods. Similarly, police agencies would provide ser- vices with collective benefits at socially suboptimal levels if they sought only to meet demand in the form of calls for service. Police agencies cannot rely on market-like mechanisms to allocate scarce re- sources.

The alternative is for police administrators to play a more active role in establishing priorities and distributing resources accordingly. When administrators are given (or assume) such a role, they are obliged to make decisions that are responsive to collective interests or preferences. Their judgments may not promote the welfare of their agencies over the welfare of their clientele.

One way to inject public input, and a measure of public influence, into the management of calls for police service is to make call classifi-

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 21

cation the subject of administrative rule making. This would require that proposed procedures for classifying calls for service be made available for public comment, whereupon the procedures could be re- vised as necessary. Administrative rule making has been seen as a means of promoting the development and systematization of police ex- pertise, and of structuring the involvement of citizens in the formula- tion of police policy (see Goldstein, 1977:116-122). Perhaps no other area of police operations can build on so substantial a body of system- atic research as the management of calls for service. This research has illuminated the outcomes associated with alternative responses to dif- ferent types of calls for service, and thus it has formed the basis for de- veloping criteria for differential treatment, i.e., for defining needs. Many departments have built, directly or indirectly, on that body of re- search, but few if any have opened their procedures to public scrutiny. Some degree of confidentiality is no doubt necessary, since the publi- cation of some procedures would invite abuses. 27 As Goldstein (1977:120) points out, it might be possible in these cases to substitute review by the judiciary or a specially constituted body (such as a police commission). In any case, structured input from the public, or its rep- resentatives, can enhance police accountability and thereby protect against the (witting or unwitting) application of overly narrow profes- sional criteria in defining need.

The implementation of DPR may pose other challenges to police administrators. First, expanding the range of response options also ex- pands the breadth of operators' discretion, and it makes their judgments more significant in that they spell the difference between an immediate response, a delayed response, or no mobile response at all. Operators inevitably exercise discretion in characterizing the events described by callers (see Antunes & Scott, 1981; Percy & Scott, 1985; Manning, 1988; Gilsinan, 1989). DPR procedures structure operators' discretion by specifying the terms in which events should be characterized and the criteria in terms of which calls should be prioritized (cf. Goldstein, 1977). But in many departments the introduction or expansion of DPR may require the recruitment and retention of more highly qualified per- sonnel, more and better training, and closer supervision (Scott, 1981; McEwen, Connors, & Cohen, 1986).

Second, police administrators must realize that the results of this evaluation, and the results of the evaluation of the NU field test, might not be generalizable to other cities. Thus, administrators should seek to obtain systematic information on the operation and impact of DPR

22 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

programs in their own agencies by conducting (or contracting for) evaluations. Useful evaluative research can be designed around virtu- ally any DPR program (see Worden & Mastrofski, forthcoming).

Third, if DPR is not used merely to absorb cutbacks, then admin- istrators must determine how to use the patrol resources that DPR frees. The organizational slack that DPR generates sets the stage for innova- tion, but innovation carries some risk. Innovative strategies may fail; at a minimum, innovative strategies, by their nature, have yet to estab- lish their worth and legitimacy. Furthermore, the implementation of proactive policing would probably require changes both in internal management and in external relations (Goldstein, 1987; Greene & Mastrofski, 1988).

Hence DPR creates both an opportunity and an obligation for po- lice administrators. It creates an opportunity to more deliberately and strategically direct how police resources will be used, and thus not only to "do more with less," but also to identify and address the most press- ing needs. It also creates an obligation for administrators to make dif- ficult choices without sacrificing accountability for expediency. If it is developed and implemented properly, DPR can contribute to both eq- uity and efficiency in policing.

NOTES

Author's note: A previous version of this paper was prepared for delivery at the Region VI Conference of the American Society for Public Administration, East Lansing, Michigan, September 27-29, 1989, and at the Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Criminal Justice Association, Chicago, Illinois, October 11-13, 1989. I am grateful for the cooperation of the Lansing (MI) Police Department and Chief Charles E. Reifsnyder (who has since retired). Special thanks must go to Charles R. Bauer, Director of the LPD's 911 Operations Center, for his interest in the study and his generous efforts to facilitate the research; to the other members of the 911 Operations Center for cheerfully tolerating my re- quests for assistance and other intrusions into their workdays; and to Lt. Fred Roush, formerly of LPD's Records Unit and now retiied, for his assistance in accessing and interpreting records of offense reports. I am grateful also for the support of the School of Criminal Justice of Michigan State University, and the assistance of Ted Whalen and Sean Patterson. Finally, thanks to Steve Mas- trofski, Jim Frank, and David Bayley for their comments on an earlier draft.

1. Most departments that serve cities of at least 50,000 population now use some type of call prioritization system, and many use relief re-

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 23

sponses-telephone, walk-in, or mail-in reporting-for certain types of

complaints. See Farmer (1981) and Levine (1985b).

2. On proactive policing see Sherman (1983); Skolnick and Bayley (1986, 1987); Eck and Spelman (1987); Goldstein (1990); and Sparrow, Moore, and Kennedy (1990). Each of these expositions cites the utility of man- aging the demand for police service.

3. The validity of citizens' evaluations as measures of public performance, on which policy choices might be based, has been the subject of some de- bate. See Stipak (1977, 1979); Mastrofski (1981); Brudney and England

(1982a, 1982b); Parks (1982, 1984); Brown and Coulter (1983); and Percy (1986).

4. Police were considered to have made a low level of investigative effort if they failed to perform two or more of the following activities: search the crime scene; examine evidence; attempt to locate or question witnesses; and make out a report.

5. But also see Cahn and Tien (1981), as well as Maxfield (1982) and the sources cited in McEwen, Connors, and Cohen (1986:42-45).

6. As the evaluation report points out, none of the departments implemented strategies that would exploit the time made available to patrol units; con- sequently, a very small proportion of the calls eligible for delayed mobile response actually resulted in substantial delays (i.e., longer than 30 min- utes). The use of DPR along with, say, problem-oriented policing, which requires that officers spend more time "out of service" and thus unavail- able to respond immediately to calls, would mean that a larger proportion of calls would result in substantial delays.

7. George Frederickson's Compound Theory of Social Equity distinguishes among several conceptions of equality (Frederickson, 1990). Police re- sponses based on demand could be said to reflect "prospect equality," be- cause everyone who calls for service receives (roughly) the same re- sponse. Responses based on need could be said to reflect segmented equality, because everyone with the same need receives the same re- sponse, but those with different needs receive different responses.

8. If citizens are better able to evaluate the quality of the service provided to them as individuals than they are to evaluate the quality of service pro- vided to them as parts of a collectivity, then aggregate levels of reported

satisfaction will probably not reflect accurately the value of the collective benefits of police services.

24 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

9. In view of the very small proportions of respondents who were dissatis- fied, it is most likely that any differences across demographic groups would be limited to the intensity of satisfaction (i.e., whether callers were very satisfied or merely satisfied).

10. These numbers are of questionable reliability, because until a Computer Aided Dispatch system was installed, complaint board operators manually recorded the number of calls that they received. It was then common- place for CBOs to "estimate" the number of calls at the ends of their shifts, rather than record them as they came in, and to base their estimates (at least partly) on workgroup norms about proper workloads.

11. At the time of this study, Lansing's 40 square miles were carved into 14 police districts (or beats). The call-for-service workload across districts had become somewhat unbalanced over time, and the department was considering alternative district configurations to achieve a better balance.

12. The director of the LPD's communications center reported that his coun- terparts in other agencies are incredulous when they are told that CBOs take the reports themselves, assuming that such procedures would impair CBOs' capacity to handle emergency calls. At the LPD, an alarm sounds if all of the lines are busy when a 911 call is received, whereupon a CBO handling a less urgent call-such as a crime report-puts that caller on hold to attend to the emergency call. Thus, the LPD reportedly suffers no degradation of its emergency response capacity as a result of this practice.

13. The sample was drawn from 28 daily lists of NRF complaints, four for each day of the week. Cases in which the complainant was identified only as an institution (e.g., a department store) were excluded. The com- pletion rate was 54%. Forty-eight people refused to participate in the sur- vey; nine people could not remember the incidents about which they had called the police, and two others indicated that they had not called the po- lice.

14. The sample of days slightly overrepresents the busier days, as it included three each of Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Sundays, and four each of Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Cases in which the caller could not be identified were excluded, as were calls from police sources (e.g., the detention facility); one call was excluded due to the extremely sensitive nature of the incident. One hundred and seventy-two cases in which no phone numbers were available were included in the original sample, and they were included in analyses that do not rely on survey data. The completion rate was 41.4%; exclusive of the cases for which

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 25

phone numbers were unavailable, the completion rate was 53%. One hundred and eight people refused to participate; seventeen indicated that they could not remember the incidents about which they had called; three people claimed not to have called the police. The completed interviews underrepresent some types of problems: e.g., people who called to report disturbances were more likely than others to remain anonymous, and so were not drawn for the sample; people involved in traffic accidents, who called from public phones or nearby businesses, and for whom no home phone number was available, were less likely to be contacted; and people who called to report assaults were more likely to refuse to complete the interview. People who were too impoverished to have phones, and whose calls for service were placed from other locations, are almost certainly underrepresented.

15. Times for call receipt and dispatch are recorded when CBOs and dis- patchers, respectively, make their entries into the CAD system. Times of arrival at the scene are recorded when patrol units signal their arrival, and herein lies a source of some error. Officers may signal that they have reached their destination before they actually arrive, or they might neglect to signal at all.

16. The mean delay is 25 minutes, but because the distribution of response times is so skewed, the median is a better measure of central tendency. The survey data tend to corroborate these estimates: according to respon- dents' recollections, the typical response delay was about 20 minutes, and the delay exceeded 45 minutes in 22 percent of the calls.

17. Many of the longer delays are the result of call stacking. About one- fourth of all low-priority calls are stacked; the median dispatch time for

stacked calls is 24 minutes, and the median response time is 32 minutes. For calls that are not stacked, the median dispatch time is three minutes, and the median response time is 12 minutes. Even so, 43 percent of the calls for which the response delay exceeds 45 minutes are not stacked,

and 41.2 percent of the calls for which the dispatch delay exceeds 45 minutes are not stacked. This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that the LPD had instituted a form of community policing (if only on a small scale).

18. Almost 40 percent of those who were dissatisfied with the operator had called either about an interpersonal conflict or to report a personal crime,

and dissatisfaction is substantially higher in those two event categories than in any other. The respondents who had called about such events and who were dissatisfied tended to cite as their reasons either poor response time or having had to argue to get the desired response.

26 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

Eighty-five percent of those who were dissatisfied with the officer had called about one of four types of events: personal crime reports, property crime reports, public nuisances, or assistance. Almost all of these respon- dents cited their treatment by the officer(s) as the reasons for their dissat- isfaction-what the officer did or failed to do, the officer's concern about the problem, or the officer's courtesy; with few exceptions, any delay in the officer's response was not the principal source of dissatisfaction.

19. Some part of these differences could also be due to differences in the de- sign of the questionnaires and the construction of individual items.

20. The estimated number of reports taken by CBOs does not include most cases of retail fraud, which were not included in the sample because the complainant was identified only as an institution; therefore, the true num- ber is actually quite a bit larger-perhaps half again as large. Further- more, the number of calls that are diverted from the dispatch queue will vary from month to month as the number of offenses varies. Thus, the

number of diverted calls is probably larger than this estimate during the summer months, when other demands on patrol units are also greater. The price for this savings is, of course, the time that CBOs spend taking reports. According to the data on low-priority calls to which patrol units are dis- patched, the average larceny or vandalism call consumes 52 minutes of a patrol unit's time, including travel time and time at the scene. These calls presumably are somewhat more time-consuming because they may in- volve taking information, talking to witnesses, and so on.

21. Some errors of the latter type were also made, and thus one cost of taking

offense reports over the phone is information loss. Thirty-eight respon- dents to the survey (or 15.7 percent) told interviewers that they had some information about the perpetrator(s): six said that they had seen the per- petrator(s) and knew who they were, nine others said that they had seen

the perpetrator(s) and could describe them, 18 said that they had not seen anyone but had some idea of who the perpetrator(s) were, and five said that they had other information. In 16 of these 38 cases the report was taken over the phone; moreover, in seven of the 15 cases in which the callers said that they had seen the perpetrator(s) and either knew who they were or could describe them, the report was taken over the phone. The cases in which callers claim to have information about perpetrators repre- sent a very small fraction (four percent) of the total number of offense re- ports taken by phone, and any information that is lost by taking the report over the phone may be of little value; future research should examine call takers' practices in discriminating among these calls.

American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993 27

22. Satisfaction levels are almost identical among those whose complaints were taken by officers, although the reasons for dissatisfaction are obvi- ously different.

23. A post-hoc design, like this one, does not generally lend itself to causal inference. Even so, it is very likely that levels of satisfaction were sub- stantially higher before the introduction of DPR. Unfortunately, this de- sign makes it impossible to assess the impact of DPR on citizens' more general evaluations of police service in Lansing.

24. The limits of this assertion are readily apparent, and would require further evaluative research. If, say, response delays were routinely two hours, four hours, or even longer, then one might well observe a significant de- cline in citizen satisfaction. Or if relief responses were provided to some categories of calls to which they are not now provided-if, say, assault reports were taken over the phone-then one might find significantly lowered levels of satisfaction among the citizens who place such calls. As Mastrofski has observed (in a personal communication with the au- thor), the "dosage" of the DPR treatment might have an important bearing on citizen satisfaction. That is, citizens might be much less satisfied if the magnitude of the service reduction is greater than it has been in the evalu- ated DPR programs, and extant research does not provide a sound basis for extrapolating.

25. One respondent, whose call for service prompted the dispatch of a patrol officer even though it was eligible for a telephone report, said she would have preferred to give her report to the operator rather than wait for the officer.

26. Some might argue that police resources are sufficient to meet needs. They could point out that much of the time that patrol officers spend on patrol is not occupied with calls for service or other tasks (see Whitaker, 1982). But this is predicated on the assumption that there is nothing use- ful that officers can and should do at their own initiative.

27. Police officials would be understandably reluctant to publish procedures that provide for taking telephone reports of larcenies so long as the loss does not exceed $1,000, lest they thereby invite less-scrupulous citizens to file fraudulent reports of thefts.

28 American Journal of Police, Vol. XII, No. 1 1993

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