Tag: Local

Reader Matthew Sweeney, who lives in Lancaster city, wrote The Watchdog in November about two incidents in which he witnessed what he considered extremely slow responses to 911 calls.

He described one call as a domestic dispute that began around noon with two men yelling in public. They had to be restrained by other people. After about 10 minutes went by with no police response, someone called the police again. 

Sweeney estimated it took 20 minutes for police to respond and control the situation. Emergency medical personnel also arrived to treat a head injury and hand injury on two people.

The second situation involved a two-vehicle crash about 1:30 a.m. in which airbags were deployed and the people were arguing. Sweeney said he and his wife called 911, and there was no response after about 20 minutes. When they called again, the dispatcher told them that all officers were on high-priority calls.

“Based on these two incidents, I’m concerned about overall response times for law enforcement,” Sweeney wrote.

While The Watchdog was unable to get specific details about police response times, he did look into, and learn, some of the particulars of emergency services dispatching.

Calls are dispatched by Lancaster County-Wide Communications, the county’s dispatch center. In 2023, LCWC handled 245,184 calls to 911, resulting in 449,303 dispatches broken down as follows: emergency medical services, 25,481; fire, 94,413; and police, 329,409.

(For perspective, about 560,000 people live in Lancaster County.)

According to Brian Pasquale, director of the county’s Department of Public Safety, dispatchers follow standards for answering calls that are approved by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency, and that are in line with national telecommunicator organization guidelines.

“We require a minimum of 90 percent of calls to be answered within the first 15 seconds and 95 percent answered in the first 20 seconds to ensure minimal response times on our end,” Pasquale said in an email.

“(The department) works with local law enforcement, fire and emergency medical service agencies to establish dispatch procedure that allows each agency to receive necessary information to effectively organize their response. We are not aware of any issues at this time,” Pasquale said.

The Watchdog did learn that Pennsylvania State Police dispatches for itself, after calls to 911 are transferred from Lancaster County-Wide Communications to its dispatchers.

“Much like other departments, we strive to respond as quickly as possible to calls for service, but do prioritize calls where life-safety may be endangered. Falling into that category would be anything ‘in-progress’ like a burglary, assault, etc. We also prioritize crashes where injuries have occurred or when there is blocking on the roadway,” spokesman Lt. Adam Reed said.

State police-wise, Lancaster County is served by Troop J, which covers more than 20 of the county’s 60 municipalities, mostly in the southern and eastern areas. Troop J also covers parts of Chester and York counties not served by municipal police.

“Because we cover such large swaths of area, we urge our troopers to remain in their assigned patrol areas for their shifts as much as possible. This goes a long way in alleviating any lengthy response times. Each of our counties and stations may differ, but they fall under the same set of standards and regulations pertaining to call response and dispatch,” Reed said.

Bob May, executive director of Lancaster EMS, the county’s largest emergency medical services provider, discussed EMS response.

The Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services recommends that EMS respond to a call within eight minutes and 59 seconds 90% of the time for an urban area, such as Lancaster.

“We do pretty well with that. Again, it’s a goal. You’re out in the rural areas and that’s gonna be a lot more challenging to do that,” May said. That time, May explained, does not account for the 911 operator taking the caller’s information.

“When you call 911, you’re going to speak to an operator. The operator is going to transfer you to a call taker. The call taker is going to take your information. The call taker is going to dispatch that ambulance. And the ambulance has to muster a response: The team will have to come out of the crew quarters. They’ll have to fire the truck up, open up the garage door,” May said.

From the dispatch to opening the garage door is known as “chute time,” May said.

Response time is from when the EMS vehicle leaves its station until it gets to the call location, May said. That’s the eight minute, 59 second goal.

“Our goal for the chute time that we have at Lancaster EMS is 90 seconds,” May said. “Our goal is to get there safely. So just because we turn on an emergency warning system does not authorize us to drive unsafely, and we have some pretty stringent policies and at the end of the day we want our personnel to get to the scene safely and to be able to go home to their families.”

Interestingly, The Watchdog learned from May, while ambulances use lights and sirens to get to a patient’s location, it’s rare they would use them to go to the hospital.

“We are taking the emergency department to the patient’s home and what is important is early CPR. … That’s what’s vital,” May said.