New York City residents have a new tool to track 911 response times: a website that shows weekly averages for how long it took to get to fires, medical emergencies and other types of calls.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Monday that the site was up and running.
Previously, the city government could compute response times only for individual agencies, not categories of calls. And the clock started when the agency received the call from a 911 operator, not when the caller first reached 911. That changed with updates to the city’s 911 system earlier this year.
New York City’s 911 system handles more than 11 million calls per year. Changes to the system in recent years have spurred contention between the city and unions representing firefighters, paramedics and dispatchers.
(AP)
Historically, when New York City computes averages, it drops any response that takes excessively long from the averages, making the averages seem better than they are.