I’d Like a McHurry, Please, with a Side of No Time to Spare

Market research indicates that most adults (42%) who eat at McDonald’s and similar fast-food restaurants expect to receive their food within a maximum of five minutes after ordering, while for seven percent of respondents, the “fast” in “fast food” means right away, with no waiting. Only five percent of customers would be willing to wait up to 15 minutes for their order (there was no option for a longer time). Delays are detrimental to business, as more than a third (36%) of fast-food customers indicated they had switched to a different fast-food eatery or stopped visiting a specific restaurant because of what they felt were excessive wait times.

The same expectations, with greater justification, could just as easily apply to calling 911. Unlike getting robbed, carjacked or burglarized, though, no one is likely to expire due to a delay in getting their burger or chicken sandwich.            

The case of Dylan Johnson, a resident of Chatham County, Georgia, serves to highlight the difference between the two. Johnson reportedly called 911 for urgent help last February regarding a crime taking place at his residence, where his wife was alone with their baby. Expecting a prompt police response, he was instead put on hold because, according to a news report, the call center employee was more interested in ordering breakfast. “After three separate calls and waiting nearly six minutes, I finally got through to a dispatcher,” Johnson said. “Then I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard her placing a McDonald’s order while I was trying to report a break-in at my home.” The recording of the 911 call obtained by a local news station reveals the dispatcher clearly saying “McGriddle, mm-hmm,” before coming back on the line to speak with Johnson.

The “Priority 1” breakfast call thankfully resulted in no harm, although by the time law enforcement officers arrived at the Johnson home the intruder had left the scene.

Johnson’s experience is probably not that unusual. A news report from early last year refers to ongoing citizen complaints regarding the County’s 911 service, including long wait times and unanswered or “abandoned” calls (callers who hang up before a dispatcher responds, possibly due to wrong-number calls or frustrations over wait times).

As law enforcement agencies across the country continue to struggle with staffing and funding challenges, response times to 911 emergencies are on the rise. One crime analyst reviewed “call to service” information that 15 law enforcement agencies make available, covering the period between 2019 and 2022. In 2019, only one agency had an average response time for all types of calls that was under ten minutes; the rest ranged from a low of almost 20.8 minutes to a high of almost 66 minutes. In all but one jurisdiction, the average response time increased between 2019 and 2022, sometimes very considerably. In New Orleans, for instance, the already high average of 50.8 minutes in 2019 had almost tripled to 145.8 minutes in 2022.

In an article on The Crisis in Response Times, the National Police Association (NAP) points out that the “reality of overburdened agencies is that anything less than a violent event in progress may get bumped so far down the list that delays of hours can occur” – hours, not minutes.

Unlike the fast-food customers who can simply patronize another restaurant if the service delays at their stand-by establishment get to be intolerable, citizens don’t have any real choice over how their jurisdiction handles emergency calls, or whether or how quickly help arrives.

For all of the moralizing by gun control advocates who decry violent crime at the same time they press to curtail the rights of responsible gun owners, the law enforcement environment as it exists today means that citizens have to be prepared to act as their own first responders. “This is not a caution rooted in despair,” notes the NAP, “but rather a call to be prepared as much as possible for the threat of crime, medical emergency, fire, and harsh weather. As fast as the heroes want to be, the old saying is true – when seconds count, responders are only minutes [or maybe even hours] away.”