Kurt Ullman wrote in
:

In article ,
Han wrote:


It usually takes several minutes for an altercation to escalate.
Remember, now there are only fists involved.

According to a recent article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution,
Atlanta police were the slowest to answer high-priority emergency
calls among police departments from seven similar-sized cities. The
results were part of a survey of police response times. In Atlanta in
2010 it took, on average, 11 minutes and 12 seconds from the time a
high-priority 911 call was received until an Atlanta police officer
showed up at the scene. The response times reported by the El Paso
(Texas) Police Department were only one second quicker than Atlanta¹s,
with an average of 11 minutes and 11 seconds.
The Denver Police Department posted a response time of 11 minutes
flat. According to the Journal Constitution story, police in Tucson,
Ariz., responded, on average, in 10 minutes and 11 seconds.
In Nashville-Davidson County, police recorded average response times
below 9 minutes.

This is WAY longer than it takes to escalate altercations unless
someone calls the cops the first time one guy eyes another.

I agree. Perhaps that is a reflection of the poor response times of
those police departments. It's a really good reason to be careful whom
you talk to on the street in those cities, and to have sturdy doors in
your home. And /perhaps/ arm yourself, if you are really fearful you'd
become a statistic. A friend of my daughter moved to an Atlanta suburb.
He: Is rather poor in manual manipulations, except with a keyboard;
found out there is an ordnance on the books there that requires one to
have a firearm in one's home; went to the police and asked whether he
really had to; police answered yeah, but it isn't enforced. Knowing him
a little, I think it would be wise for him and his wife NOT to have a
firearm. Apparently he's still happy out there. I should ask about this
next time I hear about them ...

This part of the discussion, however, was about VA hospitals, or perhaps
hospitals in general. Don't most hospitals have their own police forces,
trained to handle unruly patients and visitors? It shouldn't take more
than a few minutes max to get a bunch of officers to a fracas. I /know/
that's the case in the Manhattan VA.

--
Best regards
Han
email address is invalid