What is your experience with police/fire/ambulance response time in Chicago? (Columbus: apartment, crimes)

[soulful]

For those of you who have called 911 in the past for a true emergency, what was the approximate number of minutes before help arrived?
And in what section of the city?

Had a bad experience around E Wacker and Columbus where it took well over 10 minutes for a police response during middle of the day.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by soulful

For those of you who have called 911 in the past for a true emergency, what was the approximate number of minutes before help arrived?
And in what section of the city?

Had a bad experience around E Wacker and Columbus where it took well over 10 minutes for a police response during middle of the day.

What kind of "bad experience" was it?

I've generally seen pretty quick response. I've never called for a huge emergency, but a dumpster fire at a place I used to live got put out within minutes. I called for a lost child once, and an officer arrived in about five minutes. Both of those were in the central area, River North/Old Town sort of area.

[Feeling Brackish]

A restaurant I used to work at in the Loop had to call the cops for someone refusing to pay their bill. It took about ten minutes for them to show up and by then the people were long gone. Another time we had to call because some psycho was outside screaming at and threatening our customers. They probably only took about five minutes that time and the guy was arrested.

[MannheimMadman]

When my apartment was burglarized, it took over an hour (around 10PM, I made the call.)
When my car was buglarized, it took about 45 minutes.
When I called in the drunk bum sleeping in the vestibule, it took 30 minutes.

Remarkably, graffiti blasters had processed my request and cleaned up said graffiti within 36 hours (IIRC). That was pretty impressive.

[Attrill]

I've had good luck - never more than 10 minutes, and once in under a minute. I mostly call for drunken disturbances outside a nearby bar, and a couple of times when I've seen people trying to break into garages. Last time I called it was for two guys trying to fight in the middle of Milwaukee Ave. at 2 AM (they were too drunk to land any punches). Cops were there within a few minutes.

[ofcjim40]

10 minutes is pretty damn fast for non-priority calls. Burglaries that aren't in progress would get stacked and active calls get priority. It's only common sense, calls where people can get hurt or killed take priority over property crimes. 10 minutes for someone not paying a bill is very damn impressive since it's a low level theft. Remember when people want to complain the Police drive fast but don't use lights, or pop through a red light, it's we are responding to non inprogress calls but still want to get there quickly. So we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. Often times it can take me 15-20 minutes to get to calls across town if I do the speed limit and am stuck in traffic. So people gotta decide, you want your Cops getting there quickly or would you rather cry they drive too fast? I guarantee you once a Cop catches citizens beefs for his driving, for non priority calls he's doing the speed limit and following every rule of the road and the person will have to wait for that drive time.

With Chicago where they are down manpower and flooded with calls, burglaries, thefts, vandalism, minor thefts and squabbles will always stack, and stack for a long time for in progress fights, shootings, domestic and other violence.

[Vlajos]

No problems here. Seems like response times are short.

[Feeling Brackish]

Originally Posted by ofcjim40

10 minutes for someone not paying a bill is very damn impressive since it's a low level theft.

Oh yeah, for sure. I didn't mean to imply that it was too slow, I only added the part about them being gone because of course that's how it would go. No one is going to not pay a bill and then hang around after the manager tells them he already called the police.

[Alacran]

Never had to deal with calling an emergency vehicle.

Although once I shot a gun and the cops came around the block in less then 5 minutes.

[soulful]

Originally Posted by Alacran

Never had to deal with calling an emergency vehicle.

Although once I shot a gun and the cops came around the block in less then 5 minutes.

5 minutes is pretty good for a "shots fired" in the city