How The Eagle calculated response times of the Wichita Police Department
The response times used in The Eagle’s analysis were extracted from millions of 911 calls provided by Sedgwick County Emergency Communications that Wichita police handled from 2010 to 2022.
Around a third of the 200,000-plus calls provided for each year were eliminated because they were either missing data needed to calculate the response time or because the information used in the calculations resulted in negative times, which could be an indication of errors.
The data included several pieces of information about each call, including the call time, address, priority type, the time police were dispatched, the time an officer arrived on scene and when the call was closed. The priority type provided for each call was the one originally assigned, although Wichita police pointed out that could change.
The Eagle requested similar 911 call records directly from the Wichita Police Department. The data provided by police included self-initiated police responses that have a response time of zero and therefore lower that dataset’s average response time.
The raw data from the police department, which it said it also received from county emergency communications, showed lower response times for all years but also showed overall response times nearly tripling between 2010 and 2021, from nearly seven minutes to just over 20 minutes.
Wichita police also provided response time data calculated by the department. That data also showed response times constantly increasing over the roughly six years of data provided. WPD said it uses medians instead of averages to figure its response times so outliers have less impact on the resulting calculations. The Eagle also calculated the medians using the police-provided data, which showed a more than three-fold increase from 2010 to 2021.
The Eagle calculated each call’s response time by subtracting the time a 911 emergency communications dispatcher took and entered the call into its system from the time police arrived at a scene.
WPD public information officer Chad Ditch said response times are not 100% accurate since there are instances when officers forget to tell 911 emergency communications that they are on scene after being dispatched. It’s unclear how often that happens.
Police charged The Eagle four times ($240) what county emergency communications did for its dataset. The police department also originally refused to make a data analyst available to explain the differences in the datasets.
Police Chief Joseph Sullivan made a data analyst available for an interview after taking over the department in late November.
Contributing: Amy Renee Leiker of The Eagle
