SALT LAKE CITY — Less than a day after a FOX 13 News investigation into the agency's response times, the Salt Lake City Police Department fired off a release to provide "additional information."
During a May interview with Sgt. Keith Horrocks, the highest-ranking officer within the department’s public information bureau, he stated the department's goal for a Priority 1 response was 4-5 minutes.
However, more than a year later, FOX 13 News received a series of emails from the chief’s new spokesperson, Brent Weisberg, accusing the station of fabricating that number.
“We do not believe your reporting on this matter is accurate,” Weisberg wrote. “This is offensive to our officers who are out every day working to respond to calls for service as quickly and as safely as possible.”
FOX 13 News met with Chief Mike Brown to show him an unedited copy of the May 15, 2021 interview with Horrocks. He said he could not explain the discrepancy between Horrocks’ statements and his current goal.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if he did or not,” Brown answered when asked if Horrocks misspoke. “That is the first time I’ve heard that in its entirety.”
Brown claimed his department' goal for a Priority 1 response has “always” been 10 minutes.
On Friday, the department issued a press release listing a new figure of six minutes for “drive-time response.”
“As shown in (the mayor’s budget), the Salt Lake City Police Department’s goal for drive-time response has remained the same since Fiscal Year 2017,” the release read . “A police department’s response time can be calculated two ways — the cumulative response time and the actual drive-time response after the first available officer is dispatched to a scene ... the drive-time response starts when SLC911 dispatches the call for service to the first available officer.”
The department admits overall response times have been below expectations due to a staffing shortage, and dispatchers cannot assign cases to an officer if they are busy on another call.
“The city is now playing word semantics. Lipstick on a pig after the fact,” said Chris Bertram, the former retired chief of Unified Police Department. “This is trying to make something fit your narrative after the fact. So what they’re saying is the problem with (Priority 1) calls is that it sits in the dispatch center too long. Everybody takes the same amount of time to drive there once they get the call.”