NCJ Number
94715
Date Published
1984
Length
118 pages
Annotation
The frustration experienced by citizens who call for police assistance in nonemergency matters and then experience long delays can be mitigated through the use of a dynamic-delay procedure.
Abstract
While the Wilmington, Delaware Department of Police uses a formal-delay procedure, it is either fixed or static; that is, callers told of a formal delay are all advised of the same constant, 30-minute delay. Depending on the state of the system, the expected delay should be variable and of different value for each noncritical caller. Thus, dynamic-delay procedure is developed for delaying responses to noncritical calls. The procedure is characterized as a prioritized queue-dependent model that is sensitive to the need to have patrol cars available to respond to critical calls and that is able to prevent noncritical calls from queueing up for too long. Two models are developed, the D(N;R,M;L,Q) model and the D(N;R,M;Q,Q) model. Three cases are considered for each, and for each of the cases, two algorithms, the steady-state-probability algorithm and the conditional-expected-delay-time-for-nonemergency-calls algorithm, are developed. The properties of the conditional expected waiting times of low-priority calls are about the same in both models. The D(N;R,M:L,Q) model has a conditional expected waiting time of low-priority calls that is slightly greater than that of the D(N:R.M;Q,Q) model (1.705 as opposed to 1.66). Thirty-nine exhibits and 36 references are included.