A Dallas family’s 911 calls went unanswered for hours as a gunman accosted them outside their home. Police arrived on the scene nine hours after the first call.
The Benjamin family was inside a trailer home near the construction of their new house on an Oak Cliff road when Richard Benjamin Jr. witnessed three men getting out of two trucks.
Benjamin Jr. told Fox 4 News that he left the trailer and asked the men why they were there but received no response from them.
The incident began at 7:30 p.m.
Benjamin Jr. then retreated inside the trailer, and one of the men approached the front door. Asantewa Benjamin, Richard’s mother, told Fox 4 News that the man then began to pull on the door handle.
“I stood up ‘cause I was sitting right over there, and I said, ‘He got a gun! He got a gun,’” Asantewa Benjamin said.
Asantewa and Benjamin Jr. then called 911, pleading with first responders to arrive quickly. Benjamin Jr. said that the operators told him first responders were en route, but help did not arrive.
The location of the construction site was about a mile from a police substation, according to Fox 4 News.
The family made four 911 calls. Two of the calls occurred while the men were present, and the other two calls were made after the men had stolen equipment from the site and left.
Police received two of these calls at 7:34 p.m. and labeled the incident as a priority one disturbance, but there were no available officers at the time. After police received the next two calls confirming that the men had left and that no injuries were reported, the priority was lowered. The two later calls were made 15 minutes after the first two calls at 7:49 p.m.
Officers finally arrived on the scene at 4:30 a.m. the next day to collect a report. The officer arrived to confirm that the family was still in the home and that the men were no longer attempting to enter, but the Benjamins were frustrated that the police took as long as they did to respond.
This is not the first incident showcasing the slowing of police response times. Police response times are slowing, with priority one calls averaging 9.8 minutes and priority two calls averaging 81.5 minutes in March, having risen from 9.6 minutes and 77.5 minutes, respectively, from February, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
The slower police response times coincide with calls for more police officers in Dallas. Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, told the Dallas Observer that the Dallas Police Department was “400-500 officers short” in January, and downtown Dallas lacks its own police force even as special police units have been designated for other parts of the City.
Despite this, news of the equipment theft comes during a downturn in burglaries throughout the City. Though publicly available crime data has not been released since May 1 due to the alleged ransomware attack, burglaries in the City were down roughly 20% year over year at the time.
The incident is still under investigation.
