An LA social media personality is speaking out after his home was burglarized Saturday night, expressing his frustration with the police response.
Evan Lovett, the podcast host and personality behind L.A. in a Minute, says he had arrived from his son’s little game around 9 p.m. to find that his back door was shattered and several items were missing. Lovett then called the police, where he was surprised by the response to his emergency call.
“I was on hold for 59 minutes before somebody picked up, which I found very unnerving in an emergency situation. Luckily, this wasn’t a real-time emergency. in the sense that somebody was choking or severely injured. But I couldn’t help but think, I’m like, what if this was that kind of emergency?” said Lovett.
In a post on social media, Lovett shows he called 911 at 9:08 p.m. but didn’t get a response after nearly an hour.
“It’s something that I wanted to highlight and share to people to let them know and hopefully raise the attention of the people in charge that this is something that should not be tolerated within our community and within our city,” said Lovett.
According to the LAPD, dispatch answered the call and determined the call to no longer be an emergency since no suspects were inside the home.
“When he called 911, the initial call was answered in 74 seconds. The initial operator very quickly got his story that the sliding glass door had been broken. He was inside the house, and there were no suspects at the location. Therefore, since his personal safety was not in immediate danger, the call was transferred to the non-emergency line where it took another 56, 57 minutes to answer,” said LAPD Captain Ray Valois.
The LAPD captain added that for non-emergency call its not unusual too see longer wait times, especially on weekends and nights.
Lovett said that once the officers arrived at his home later that night, they told him the department was short-staffed and that that may have been the reason why it took so long for his call to go through.
According to Valois, the department is currently working to hire more dispatchers.
“Last year alone, we hired 144 new dispatchers. We have 115 of those are still in training. We have help on the way to where things are going to get better. We’ve got a lot of support from the city, from personnel department, from my own department, my own chief, in getting this done and improving our call answering times, both on emergency and non-emergency,” said Valois.
In a statement, the mayor’s office wrote:
“This is unacceptable and we are looking into what happened last night. All Angelenos have the right to be safe in their homes, and it is our duty to protect that right. Last year we hired more than 100 additional 911 dispatchers and we are hiring more. The City hit a four-year high of LAPD applications as we continue to work to grow the Department. My thoughts are with Evan, his family and all those who have been victims of crime.”
Source: NBC Los Angeles
Be First to Comment