RT Article
T1 Minimizing the cost of dispatch delays by holding patrol cars in reserve
JF Journal of quantitative criminology
VO 9
IS 2
SP 203
OP 224
A1 Sacks, Stephen R.
A2 Larson, Richard C.
A2 Schaack, Christian
LA English
YR 1993
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1764278054
AB At many police departments high-priority callers sometimes incur undue delays that could be avoided by the use of a differential response strategy that takes full account of the different “costs” of delay for different priority calls. In this article we examine such a strategy, in which lower-priority callers may not be served immediately, even though some response units are available. Arriving priority i callers are queued whenever the number of busy patrol units equals or exceeds the cutoff number for that priority. Our purpose is (1) to find a practical way of choosing the set of cutoff numbers that will minimize the expected total cost of delays for the entire system and (2) to use that method to investigate how the optimal set of cutoffs changes in response to changes in several important variables, including the relative costs of delay for different priorities, the overall workload, and the relative frequencies of different priority calls.
K1 911
K1 police dispatching
K1 Police deployment
K1 differential response
DO 10.1007/BF01071168