A popular LA podcaster said on Instagram Saturday that the Los Angeles Police Department took 59 minutes to answer his 911 call after his Studio City home was burglarized.
City officials say the LAPD has a dispatcher shortage, despite hiring 100 additional dispatchers last year.
Evan Lovett, 46, the host of L.A. in a Minute on YouTube, returned from his son’s baseball game on Friday evening, Feb. 28, only to discover that his home had been broken into and burglarized. Standing behind a pair of shattered sliding glass doors, Lovett said the burglars stole his wife’s family jewelry, coins, baseball cards, and other valuables, including a safe containing “everything that my dad gave me after he passed away.”
“This s–t is unnerving and it’s not cool. And I’ll tell you what else: I was on hold with 911 for 59 minutes, 59 minutes. Luckily, it was just a home burglary; it wasn’t someone dying, choking, or being shot, but what happens if it was a real-time emergency?” Lovett said in his Instagram video.
Lovett said police were “very nice” when they arrived but mentioned how “undermanned” they were. This is a real problem, he said.
Los Angeles Police Capt. Ray Valois told NBC Los Angeles that the department is working on hiring new dispatchers, and it was not unusual to experience longer wait times for non-emergency calls during evenings and weekends.
“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,” Capt. Valois told the TV station.
In an interview Sunday, Lovett referred to LAPD Capt. Valois’s account of events as “incredibly false.”
The podcaster said he called 911 twice, on two separate phones, after he received a repeated automatic message in the initial call. After the 6-minute mark, he grew concerned and tried calling from a different phone while still on hold, only to receive the same automatic message. He eventually hung up one of the calls to avoid tying up two lines.
“We did not hear the voice of a human being until the 59-minute mark,” he said.
Mayor Karen Bass called the delayed response “unacceptable” and said in a statement that over 100 dispatchers were hired last year, with more currently being hired. Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman said her office had been working closely with city leaders over the last few months to increase the number of 911 dispatchers being hired.
“911 wait times for non-urgent calls are unacceptably long right now due to low recruitment for open positions, for 911 operators and emergency and non-emergency calls being routed through the same operators,” Raman said in a statement released to KCAL News on Saturday.