911 Response Protocols Are ‘Outdated,’ New Dallas Police Chief Tells Council

The amount of scrutiny facing the Dallas Police Department’s 911 call response times is mounting, thanks in part to an NBC 5 investigation that found that police took more than four hours to respond when two 10-year-old boys were struck by a vehicle while riding their bicycles in an East Dallas neighborhood.

Police data presented to the Dallas City Council’s Public Safety Committee on Monday shows that through the end of April, Dallas police have consistently taken longer to respond to 911 calls than last year. For the highest priority calls, which include reports of shootings, in-progress robberies and kidnappings, officers have taken nearly 12 minutes to respond on average this year. Officers responded to Priority 1 calls more than a minute and a half faster in the same period in 2024.

Priority 4 calls, which include noise complaints, vehicle burglaries and fireworks, average wait times of more than five hours. In 2024, police responded nearly a full hour faster to those low-priority calls.

Addressing the Dallas Police Department’s new chief, Daniel Comeaux, Council member Gay Donnell Willis acknowledged that the lackluster response times are an issue he is inheriting. Comeaux’s first day with the department was April 23.

“We’ve had a concern around our response times, and as you look year over year, they’ve tended to go in the wrong direction,” Willis said. “What are we doing that might help get these numbers back down to where we would hope they’d be closer to the norm? I know you’re walking into this, but I would hope this is one of the things that you’re taking a look at. It’s one of my main concerns, and I think we all hear this from our residents, as well.”

Comeaux responded by assuring Willis that the response times were something he had started looking at on “Day One” of the job. He told the committee that a team is evaluating the Dallas Police Department’s procedures on labeling and prioritizing 911 calls. He added that, over the last three weeks, “one of the things that [he’s] already learned is that [the system is] pretty much outdated.”

“We need to really go over that again, because what happened 20 years ago is different now. We need to make sure that things are classified the right way,” Comeaux said. “I’ve already started studying some of the other larger cities, and I am noticing some differences in how we classify certain calls compared to other cities.”

Comeaux did not elaborate on those differences. The Observer reached out to the Dallas Police Department for clarification, but a spokesperson provided us with a statement instead, saying, “We are reviewing and comparing classification methods for emergency calls for service to ensure accuracy and consistency. The goal is to identify the most effective approach for categorizing 911 calls based on urgency and type.”

During the briefing, the new chief added that the department is examining where excess resources could be shifted to add “extra manpower” to patrol units.

The Long Wait

Dallas resident Francisca Munoz addressed the city council during last week’s meeting about her concerns regarding DPD’s wait times.

“This is my first time here for the City Council, and if it’s my first time and I had to take time off from work and wages, you know it’s a very serious [issue] for my neighborhood,” Munoz said. “One of the major problems that’s happening is noise pollution. It seems like every weekend people have the need to have their parties … I called the police, but they don’t arrive ever. They call me the next day asking me if the noise is still around.”

Munoz said officers have told her that the low priority classification of noise complaints, coupled with a lack of manpower in her area, is likely resulting in her calls going unanswered. Following Munoz’s testimony, Council member Paula Blackmon urged City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert to identify what needs to be done to help address late-night noise complaints.

Blackmon said she regularly hears calls from frustrated constituents who share stories similar to Munoz’s and suggested that staggering the shifts of code compliance officers could help address nuisance calls.

(Past Observer reporting suggests this may not be the perfect fix, as Chris Christian, director of Code Compliance Services, recently told the council that code enforcement officials are not legally allowed to detain a person or force them to identify themselves, and security concerns would likely push the department to seek out a partnership with the Dallas Police Department if the council decides to pursue a nighttime code enforcement program.)

It isn’t just low-priority calls being shoved to the bottom of the list, though.

Last week, an NBC 5 investigation found the Dallas Police took four hours and 32 minutes to respond to the M Streets neighborhood after two boys were hit by a vehicle while biking on the sidewalk. One of the boys suffered a concussion and a wrist injury, while the other was unharmed.

According to the investigation, the call was coded as Priority 2. Dallas Police data shows that Priority 2 calls have averaged a 1.6-hour wait time so far this year, nearly 20 minutes longer than the same period in 2024.

According to NBC 5, multiple Priority 2 calls and a Priority 1 call were also waiting to be responded to at the time of the accident.

“Every call is important to those who make the calls. So we’re really working hard to make sure our response time is appropriate,” Comeaux said in an interview with Telemundo 39 after the investigation was published. “We’re gonna make sure that we do the right thing by Dallas.”