At this week’s neighborhood CAPS meeting, a resident asked for more information about the police department’s Radio Assignment Pending status (also known as a RAP).
A RAP is put in place when a district runs out of police units and there are 911 calls that need to be handled. The 19th district has had at least 24 RAPS declared since CWB started keeping track in late June.
The audience member at the CAPS meeting essentially asked, “if I’m bleeding on the sidewalk during a RAP, no one’s going to come for 7 hours?”
“Not true” the police said, with a bit of a brush off.
And they are correct. The fire department will roll over and get you to a hospital, but the police probably won’t come. Remember when an Air Force veteran got severely beaten in Wrigleyville this summer? The fire department got to him fairly quickly. The first police officer, though, became available two hours later.
As a further example of how you will not be left bleeding on a sidewalk for hours, but you probably won’t get police assistance, we take you to down to the area of Halsted and Fullerton early this morning.
This next part is a little gory, so you may want to stop now and maybe just go watch this awesome collection of Wonder Woman moments.
OK, so. Our neighboring 18th police district was in a RAP early this morning, so they had a backlog of calls waiting for police to become available.
At 4:14AM, a man tried to jump a fence in the 900 block of Fullerton. He missed and became impaled on the fence. For over 30 minutes, as the 18th district dispatcher read of her list of assignments waiting for police response, the “man impaled on a fence” was included every time.
Long before an officer became available, the fire department responded, extricated the man, and transported him to a hospital.
