How Long Do San Antonio Police Take to Reach a Call?
The City publishes every police call for service with an interval attached to it. It does not publish what that interval measures. This page sets out what the column has to be, shows the evidence, and then reports it: 43 months of calls by priority, patrol area and call type.
Seconds, and the only data dictionary published
beside it describes a different dataset. So the figures below are a reading of the
record, not a quantity the City has defined. Four things make the minutes between a
call arriving and a unit reaching it the only reading that fits, and every one is reproducible
from the same file:- It runs in order with the priority the City assigned the call, which a time-to-resolve would not.
- Officer-initiated dispositions are almost entirely zero: 91.6% on traffic activity and 95.4% on patrol checks, against 0.3% on commercial burglary alarms. The officer was already there, so there was no interval.
- The ordering across dispositions is reach-time rather than resolve-time. Family violence is the fastest and a theft report the slowest, which is the opposite of how long each takes to deal with.
- The Bexar County Sheriff publishes both intervals on the same calls: 16.0 minutes to arrive against 35.6 to close. This figure sits below even the arrival time, which fits a city and does not fit a close.
What is actually in the column
A zero is not a fast arrival. Across the record the whole one-to-fifty-nine second band is a fraction of a percent while exactly zero is more than a quarter, so the distribution spikes at zero rather than ramping into it. Those are calls an officer was already at: prisoner transport, on-site activity and traffic stops are all above 96% zero.
Response time follows the priority the call was given
| Priority, as the City recorded it | Calls with an interval | Median | Slowest one in ten |
|---|---|---|---|
| Priority 1 | 15,522 | 4 min | 9 min |
| Priority 2 | 247,808 | 8 min | 19 min |
| Priority 3 | 36,737 | 7 min | 19 min |
| Priority 4 | 1,072,499 | 19 min | 1h 06m |
| Priority 5 | 692,626 | 17 min | 1h |
| Priority 6 | 200,735 | 21 min | 1h 11m |
| Priority 7 | 650,655 | 24 min | 1h 25m |
| Priority 8 too few calls to read as a rate | 71 | 11 min | 1h |
| Priority 10 too few calls to read as a rate | 35 | 4 min | 27 min |
Priority 1 is the most urgent. The gap between it and everything else is the clearest thing in this record: the top three priorities sit under ten minutes and the rest sit near twenty. That step is also the strongest evidence for what the column measures, because a time-to-resolve would not track a dispatch priority at all.
By patrol service area
| Service area | Calls with an interval | Median | Slowest one in ten |
|---|---|---|---|
| WEST | 547,032 | 18 min | 1h 06m |
| NORTH | 496,875 | 19 min | 1h 10m |
| SOUTH | 492,548 | 18 min | 1h 01m |
| PRUE | 480,625 | 21 min | 1h 18m |
| EAST | 433,595 | 17 min | 1h 06m |
| CENTRAL | 334,311 | 15 min | 55 min |
| DOWNTOWN | 131,702 | 13 min | 43 min |
An area covering more ground with the same number of officers will show a longer median, and this record publishes neither the area nor the staffing, so the difference between these is described and not explained.
Month by month
Median wait per month across 43 months. Bars are the median, so a quiet month is drawn the same height as a busy one at the same wait.
The calls that wait longest
| Call type, as the City records it | Calls | Median | Slowest one in ten | No interval recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forgery | 10,241 | 33 min | 1h 58m | 2.1% |
| Sexual Offense-Child | 6,481 | 32 min | 1h 40m | 7.4% |
| Theft | 133,385 | 31 min | 1h 55m | 1.7% |
| Threats | 44,820 | 31 min | 1h 46m | 0.5% |
| Information | 66,406 | 30 min | 1h 44m | 3.2% |
| ID Theft | 16,874 | 30 min | 1h 56m | 0.4% |
| Rape | 3,724 | 30 min | 1h 42m | 4.3% |
| Burglary Vehicle | 79,848 | 29 min | 1h 40m | 1.5% |
| Theft of Vehicle | 61,366 | 29 min | 1h 34m | 0.9% |
| Criminal Mischief | 39,333 | 29 min | 1h 46m | 2.7% |
| Assault | 33,596 | 29 min | 1h 40m | 1.9% |
| Burglary | 43,149 | 28 min | 1h 43m | 0.8% |
| Accident Private Property | 35,601 | 28 min | 1h 35m | 0.6% |
| Missing Person/Runaway | 25,895 | 28 min | 1h 30m | 0.8% |
| Property Found | 18,085 | 27 min | 1h 39m | 13.3% |
Only call types with at least 2,000 calls are ranked. The last column is the share of that type with no interval recorded, and it belongs beside the median rather than in a footnote: where it is high, the type is mostly calls an officer started, and the median describes only the few that were dispatched.
What this record cannot tell you
- The City does not define this column. It is text, it is named Seconds, and the only data dictionary published beside it describes a different dataset. What it measures is read from how it behaves, and the readings are published on this page so the conclusion can be checked rather than trusted.
- The City publishes no target response time, so nothing here is late and no target is estimated.
- About a quarter of the record carries no usable value in this column at all, neither a number nor the zero marker. Those calls are counted and excluded, and the share is published, because a figure that only mentions zeros implies the rest were measured.
- A zero is not a fast arrival. It is what the record holds when there was no interval to measure, usually because an officer started the call themselves. Zeros are more than a third of the record, they are excluded from every figure here, and the share is published for every call type.
- Every figure is a median. The average is far higher because a small number of calls wait many hours, and an average lets those few decide the headline.
- A call type that is mostly officer-initiated has almost nothing to measure, so its median describes the handful of dispatched calls rather than the type. The zero share is printed beside every median for that reason.
- These figures are not comparable with the Bexar County Sheriff figures on this site. Different agency, different ground, and a documented interval there against an inferred one here.
- A response time is not an outcome. The record says when a unit reached a call, not what happened when it did.
- Service areas are SAPD patrol areas of different sizes and populations, and the record publishes neither, so the difference between them is described rather than explained.
Why this page argues before it counts
Every other figure on this site is a government record read literally. This one is not.
The column is called Seconds. It is stored as text, it sits beside the priority and the disposition, and the City defines it nowhere: the service-calls package publishes ten resources and the only data dictionary among them describes the 311 record, which is a different dataset entirely.
That leaves two candidates. It could be the time from a call arriving to a unit reaching it, or the time from a call arriving to the call being closed. Those are very different quantities, and picking the wrong one would put a number on this page that means something other than what the page says it means.
The decisive evidence is the ordering across dispositions. Calls cleared as family violence show the shortest interval and calls cleared as a theft report the longest. If the column were a time-to-close, that ordering would be the other way around: a family violence call is quick to reach and slow to resolve, and taking a theft report is the reverse. The ordering that appears is a reach-time ordering.
Three other readings agree. The interval runs in step with the City’s own dispatch priority, which a handling time has no reason to do. Calls an officer started themselves are almost entirely recorded as zero, because there was no interval to record. And the Bexar County Sheriff, next door, publishes both quantities on the same calls: sixteen minutes to arrive against thirty-six to close. The San Antonio figure sits below even the arrival figure, which is what a denser city should look like and is not a plausible time to close a call.
None of that is a definition. It is four readings that agree, published so the conclusion can be checked instead of taken on trust. If the City documents the column and it turns out to be something else, this page is wrong and will say so.
A quarter of the column is empty, and a quarter more is zero
Only 47.3% of calls carry an interval at all.
Of 6,165,102 calls, 2,916,688 carry a usable interval. Another 26.8% are recorded as exactly zero, and 25.9% hold no usable value whatsoever, neither a number nor a zero.
The zeros are not fast arrivals. Across the whole record the one-to-fifty-nine-second band is a fraction of one percent while exactly zero is more than a quarter, so the distribution spikes at zero rather than ramping into it. Those are calls where an officer was already present: prisoner transport, on-site activity and traffic stops are all more than 96% zero. They are excluded from every figure here and counted instead.
Because that share differs enormously between call types, it is printed beside every median in the ranked table rather than mentioned once. A call type that is mostly officer-initiated has almost nothing to measure, and a median computed over the few dispatched calls describes those calls rather than the type.
These are not the Sheriff’s numbers
The site holds both, and they must not be read against each other.
The Bexar County Sheriff tool publishes a response time too, and the temptation to put the two medians side by side is obvious. It would be wrong twice over.
They cover different ground: the Sheriff polices unincorporated Bexar County and San Antonio Police cover the city, and the two do not overlap. More importantly, the Sheriff’s figure is documented and this one is inferred. That record carries an explicit chain of timestamps from the phone being picked up to the first unit arriving. This record carries a column called Seconds with no definition. Comparing them puts a measurement beside a reading and presents the pair as though they were the same kind of thing.
The Sheriff’s two figures do appear on this page, in the section above, and they are there for one purpose only: as a yardstick for what an arrival interval and a closing interval look like in this county. They are evidence about the shape of a column, not a scoreboard. No figure on this page is placed beside a Sheriff figure as a comparison of the two agencies, and the Sheriff page carries no San Antonio figure at all. It is the same rule that keeps three separate counts apart across the data center pages, applied to two agencies rather than three registers.
Use the data
The whole thing as JSON and CSV, with no key and no signup.
sa-sapd-response.json carries the figures by priority, service area, call type and month, along with the reading of the column and the evidence for it as structured fields rather than prose. sa-sapd-response.csv is the call-type table.
Both carry the same warning in their own headers: the unit is a reading and not a City definition, zeros mean there was no interval to measure, and the figures are not comparable with the Sheriff’s. A consumer who never opens this page still meets all three.
Share it with someone who reads government data for a living.
Other San Antonio tools
Same method, a different public record. Each one states what its record cannot answer.
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All 16 are free, with no signup and no email wall, and the public API behind them needs no key.
Who publishes this
These tools are built and maintained by BrandShyp LLC, a San Antonio software firm. We sell data, software and accessibility work to public agencies and are seeking state and local government contracts. Small business certification with the South Central Texas Regional Certification Agency is in process. We hold no City of San Antonio contract.
No client, agency or sponsor funds, reviews or approves any of these tools, and nothing on these pages is a solicitation. Every figure comes from the public record named below, which is linked and can be queried without us.
Corrections. If a number here disagrees with the record, write to Justice Harker at [email protected] with the figure and the source that contradicts it. Corrections are made on the page, and what changed is noted there rather than replaced silently.
Source. This page reads SAPD calls for service, published by the City of San Antonio. The interval this tool reports is a column the City does not define; the reading and its evidence are published on the page. The record is linked from the page above and can be queried without us. We claim no rights over the underlying record and add no license of our own to it.