The Windsor Police Service is reporting an improvement in priority one response times, and several focused initiatives launched over the past couple of years are getting some of the credit.
In 11 of the past 13 weeks, the priority one response time has been 8 minutes or less.
Priority one calls are the 911 calls involving immediate danger, bodily harm, or potential death.
The Windsor Police Service Board was told during Thursday's meeting that programs and focused initiatives, such as the Nurse-Police Team, Crisis Response Team, along with focused efforts in high call volume areas such as the Glengarry neighbourhood, have freed up police resources to respond to emergency calls.
Windsor Police Deputy Chief Jason Crowley says the more initiatives they put in to combat a specific problem, we've learned we're able to get to calls faster because some things are taken care of.
"The designated officer program in the hospital is a perfect example where our officers were between 3 and 11 hours due to mental health apprehension, and now we're out in around 15 minutes, so that's allowing our officers to get back out on the road and answer 911 calls," he says.
A priority one response time is calculated on the time it takes for a 911 call to be received to when an officer arrives on the scene.
Crowley says the better we take care of certain things, the better we take care of the whole city, and that's really what we're seeing.