Fresno Police response times range from minutes to hours, chief Casto vows change

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A new priority is taking shape at the Fresno Police Department, where Police Chief Mindy Casto is making a major push to speed up response times citywide.

"We're great at the emergencies," Casto told Action News. "We get there fast, but the other calls can hold for quite some time."

Data obtained by Action News reveals response times can vary from eight minutes for the most urgent calls to nearly four hours for burglary, auto theft, and child custody disputes.

"It doesn't make people feel safe when they have to wait," Casto said.

Some officers are now using AI to draft initial reports and save time.

Chief Casto has also established what she calls a "Customer Service Unit," telling Action News efficiency is a priority department-wide.

"Tomorrow, I'll be visiting the briefings virtually all shifts in the city, and just making sure to reinforce that message that the people out there that we serve often aren't touched by violent crime, but they are touched by the window smash, the burglary, or a disturbance that is a lower priority call," she said on Tuesday.

Dispatchers are on the other end of the 911 calls, over 1,000 of them a day.

State officials require call takers to answer 90 percent of 911 calls within 15 seconds.

A review by ABC Owned Television found the Fresno Police Department has lagged. For nearly two years, between 2021 and 2023, the average answer time was well above the state requirement.

"We're hovering in the high 70s to an 80 percent is a good week on 911 getting answered in under 15 seconds," Chief Casto said. "But to contrast that, our average answer time is under 15 seconds."

The chief says the average so far this year is now 11.65 seconds.

"We've got a long way to go," she said. "But, again, our new communication center that we broke ground on, that's going to allow for more staffing."

The new dispatch center will add at least a dozen more employees by the time construction is finished in the fall of 2026.

Improving response times has been a top priority for the department, and something Chief Casto highlighted on her first day as the top cop in February.

"I'd like to increase our service levels," she said at the time. "We have a lot of non-emergency calls we could do better on."

"We're always going to be there for those emergencies," she said on Tuesday. "But can we do better to make people feel safer and feel like they're getting their money's worth out of Fresno PD?"

For news updates, follow Gabe Ferris on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.