Seattle Police plan to follow up 911 calls with surveys

These days it seems almost every transaction is followed up by a survey asking your opinion on how it went. Next to join the trend: The Seattle Police Department. Starting tomorrow (Thursday, January 26), SPD says many 911 callers and crime victims will get automated text/email messages – “once the 911 emergency has passed” – to “solicit feedback about the caller’s experience with SPD to improve services to the community.” The feedback solicitations will follow initial messages with the incident number and some general advice, as shown in examples here. SPD says it’s announcing this in advance so that people who start getting these messages don’t think they’re spam. The SPD announcement says the technology they’re using for this is from SPIDR Tech, an Arizona-based company that says it provides “the world’s first automated customer-service platform for public safety.”

Gavin H, January 25, 2023 (2:27 pm)

A text/email message is useless for people who either don’t own a smartphone or have just had their smartphone stolen. People who interact with 911 should be given an option to receive a postcard for submitting their feedback.

Pete January 25, 2023 (4:13 pm)

Oh great another survey. And how much will this cost us? Somebody has to send the survey, then look at the survey that is returned and then what will they do with this information? Wait a minute…..how brilliant is this plan after all? They can create another level of bureaucracy to spend more of the precious dollars that we give to the city. Why not spend this effort on retaining and hiring more officers for our understaffed SPD instead of adding to their workload sending and reviewing countless survey’s from folks that will just have another avenue to complain about SPD.

Kersti Elisabeth Muul January 25, 2023 (5:18 pm)

Can’t wait lol.

bill January 25, 2023 (7:57 pm)

Is this for real???????? The non-emergency line almost never gets answered. How about staffing that instead of analyzing surveys?

Flivver January 26, 2023 (7:16 am)

Bill/others. The non-emergency # has ALWAY’S been answered by 911 operators that were between calls. Even pre pandemic/de-fund times I’ve had it answered quickly and have hung up after 45 minutes on hold. It’s all manpower dependent.
Odd son January 26, 2023 (10:35 pm)

I agree with you Bill. I was going to comment the same sentiment. I’ve had to call several times over the last 20 years or so. I have seen hold times for non emergency skyrocket or not be available in the past few years. Unacceptable.

Scubafrog January 25, 2023 (9:23 pm)

It’s hard to dispatch law enforcement when no police are available, so I’m empathetic. Also, I hope a new fire station is built closer to White Center near the “dead zone” — so medics are closer and able to save lives. That we have a “dead zone” (patients who perish) due to time-in-transit for critical cases in Seattle is abhorrent.

Sorry, comment time is over.