The Marietta Police Department’s average response time to calls from citizens dropped since the department implemented the Public Safety Ambassador (PSA) Program, according to an MPD press release.  The PSA program created a group of non-sworn police employees who handle non-critical and non-dangerous tasks to free up the time of sworn officers to handle more critical tasks.

The press release states, “The overall average MPD response time to calls for police service, in comparable six-month periods, has dropped from 2 minutes and 44 seconds in 2016-17 to 2 minutes and 20 seconds in 2017-18.  When lives are in danger 24 seconds can be an eternity!”

The PSA program was set up as part of the MPD’s use of evidence-based policing.  Evidence-based policing is the approach of fine-tuning procedures and measuring results to make sure that policies provide the maximum benefits to the community being served.  In the case of the PSA program, the department measured the time it took officers to arrive after receiving a call, and so far the results have been better response times.