How quickly do DeKalb County sheriff’s deputies respond to 911 calls?

SYCAMORE – With a significantly short-staffed patrol division in 2024, the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office improved its average response time to crashes with injuries and domestic violence-related 911 calls, according to the office’s annual report.

Average response times decreased for calls related to crashes with and without injuries, reports of suspicious persons or vehicles, and domestic disturbances in 2024, according to data reported in the sheriff’s office’s annual recap. Those responses improved to average times not seen since 2021, according to the report.

But overall response time for all dispatch calls in 2024 grew to more than 18 minutes, the longest average response time since at least 2016, according to seven different annual reports. DeKalb County Sheriff Andy Sullivan said that could be due to the time his deputies needed to respond to nonemergency calls.

The sheriff’s office has the largest 911 communications center in the county and operates 911 lines for most of the municipalities in the area, not including the city of DeKalb.

Sullivan said he thinks the average response times to nonemergency calls in 2024 is why the data shows a slowed overall time.

“I believe the myriad of other types of calls that are listed in the nonemergency examples would contribute to that,” Sullivan said. “For example, a theft call or dog bite or things of that nature. Increased traffic congestion at times when deputies do not need to go with lights and sirens to a call would extend the response times.”

In 2024, it took sheriff’s deputies more than a minute and a half longer on average to respond to calls south of Perry Road compared with calls north of that road, according to county documents.

What the office calls the “south zone,” 264 square miles with a population density of 65 people per square mile, has the fewest people living inside it. But it’s also the largest of the three zones the sheriff’s office divides the county into.

The “central zone,” 172 square miles between Route 64 and Perry Road, has the highest population density, with 377 people per square mile. The “north zone,” the 194-square-mile expanse from Route 64 to the northern county line, has 119 people per square mile.

Sullivan said his office in 2024 typically had three to four deputies plus a supervisor on duty during any given shift. Of that personnel, usually one person was assigned to the south zone.

Minimum staffing, including a supervisor, is generally four patrol cars, while maximum is six, according to the report.

Sullivan said geography and population density factor into the data and his staffing decisions.

“The central zone and the north zone are typically our busier zones, and so there is one person assigned to the south,” Sullivan said. “There’s a lot more miles to cover in that [south] area, so sometimes it just takes longer to get to different calls.”