A Kansas City woman called for police after a cry for help. Where was 911?
The woman screamed in the darkness for her to call the police, and Katie Rodden dialed.
For several minutes that night last month, she waited on hold with 911 as she pursued the van the woman had been stuffed into while it careened along Interstate 29 in Kansas City’s Northland, Rodden said.
Moments before, Rodden had stopped her vehicle for a van parked on an on-ramp near Kansas City International Airport. The woman burst out of the van, begging for help, and a man followed her, downplaying the situation.
“He says, ‘Oh, she’s fine, I don’t know why she’s saying that, she’s OK.’ All the while she’s still screaming,” Rodden said.
The man chased the woman back to the van, overpowered her and drove off with her in the vehicle, she said.
Was it domestic violence? An abduction?
Rodden pursued the vehicle for a few miles, watching as it swerved and sped along the interstate. She spotted the passenger-side door open several times as if the woman was trying to jump out.
A recorded message on the other end of the 911 call repeated periodically as she drove, directing her to stay on the line. She had details of what she had seen, a license plate number to pass on. She could see the vehicle.
Eventually, it exited the interstate near Zona Rosa and left her behind, she said.
She estimated it was about 10 minutes after she placed the call that a 911 call taker finally picked up, directed her to not follow the vehicle and took down the license plate in a brief exchange. Someone would check into the situation. The call ended.
When Rodden followed up with a call to Kansas City police later, an officer couldn’t find any record of anyone dealing with a call. She was told either police couldn’t track down the vehicle or did and nothing came of the interaction, she said.
“I tried to help this person, and I feel like the systems in place, they failed both of us,” she said. “I hope she’s OK, but I don’t know.”
The Kansas City Police Department’s slow 911 response times have been an ongoing issue for years. Police have regularly pointed to staffing as a factor.
Asked about Rodden’s call, Officer Alayna Gonzalez, a Kansas City police spokeswoman, said the call lasted 8 minutes and 24 seconds before a call taker answered. The duration of the call from start to finish was 11 minutes and 7 seconds, she said.
Gonzalez said it appeared that information from the call was broadcast to officers in the department’s north zone and traffic radio channels so they could try to locate the vehicle.
“This typically happens when there is an incident that occurs that is not stationary, such as calls reporting a road rage incident, reckless driving, disturbances observed in a moving vehicle, etc.,” she said. “As it pertains to this incident, it appears officers were notified the vehicle was no longer in the area. Dispatchers decided to broadcast the description of the vehicle and individuals involved in order to provide important information to as many officers as possible.”
“This is an extremely helpful tool to ensure we get more than one car dispatched to a scene that may no longer be active, and allows us to significantly widen our net to search a larger area,” she said. “This provides the opportunity to have more attention, awareness, and resources brought to a potentially volatile situation that is not isolated in a single location.”
The vehicle was not found, and the call was closed, she said.
Long-standing issues
The Kansas City Police Department received around 246,000 emergency calls from January through the end of May, and during those calls, the average wait time was 36 seconds, according to data from the Mid-America Regional Council, which administers the area’s 911 system. For non-emergency calls, the average wait time during that period was 3 minutes and 3 seconds.
In May, the average wait time for an emergency caller was 55 seconds.
The longest wait for an emergency call so far this year came in April, as one person waited 21 minutes and 58 seconds before reaching a call taker. In March, one emergency caller waited 19 minutes and 34 seconds. In May, one caller waited 17 minutes and 1 second.
During one non-emergency call last month, a caller waited a staggering 5 hours and 21 minutes.
One national standard directs that 90% of 911 calls should be answered within 15 seconds, and MARC data shows the department is far from meeting that number — and has been for years.
So far in 2025, just over half — 52% — of calls were answered within 15 seconds. That number has held steady in recent years: 51% in 2024 and 55% in 2023, down from 65% in 2022, 76% in 2021 and 77% in 2020.
The Kansas City Police Department is one of just two area law enforcement agencies not hitting the 90% within 15 seconds standard so far in 2025, according to MARC data. Kansas City, Kansas, police’s answer rate so far this year sits just below the mark at 89%.
Gonzalez, the Kansas City police spokeswoman, said the department was making “great improvements” in 911 hold times.
“Our staffing numbers are improving greatly, and we still have several law enforcement officers that come in and work overtime to assist with ensuring the phones are answered as quickly as possible,” she said.
At the May 27 Kansas City police board meeting, Deputy Chief Luis Ortiz told commissioners the department has seen a surge in interest in positions in the department’s communications unit after an announcement of a salary increase for call takers starting May 1. After the announcement, the department received 190 new applicants, and of those applicants, 143 people were scheduled for an initial test, he said then.
Police Chief Stacey Graves said the bump in applications for positions in the department’s communications unit was “shocking” and that the department was directing more resources toward processing them as quickly as possible.
A cry for help
After the woman’s plea for help late in the evening hours of May 17, followed by the 911 call, the wait, and the follow-up — Rodden was left frustrated and disheartened.
“The whole situation, it really kind of diminished my faith in the ability to get help if it’s needed,” she said. “If I am bleeding out on the sidewalk, if I get stabbed or something, am I going to have to be on hold for 10 minutes, 15 minutes while I’m just laying there dying? It’s actually really scary to think about.”
“It kind of felt like I was just dealing with this uncaring monolith basically that didn’t really care that something scary was happening,” she said.
Rodden has read about 911 staffing issues and knows the job is a difficult one. But where was the empathy in a difficult moment?
“I know it’s a tough situation, but I also know that it’s a really important service to have,” she said. “If we don’t have it, and we can’t rely on it, that’s really, really scary.”
