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Cedar Hill public safety: EMS makes up most calls; police note staffing gaps and robust commercial-vehicle enforcement
Summary
Director of Public Safety Eli Reyes presented the department's first combined police and fire monthly snapshot on Feb. 25: fire responded to 752 incidents (70% EMS), police recorded ~5,700 activity responses, and the city is down six officers. Commercial motor-vehicle inspections produced numerous out-of-service violations.
Director of Public Safety Eli Reyes presented a new combined monthly snapshot for Cedar Hill's police and fire departments at the Feb. 25 briefing, highlighting that EMS calls drive fire department workload and that police are seeing steady response metrics amid staffing shortages.
Reyes said the fire division recorded 752 incident responses for the reporting period, with over 70% of those being EMS responses. He reported 24 fire incidents overall; 17 occurred in Cedar Hill (10 structure fires, two vehicle fires, three trash fires and two outdoor fires). Reyes said the quick response limited structure-fire damage to about $400,000 and there were no injuries.
On fire response times, Reyes said, "Over 83% of the response times for fire and EMS is less than 6 minutes." He added the department has transitioned to new software that should provide more accurate turnout and response-time data and allow staff to separate fire turnout time and medical response time in future reports.
Police data: the snapshot showed roughly 5,700 police activity responses with average response times under 10 minutes and the highest-priority (priority 0) responses averaging under five minutes. The department reported 51 UCR Part 1 crimes for the month, 92 arrests, and 631 traffic citations. Police also conducted 33 commercial motor-vehicle inspections that yielded 35 out-of-service violations and 52 citations.
Council members asked for additional detail on outlier response times and for separate breakdowns of EMS versus fire turnout times. Reyes offered to provide further analysis on specific long-response incidents and said the department will attempt to parse out response types as data quality improves.
Staffing and enforcement context: Reyes and other presenters noted the department currently has six vacancies in sworn patrol positions and one full-time motor officer (down from two), which limits proactive traffic enforcement. Police said enforcement is supplemented by speed trailers and by a Citizen on Patrol program that provided over 320 hours of patrolling in the month.
Reyes and Chief Rafael also highlighted community outreach and training: the fire division reported roughly 2,000 training hours and described a recent cardiac-arrest response in which the patient was later reported to have walked out of the hospital. Both departments participated jointly in a Polar Plunge event to support Special Olympics Texas.
Ending: Reyes said the departments remain focused on response performance and community engagement and will return with more granular response-time data as software and reporting mature.
