Your account of the CHPs delayed response, lack of urgency, response and lack of concern, and indifference to “Good Samaritan” citizens is disturbing.

I’ve never heard of a 911 responder taking 25 minutes to arrive without a good reason.

Given the neighborhood you were passing, perhaps the CHP was already tied up with another event– maybe a shooting or murder or worse….

It makes me wonder how urgent your phone call sounded to the 911 operator– was it a 911 or CHP operator? From a cell phone or a roadside phone? (By the way, do they have roadside phones anymore?)

To consider a different perspective, based on what you wrote, perhaps the operator perceived that an accident in which the on-scene witness “believed” and judged that there “might” be an injury caused the operator to downgrade the importance of the call from being an Priority Urgent life-threatening 911 call to a Police Response Required because “a possible 1 a.m. drunk-driver-has-a solo-possible-injury-accident.” If the operator perceived there to be an imminent threat to life, then you’d think or hope or pray that an ambulance and/or the fire department would be the first on-scene responder.

When you called 911 and said you were on the freeway, did the 911 operator patch you through to a CHP operator– given that the I-80 is in CHPs jurisdiction? If there was a handoff to CHP, perhaps the urgent tone of your voice was lost in the translation? Did you ask specifically for CHP help? Was the accident blocking the freeway or off on the shoulder? I suspect the car was on the shoulder, otherwise you’d think the CHP would be there within minutes to close down the lane to prevent injury to others.

While you don’t mention the accident victims race, I wonder if that played any role in the on-scene CHP response. Could racial profiling be a cause for the type of response the victim had to endure?

The CHP claims to have a well-defined procedure for investigating citizen concerns. Internal Affairs Section is responsible for coordinating such investigations. To voice a concern and/or file a complaint regarding Department policy or employee conduct you can do so at the CHP website.

The California Highway Patrol Community Outreach and Marketing Unit (COMU) publicly say that the CHP Internal Affairs division “considers the investigation of complaints regarding an employee’s actions or our policies to be one of our most important missions. All complaints are investigated objectively and thoroughly, and the investigation findings are provided in writing to the complainant.”

I say, “Do The Right Thing. Always.”

of course, don’t go back to Martinez after that.