On June 6, our home, located West of Market Street, was burglarized between 1-3 p.m., broad daylight. Most of our jewelry and electronics were taken during the burglary and our house was ransacked.

My son, who came home from school around 2:30 p.m., noticed that the front door was open. He entered the house, thinking that one of us had left the door open. He quickly realized that his dog was missing and that the house was a mess and he called 911. The dispatcher asked if anyone was still in the house and he said he didn’t know. The dispatcher told my son to stay outside until the police arrived. Thinking they would arrive, he waited and then finally called 911 two more times. Thirty-eight minutes after the initial call to 911, the Kirkland police arrived. They checked for finger prints and asked us for an inventory of lost items. The responding officer said to make sure that all future communication went directly to him.

In a subsequent call to Kirkland police regarding the delayed 911 response, I was told that the police were “busy” responding to higher priority calls and that this was a “cold burglary” which became a lower priority. In reality, my son didn’t know if someone was in the house and we still aren’t sure why the dispatcher determined that the house was empty. The next day, one of our neighbors said that he had a video of a car going at a high speed up the alley in the afternoon of June 6. I contacted the responding officer multiple times via e-mail and phone calls during the next two days to tell him about the disc showing the car and no effort was made to contact me. On June 9, I finally called the 911 non-emergency number and found out that the responding officer’s wife had a baby and no one from the Kirkland Police Department checked his unanswered telephone messages. During this call, I told the contacted officer about the tape and she said that I should review it to see if there was anything relevant because they were “too busy.”

I have filed a citizen complaint against the Kirkland police for failure to follow their own communication protocol when someone is out of the office and for the general slow response for 911. I guess they expected us to do the detective work as well, determining if the house was clear, finding and reviewing the tape evidence and reporting the relevancy of the tape.

I have been told by the police that there are so many car prowls and burglaries in Kirkland that they are simply responding to the crimes after the fact. So we build a shiny new multimillion dollar police and justice building in Totem Lake, but we don’t have enough officers to respond to 911 calls.

I see Kirkland Police officers sitting on the roadside all over Kirkland, with engines idling, waiting to ticket drivers for speeding and other driving infractions, but when you really need their service, they are too busy. If you experience a crime in Kirkland, don’t expect a quick response from the Kirkland police.

Patrick Harris, Kirkland