A Los Angeles content creator waited 58 minutes for 911 to call after his home was robbed, he said.
“LA in Animing” podcast host Evan Lovett returned to his Studio City home just after 9pm on Friday after his 11-year-old son’s baseball game. A glass door was destroyed behind the house, leaving no valuables, such as a jewel and a safe with items left behind by his late father.
After searching for the intruder, Lovett called 911 and said it was put on hold for 58 minutes. “This is becoming more unsettling,” he said in a video posted on social media.
“What if my son is choking? What if my wife slips and falls in the shower and opens her head?” he said in an interview with the Times on Sunday.
Police publicly challenged LA police Colonel Ray Vallois about how long it took him to answer the call, saying that the NBC4 was picked up in 74 seconds and then prioritized as a non-emergency call.
Lovett refuted Valois’ claims and said there were witnesses to prove it. Several of his neighbors had come to his house to help while he called the speakers for 911, Lovett said. When he called, he told him that the two-part recording was on hold, and then he couldn’t turn off and said he wasn’t hanging up.
“Until 58 minutes, there was absolutely no one we heard of.”
Once the dispatch is picked up, La Labett will receive an LA police officer and take a report within six minutes. By then it was 10:12pm
His Wi-Fi enabled ring camera did not detect any movement between 6:30pm and 7:30pm, he said, and he believes that a group of burglars will use Wi-Fi jammers to destroy the camera and enter it invisible.
Lovett, who worked as a sports staff writer for the Times from 1998 to 1999, said he wanted to use his platform to begin a dialogue about how he could fix what he considers as a negative trajectory in Los Angeles.
Lovett’s podcasts regularly focus on the history, news and current events that have shaped Los Angeles. But early on the day of the invasion, he posted an episode explaining that he felt discouraged about the city’s condition. “From fires to ice attacks to political responsibility games, to Hollywood’s ongoing struggle, the atmosphere of darkness permeates Los Angeles,” reads the description. Then the intrusion occurred.
Now, he feels he should be speaking out given his own experience and the lack of staff present at the LA Police Station and the 911 Call Center.
“When it appears at your door and I have a platform that reaches important people and people who make decisions, I have to say something,” Lovett said. “Let’s be constructive. And work to improve the city without getting angry at each other, without having to point our fingers at each other. Let’s work to do that in a positive and uplifting way.”
He said several local officials, including Nisia Raman, the representative of his city council, had reached out to him since the robbery.
LAPD did not immediately respond to a time request for a 911 call report that could indicate what happened in Lovett’s emergency call.
