AUG 26, 2022 - 4:32 PM
Mark Mascar lay huddled with his dog, Lotus, under a van parked near his home in Mid-City, pleading on his cell phone for police.
“I’m in danger! They’re chasing me with a gun!” he told a 911 dispatcher shortly before 9 a.m. on May 30. He’d been waiting nine minutes before he implored, “Is someone coming or not?”
Someone was, the dispatcher assured him, though she couldn’t say how much longer it might take. Waits for police to respond to emergency calls like Mascar’s have skyrocketed this year as the New Orleans Police Department sheds officers, 911 call data show.
Mascar, like many emergency callers, didn’t think waiting was much of an option. The British transplant had just pulled out his phone to record a pickup truck with two men he’d seen breaking into a vehicle, when the truck turned around. A window lowered as it came back at him, and the men flashed handguns, he said.
Mascar, 54, ran around a corner and dragged Lotus, a black mouth cur, under the van as the pickup circled. He waited 12 minutes before sprinting in terror to his doctor’s house nearby.
“They’re not drawing guns just to say, ‘Hello. Good morning. How are you?’” he said. “In that time, anything could have happened.”
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