3 hours has nothing to do with anything, unless you live in a well developed area where the municipality has its own police force, you're stuck with slow response times. That's generally the issue with the sheriff's offices or state based police agencies. They are not well staffed and they are expected to cover a large area. In a rural area it's not uncommon to have a 10-30 minutes response time for a priority call, whereas in an area such as where I work our response time from the call just coming in to officers arriving on scene is 5 minutes or less 95% of the time, many times it's in the 2-4 window depending on how fast dispatch can get units rolling out. On a delayed report or crime that is not in progress, you are going to get a lower priority and have an extended response time. It's a nature of the beast.