Is being poor fair?

Mr. Quinnell informed us in class that if there were an instance that a person from a poor community called the police and a person from a suburban community called the police around the same time then the police would respond to the person from the suburbs first. How can anyone justify this? Is it the poor persons fault that he/she is poor? What kind of country do we live in that would try to justify this by saying that those who pay more taxes tend to use the services more frequent than a poor person would and basically they therfore get first dibs on the services.