911 & emergency4 min read
AI now answers non-emergency lines at 911 centers
Counties in Wisconsin and Massachusetts and the San Diego police are using AI voice agents to screen non-urgent calls. Early figures and the safeguards they are adopting.
In most emergency communications centers, a large share of incoming calls are not emergencies at all: noise complaints, badly parked cars, questions about paperwork or follow-ups on earlier reports. Each one ties up a call-taker who could be handling a life-threatening situation. Over 2026, several US centers stopped treating this purely as a staffing problem and began handing that first contact to AI voice agents.
What is happening
In late September, the Dane County public safety communications center in Wisconsin reported on its first month with AVA, a voice assistant that answers the non-emergency line. According to local coverage, the system handled more than 24,000 calls in that period. Center leaders said there were no major mistakes and that the fixes needed were programming adjustments. The pilot runs for a year, and Dane joins two other Wisconsin counties already using similar tools.
In Massachusetts, the Westcomm regional dispatch center announced in August that it will use the Prepared platform, now part of Axon, for its non-emergency line, which takes roughly 79,500 calls a year. The estimated annual cost is 100,000 dollars, paid through a state 911 grant. In San Diego, police have contracted since 2025 for a service that sorts non-urgent calls, transcribes 911 calls and suggests follow-up questions to dispatchers.
The safeguards that keep showing up
Centers already running these systems converge on a similar set of measures so automation never lets a real emergency slip through:
- Live human monitoring of the conversations the agent is handling.
- Detection of keywords and warning signs that immediately transfer the call to a dispatcher.
- An always-available option for the caller to ask for a person.
- Medical calls and vulnerable callers routed straight to human staff.
- Contract terms that keep data ownership with the center or its member communities.
Why it matters for a command center
The obvious gain is freeing call-takers for critical calls. San Diego shows the other side: civil society groups objected that the contract described AI analysis in vague terms, without spelling out what data is processed or under what limits. The worry is that people stop calling if they sense surveillance. For a C4 or C5 center, the lesson is that the technology has to arrive with clear rules: what is recorded, who can access it, how long it is kept and how each automated decision is audited.
There is also a technical precondition. A voice agent can only route a call well if the dispatch system has clean incident catalogs, explicit priority rules and a reliable record of every interaction. Without that foundation, AI simply moves the disorder to another layer.
How we apply it at Exylia
Our command center platform starts from the same premise as these centers: every call must be recorded and tied to a report, whether a person or an automated system handles it. With our VoIP telephony module we record and detect SIP calls and attach them to the matching incident without modifying the existing PBX, so any classification can be reviewed later against the original audio.
Before automating anything, we work with the center's team to design incident catalogs, priority rules and the criteria for escalating to a dispatcher. That systems design work is what makes it possible to add triage tools later with human oversight, audit logs and dashboards showing how many calls are routed, how quickly and with what outcome.
For paperwork and reports that are not emergencies, our government software provides dedicated follow-up workflows, so those requests are handled through an orderly channel without crowding the emergency line.
Try it in a simulation
Sources
- Dane County PSC shares one month update on AI non-emergency line · Spectrum News 1
- Massachusetts 9-1-1 Center to Begin Using AI for Non-Emergency Calls · Firehouse
- Scoop: AI is answering some San Diego 911 calls · Axios San Diego
Summary and analysis by Exylia Systems based on the sources cited.
