BOULDER, Colo. — The City of Boulder announced Tuesday that the Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center will begin using AI technology this month during limited hours and days of the week to answer non-emergency calls.
According to the city, the technology will not be used to answer emergency 911 calls.
In the release, the city said the purpose of the non-emergency line AI assistant is to provide faster and more efficient responses to non-emergency calls, which the city said will allow dispatchers to handle higher-priority calls more quickly.
The city said the technology will eventually replace the center's current traditional phone menu, which requires callers to listen to a list of options and then make choices; the goal for now is to test the new technology in phases throughout the month during certain periods of time and days of the week, with full implementation by the end of November.
“Our dedicated dispatchers regularly handle a variety of emergency and non-emergency calls 24/7/365 from the community while simultaneously notifying, activating and dispatching resources for our officers, fire and ems, rangers and other city employees,” Police Chief Steve Redfearn said. “This option will allow us to better serve everyone by giving them more time to focus on calls involving more serious threats of harm and violence to our community. This will also still allow us to provide professional service to callers for lower-level priority calls that are important but can be handled by this technology.”
The city provided a list of examples of types of non-emergency calls that could be answered, including but not limited to:
- Abandoned vehicles
- Traffic crashes with no injuries
- Animal complaints with no threat to public safety
- Cold assaults where the suspect is no longer on scene
- General assists
- Cold burglaries where the suspect is no longer on scene
- Extra patrol requests
- Firework complaints
- Found property
- Lost property
- Noise complaints
- Parking complaints
- Requests for follow-up from officers
- Traffic complaints
- Cold trespasses where the suspect is no longer on scene
The city said there are several safeguards in place to immediately transfer calls that become an emergency.
According to the city, if a caller believes their service was insufficient, or has other feedback regarding their call, they should contact the non-emergency line and state that they have feedback or a complaint regarding a previous phone call.
The city said the system will then transfer that call into Dispatch, and the caller will also automatically receive a PowerEngage survey for any calls entered into the computer-aided dispatch system.
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