Arlington County using AI to help handle non-emergency 911 calls over holiday weekend

AI being used to assist 911 dispatchers in Arlington County

The Arlington County Police Department says its using AI to help field non-emergency calls. With July 4 being the busiest day for the department, the hope is that the AI component will help free resources.

ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va. - Arlington County’s 911 center is preparing for its busiest day of the season and they’re turning to artificial intelligence to help man non-emergency calls coming into its dispatch center this Fourth of July holiday.

The Emergency Command Center is inside the county's police department building.

With July 4 being the busiest day for the department, the hope is that the AI component will help free resources and dispatchers, make them available to assist residents calling about real emergencies.

What we know:

Inside the Arlington County Police Department’s Emergency Command Center, dispatchers answer both emergency and non-emergency calls, including questions about things like fireworks laws and towing complaints and issues.

The non-emergency calls are the ones that will have artificial intelligence robot-like assistance aiding in responses. The AI component has been used to assist in non-emergency calls since last year.

Compared to last year, non-emergency call volume to the emergency line improved significantly as more calls were redirected using an artificial intelligence workflow. 

"I guess I’d use it, like Google, for general purposes. I think it answers your questions pretty accurately. For emergencies I’d rather talk to a human being," one Arlington resident, Chad, told FOX 5. 

Dig deeper:

Officials say non-emergency calls were down by nearly 16,000 in the first quarter of the year compared to the same time period in 2024. That’s reportedly an average of 5,250 calls per month.

"Every minute that they’re answering non-emergency lines, they’re not able to answer emergency lines so this has been very beneficial for us to free up those dispatchers to answer emergencies first," Emergency Command Center Administrator Jacob Saur said.

County leaders say since adding AI, the average call length also dropped from 129.3 seconds per call to 105.2 seconds. 

We’re told that "lower call volumes and shorter calls combined saved 829 hours that would have otherwise been spent on non-emergency calls, which amounts to more than nine hours per day."