Quick Summary

Understaffed 911 centers in Washington State are routing non-emergency calls to an AI voice agent that takes the report, writes the summary in the dispatcher's style and drops it into the dispatch system. Snohomish County's agent has handled more than 220,000 calls since 2024, and hold times went from 10 to 15 minutes to none.

The Use Case

At the Tri-Cities dispatch center, 34 full-time staff cover a need of 42, and 60 to 70% of the 750-plus daily calls come in on the non-emergency line: noise complaints, parking, fireworks, cold reports. Those calls sat on hold while dispatchers worked emergencies. Snohomish County, Tri-Cities and Cowlitz 911 deployed Aurelian's voice agent on the non-emergency line. It collects the caller's details and complaint, listens for stress or trigger words and transfers those callers to a person immediately, then writes a summary in the dispatchers' own house style and pushes it to the computer-aided dispatch system for one-click review.

Real Example

1. A resident calls the non-emergency line at 11 pm about a car alarm that has been going for an hour
2. The agent answers immediately, takes the address and description, and asks whether anyone is in danger
3. The caller says no; the agent finishes the report
4. A summary in the center's standard format lands in the CAD queue
5. A dispatcher reviews it and sends it to patrol with one click
6. A second caller says "someone is trying to get into my house"; the agent transfers to a live dispatcher on the spot

Why It Matters

• Snohomish County: 220,000+ non-emergency calls handled since 2024, with hold times cut from 10 to 15 minutes to immediate
• Tri-Cities: the agent handled 68% of 1,000 recorded test calls before its January 15, 2026 launch, at about $120,000 a year
• Dispatchers at Cowlitz 911 got real breaks on July 4, the busiest day of the year

Source

https://www.govtech.com/em/preparedness/tri-cities-in-wash-turn-to-ai-for-understaffed-911-dispatch