Fairfax County is testing out AI to handle non-emergency 911 calls, easing operator workload while ensuring emergencies still get human attention.
FAIRFAX, Va. — Fairfax County’s 911 center, which answers about 3,000 calls a day, is testing artificial intelligence technology to help manage non-emergency calls.
The Department of Public Safety Communications Center, often described as the heartbeat of emergency response in the county, has introduced an AI system that operates on the non-emergency line.
Callers who dial 703-691-2131, the non-emergency line, may soon hear an unexpected voice on the other end of the line. That voice is AI.
“We get 3,000 calls a day and approximately 60% of those calls are non-emergency calls for service,” said Dru Clarke, assistant director of operations at the center.
He told WUSA9 that 40 people are working at any given time in the center. This will give them a chance to not only catch their breath but also focus on the actual emergencies.
“They have a time to breathe in between calls because the AI agent is triaging calls that they really shouldn’t be getting in the first place,” said Clarke
Calls about vehicles being towed, or people asking for a police report.
“They’ll call and say, ‘I need a police report from three weeks ago, where can I get that from?’ or car seat installations people call us for, so we get the full gamut of just information only, and we thought, well, these don’t really require a person to triage them,” said Clarke.
The automated assistant sounds much like a human operator, Clarke said. “It’s not obvious that it’s AI. It actually sounds very much like a person.”
He added that they didn’t want people to have to press a bunch of buttons to get their problems answered. “We wanted something that’s relaxed, something that’s conversational, something that can build as the person builds their story in context,” said Clarke..
The AI system, Clarke says, allows callers to receive faster responses by automatically triaging their calls. However, callers can request a live operator at any time, and the system is designed to recognize emergencies and transfer those calls to a human dispatcher immediately.
“If at any point your non-emergency becomes an emergency, it will recognize that and transfer you automatically,” Clarke explained. The AI listens for keywords such as “someone is hurt” or “a child is missing” to identify urgent situations.
He told WUSA9 they’ve done one test so far, but have two more planned for future dates.
“We tested it for two hours, and in those two hours, we triaged 150 calls in two hours just on the non-emergency line. So, that’s the power of our workload today is that we get so many non-emergency calls, and during those two hours, what we realize is that the AI agent not only can handle a lot of those calls, but it grows and learns, the more information that you feed it,” he said.
Currently, the AI operates in English and Spanish, with plans to add more languages as the technology evolves.
Fairfax County is not the first in the region to adopt AI technology. Arlington County introduced an AI system for non-emergency calls in 2023.
“We have our neighbors in other jurisdictions that already have this technology in their center. Neighbors as close as Arlington County has AI on their non-emergency line. Charleston, South Carolina, has an AI agent on their non-emergency line, so the technology is being used in the right way,” said Clarke.
Despite the new technology, human dispatchers remain the primary responders for emergency calls.
“Is there a time and place where AI is answering emergency 911 calls?” WUSA9’s Katie Lusso asked.
“Not in Fairfax County, not right now,” Clarke replied. “A lot of us, this is why we started in 9-1-1, is to help save lives, and so we’re not gonna use an AI agent to process something that’s critical in those life-saving moments.”
The technology is currently in a pilot phase and will be tested two more times before potential implementation this fall.