Minn. County Tests AI System for Nonemergency Dispatch Calls

Residents calling the nonemergency dispatch line in Anoka County could soon be greeted over the phone by Eric or Erica — not a real person but a new artificial intelligence assistant.

Anoka County’s Emergency Communication Center is testing the AI call taker to try to free up dispatchers’ time to focus on handling high-priority emergencies. The AI tool will field nonemergency calls by “gathering critical information quickly and consistently,” officials said, while 911 emergency calls will still be answered by dispatchers.

The county is implementing the new system as municipalities and police departments across Minnesota start using AI more in their daily work, including to transcribe 911 calls in real time, document meeting minutes and reports and automate language translation and advanced mapping.

But enabling AI to answer nonemergency calls is one of the most visible and public-facing uses of the technology by local agencies so far.

Kari Morrissey, director of the emergency communication center, said Anoka County dispatchers handle roughly 1,100 calls per day on average. Two-thirds of them are nonemergency calls, which can include reports of parking complaints, thefts from a previous day, noise concerns or credit card fraud.

Dispatchers currently answer all nonemergency calls. Morrissey said the AI tool will only take over the lowest-priority calls that do not involve active incidents.

She said the goal is to “lift some of the weight of the job off the shoulders” of the employees who answer 911 calls. Dispatchers can field up to 150 calls each day.

“That’s not a lot of time between calls. We want to give them more breathing room before answering the next high-priority call,” Morrissey said.

Another suburban county has already implemented AI technology. Dakota County’s 911 dispatch center implemented an AI-powered attendant last year for nonemergency call triage, as officials reported staff shortages. The system directs callers to services and answers frequently asked questions.

In 2025, 67% of calls to the dispatch center were handled by employees, while 33% were redirected by the AI system.

Anoka County expects to fully launch its AI call taker as early as this month, after a series of live testing periods. The “brief activation windows will help the system learn from real-world interactions and allow staff to fine-tune performance,” officials said in a news release.

Residents can try the system by using a public demo line at 218-535-7675. The demo allows callers to hear the system’s questions and answers without reaching a live dispatcher.

The call taker answers by stating it is an AI assistant, either Eric or Erica, and then asks what the caller is reporting. As the caller answers questions, keyboard typing sounds can be heard in the background. For the demo, if the AI assistant says it’s transferring the call to an agent, the call disconnects.

Once the AI system is fully implemented, Morrissey said any in-progress call, such as a health emergency, crime or dog running loose, will go to a live dispatcher.

“This will not replace any people,” she said. “We consider this a tool to supplement our workflow and help us provide better customer service for calls that our [dispatchers] are tasked with answering.”

If the AI system transfers a call to a live dispatcher, it would come with a transcript of the call that the employee would read to respond more quickly.

Morrissey said every call handled by the AI assistant will be reviewed by an employee and investigated further, if necessary, before notifying first responders.

The AI call taker system costs about $60,000 a year, she said.

Anoka County opened its new $40 million emergency communication center in Andover early last year, replacing its much smaller, aging facility. Fully staffed, Morrissey said the center has 46 dispatchers and 12 supervisors.

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