A Tennessee police department will stop responding to certain traffic accidents next month in an effort to concentrate on high-priority calls.

On Monday, Knoxville Police Chief Paul Noel announced that officers will stop responding to minor crashes not involving injuries, WATE-TV reports. Officers will still respond to incidents in which vehicles are disabled and need a tow truck.

The policy change is being made so officers can respond to violent crimes and other high-priority calls. The department will implement the change Sept. 1.

“Minor, non-injury crashes occupy a lot of our officers’ time and minimize our ability to respond more quickly to higher priority calls or conduct proactive traffic enforcement initiatives to actually prevent serious crashes from happening,” Noel told WATE. “We want to recapture that time so that we can focus our efforts on being visible in city neighborhoods and addressing violent crime.”  

According to traffic incident data, officers cumulatively spend 24 hours a day working non-injury crashes. That includes the time to respond to the call and complete a report. 

“This is really a minor change to our operations so that we can focus more narrowly on what is essential to our core mission as a department,” Noel said. “This is also just a small piece of a larger strategic vision. We are taking a close look at how, when and where officers are deployed so that we can more effectively address higher priority public safety issues and concerns.”