NovDec Associate Magazine.2018.

DON REDMOND “AVA! SEND HELP!” The 9-1-1 call was frightening. The female caller was screaming into the phone that her boyfriend had just been stabbed at the marina by two suspects leaving in a white vehicle. The police dispatcher immediately identified the three closest police units by using GPS coordinates from the caller’s phone and dispatched the fire department, ambulance, and launched a surveillance drone from the roof of the police department. A dditionally, video cameras in the area were activated, cap- turing the suspects’ vehicle license plate and pictures of the vehicle and suspects, which were then sent to the responding of- ficer’s mobile computer. The dispatcher calculated the probable direction of travel and officers soon intercepted the fleeing ve- hicle. Within minutes of receiving the frantic 9-1-1 call, police had the suspects in custody. Once again, Dispatcher Ava was credited with providing officers with all the information they needed to solve another violent crime. Dispatcher Ava is not human, though – “she” is the Autonomous Voice Activation system (AVA). TODAY SHAPING TOMORROW The City of Chula Vista is the second largest city in San Di- ego County, encompassing 50 square miles with a population of 267,842 residents. The Police Department employs 246 sworn police officers and 90 professional support staff. The Chula Vista

Police Department (CVPD) has a reputation of being a progressive agency that prides itself on being cutting edge with technology and proactive in seeking solutions. Like almost every other law enforcement agency of a similar size, Chula Vista also staffs a full-service dispatch center. Although the center’s functions are essential to the delivery of police ser- vices, they are expensive, difficult to staff and unable to control the vast amount of data coming into and going out of the commu- nications center. For instance, CVPD employs 25 dispatchers and anticipates hiring another seven over the next two years. Each dispatcher costs about $70,000 each year, and the center has a total budget of more than $250,000. Finding qualified applicants who can answer 9-1-1 phone calls and multi-task under extreme pressure is challenging. Additionally, it takes six to nine months to train a dispatcher to be competent enough to work on their own. As is common in the profession, for every three dispatchers hired, only two will be successful in training. With the continual rise in emergency call volume, including text messaging, pictures and videos, the Department will need to hire more dispatchers to handle the increasing workload unless other means of doing the job can be found. What if, however, a police department could eliminate po- lice dispatchers from the annual budget? Could virtualization and automation of the communications center remove the need for humans to perform the dispatch function altogether? In fact, there are places where this is already happening. In Dubai, vir- tual dispatch centers exist that answer non-emergency calls and can walk citizens through the process of filing a police report. In Copenhagen Denmark, AI-powered technology called Corti is be- ing used to augment emergency dispatchers in EMS communica- tions centers. The Journal of Emergency Medical Services states, “Corti quickly assists dispatchers in concluding what is happen- ing by finding patterns in the caller’s description. Corti analyzes the full spectrum of the audio signal, including acoustic signal, symptomdescriptions, tone and sentiment of the caller, as well as background noises and voice biomarkers. These distinctive fea- tures of the call are immediately and automatically sent through multiple layers of artificial neural networks that look for patterns that might be useful for the dispatcher.” Could this technology be expanded to perform the full array of duties as a virtual police dis- patcher? It is useful to explore a possible future by traveling into a police department where they are working to integrate AVA into the fabric of their organization. A GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE... A SCENARIO It is a bright fall day in 2022. As has been the case for years, the River City Police Department (RCPD) is unable to find quality dispatch applicants and is faced with a financial crisis relating to the exorbitant cost of the 9-1-1 Communications Center. The De- partment contacts Future Insight, a technology firm specializing in artificial intelligence (AI) and cognitive analytics to test whether AI can be used to supplement or replace police dispatchers to ful- fill the mandates of running an emergency call center. AI being used to answer phone calls is not a new concept. Rarely do companies have employees answering telephones. For example, Google announced they have partnered with compa- nies like Cisco and Vonage to actively focus on using AI to replace call center workers. Google Cloud Chief Scientist Fei-Fei Li states, “When we studied the challenges faced by real contact centers ev- ery day, we found that customers often have simple transactional

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