The city’s Dispatch center is rolling out some new technology to enhance its public safety response to the community.

Starting this month, Boulder Police and Fire Communications Center will begin using AI technology during limited hours and days of the week to answer non-emergency calls. The purpose is to provide faster and more efficient responses to those calls, which will allow dispatchers to handle higher priority calls more quickly.

This technology will not be used to answer 911 calls and there are several safeguards in place to immediately transfer calls that become an emergency.

“Our dedicated dispatchers regularly handle a variety of emergency and non-emergency calls 24/7/365 from the community while simultaneously notifying, activating and dispatching resources for our officers, fire and ems, rangers and other city employees,” Police Chief Steve Redfearn said. “This option will allow us to better serve everyone by giving them more time to focus on calls involving more serious threats of harm and violence to our community. This will also still allow us to provide professional service to callers for lower-level priority calls that are important but can be handled by this technology.”

Dispatch Manager Brad Riggin explained that the technology will eventually replace the center’s current traditional phone menu, which requires callers to listen to a list of options then make choices.

“This technology is designed to sound like a natural conversation while it determines the caller’s needs and quickly addresses their request,” Riggin said. “It will not be used to answer any 911 calls and if the technology detects concerns it will immediately transfer the call to a dispatcher.”

Examples of types of non-emergency calls that could be answered include, but are not limited to:

  • Abandoned vehicles
  • Traffic crashes with no injuries
  • Animal complaints with no threat to public safety
  • Cold assaults where the suspect is no longer on scene
  • General assists
  • Cold burglaries where the suspect is no longer on scene
  • Extra patrol requests
  • Firework complaints
  • Found Property
  • Lost property
  • Noise complaints
  • Parking complaints
  • Request for follow up from officers
  • Traffic complaints
  • Cold trespasses where the suspect is no longer on scene


If you believe your service was insufficient or have other feedback regarding your call you can call the non-emergency line, 303-441-3333, and say you have feedback or a complaint regarding a previous phone call. The system will then transfer that call into Dispatch. You will also automatically receive a PowerEngage survey for any calls entered into the Computer Aided Dispatch system.

The goal is to test this new technology in phases throughout the month during certain periods of time and days of the week with a full implementation by the end of November. You can learn more about it on our website.

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