SAN DIEGO (CNS) – Non-emergency calls to the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office will be answered by an artificial intelligence system starting this weekend in an effort to shorten wait times for callers who don’t need a 911 response.
All emergency calls to 911 will continue to be answered by trained responders, according to a statement released by the SDSO on Friday. Calls to the non-emergency number are now greeted by a carefully trained and tested voice AI agent known as Hyper, officials said.
The AI asks a short series of questions to connect callers to the appropriate sheriff’s office resource, provide callers with the information they are looking for or connect them to a dispatcher.
“Hyper’s Voice AI system helps callers get the help they need faster. It’s a practical use of technology that improves outcomes for our community,” said Ashish Kakkad, chief information officer for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office. “By automating the routing of non-emergency calls, our trained call takers can focus more time on emergency situations
that require judgment, empathy and critical thinking.”
The Sheriff’s Office responds to up to 400,000 non-emergency calls per year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Under the new system, all interactions are recorded and transcribed in real time.
Hyper will immediately transfer the non-emergency call to a trained sheriff’s emergency services dispatcher if the situation is an emergency, if the system does not understand the caller, if the caller requires a language or translation service not supported by the system, if unusual activity or discrepancies are detected, or if the request is outside the system’s trained standard procedures.
The sheriff’s non-emergency number, 858-868-3200, should be used to report past crimes, request information, file a report or reach a member of the sheriff’s office when not an emergency. 911 should still be used when there is an imminent threat to life or property, a crime is in progress, or there is a serious injury, fire, or medical emergency.
Hyper is a public safety technology company that builds AI voice systems specifically designed for non-emergency police communications. The platform helps emergency communications centers reduce wait times, increase efficiency and improve service to the public by automatically handling routine calls and ensuring that urgent calls reach human dispatchers immediately.
Hyper was founded by experienced technology engineers, former government officials and freight forwarding experts with deep AI experience.
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