Ontario police service using AI in hiring, training 911 call takers

Halton regional police in Ontario are using artificial intelligence in the recruitment and training of 911 call takers and dispatchers.

The force said American AI firm GovWorx provides the technology to create emergency call simulations to help 911 applicants improve their decision-making, communication and crisis management skills.

Halton police 911 communications bureau manager Brian Dodd said the new technology helps the force identify the right candidates from the beginning of the hiring process.

He said the department has been facing a staffing crisis because not all candidates applying for 911 jobs succeed in their training after they are hired.

“The training takes quite a long time, takes close to a year,” he said in an interview.

“What we’re trying to (do) at the very beginning stage in recruiting, is to find the right candidates … and this software helps us do that through some testing and using AI scenarios.”

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Dodd said police are also using the same AI in 911 communicator training and it will be used to evaluate their work after they are hired.

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“We are proud to be the first Canadian customer and the first Canadian agency to be using this type of technology,” he said.

Halton police said the use of AI in the hiring of 911 dispatchers reduces candidate evaluation time by 50 per cent.

“This technology is used successfully in hundreds of communication centres in the U.S.” Dodd said.

“We’ve been working with them and speaking to them about the success.”

He said the Halton police service currently has 75 dispatchers and call takers and is aiming to hire between four and eight new ones this year.

Halton police started using another technology called SARA AI to take certain types of non-emergency phone calls.

They said the SARA AI reduced 911 wait time by almost two seconds a call.

“There is a standard in North America, that we can proudly say that we meet, which is that 90 per cent of all 911 calls are answered within 15 seconds,” Dodd said.

“Obviously, if we can do better than that … that’s what we strive to do.”

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Police say the bot has answered 95,367 calls so far this year, spent 1,195 hours talking to residents and sent more than 2,470 text messages to people to help them report incidents elsewhere, such as through the collision reporting centre.