Aurelian deploys AI to route non-emergency 911 calls

The New York Post reports that Seattle-based public safety technology company Aurelian has developed an AI call-taker named Ava that answers police non-emergency phone lines, takes reports, and routes complaints to appropriate departments. Aurelian CEO Max Keenan has stated that roughly 70% of calls entering a typical emergency communications center are non-emergencies, a figure Aurelian reports across its deployed agency base. The New York Post cites a March report that found the LAPD answered just 57.43% of 911 calls within California's 15-second standard in 2024, below the state benchmark. City officials told The New York Post that roughly 100 operators must be on duty across a 24-hour period to meet minimum staffing requirements.

Aurelian's Ava platform has been adopted by multiple agencies. Volusia County Sheriff in Florida reported a 98.5% successful resolution rate for non-emergency reports handled by Ava since deployment, per the Sheriff's Office. Kitsap 911 in Washington State launched Ava on a dedicated non-emergency line in May 2026, per public reporting. Aurelian raised a $14M Series A in August 2025 to expand its dispatcher-relief AI capabilities.

Ava handles low-acuity call types including barking-dog complaints, parking disputes, noise complaints, lost property, abandoned vehicles, and minor traffic crashes with no injuries. These map to mature automation techniques: automatic speech recognition, intent classification, slot-filling workflows, and deterministic routing to municipal service channels or online forms. Ava continuously monitors every interaction for emergency signals; if detected, it immediately transfers the caller to a human telecommunicator. For practitioners, the key engineering and governance concerns are transcription accuracy in noisy environments, emergency-detection precision, and integration with existing CAD (computer-aided dispatch) and records systems.

Emergency dispatch centers nationwide face staffing shortages and high non-emergency call volumes, which public reporting connects to slower emergency response times. The LAPD figure cited by The New York Post illustrates the operational stakes. Aurelian positions Ava as an operational relief tool for strained centers, not a replacement for emergency dispatch.

Observers should monitor independent performance evaluations, published accuracy and safety metrics for emergency-detection logic, and any municipal pilot results or procurement records as additional agencies evaluate the platform.