When someone in Dakota County calls the police non-emergency line it isn’t a dispatcher that answers the phone, but rather an AI assistant. The change is so that the dispatch center, which is already understaffed, can focus on emergency calls in the county. Dakota County is one of the first in the Twin Cities metro to establish an AI assistant for non-emergency calls.

Joining Minnesota Now to explain how this works is the executive director of Dakota 911, Heidi Hieserich.