Long Beach soon will use artificial intelligence to help evaluate how dispatchers respond to 911 calls.
The Long Beach Department of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Communications is testing and training GovWorx’s CommsCoach, a program that will screen recordings of the more than 600,000 calls dispatchers field annually.
Typically, supervisors with the department, who also answer 911 calls, are required to evaluate 2% of calls a year. With CommsCoach, supervisors can evaluate all calls that come through the emergency communications center, said Reginald Harrison, the department’s director.
The AI software, which will cost the city just over $68,600 a year through February 2028, will grade each call based on standards created by supervisors, Harrison said.
Ashley Gunckel, a union representative for Long Beach city employees, said the union is skeptical of the implementation of AI software and hopes to gain protections that would prevent AI programs from expanding to handling 911 calls or replacing dispatchers in the future. While Gunckel said management hasn’t signaled they would want AI to take emergency calls, she said there’s still growing concern among union members that AI could eventually replace their jobs or be used to discipline employees without human input.
“If we let this one system come in, who’s to say they’re not going to bring in more systems for just taking over the phone calls,” Gunckel said. “That’s our biggest growing concern.”
The city, she said, has pushed back on artificial intelligence limitations during negotiations for all city workers that the union represents across all departments. While city officials told the union they haven’t identified AI systems they’d want to use, Gunckel said the city wants the right to implement AI programs at any time in the next few years.
CommsCoach is used by dispatch centers in about 40 states, said co-founder Scott MacDonald, including in California. The Orange County Fire Authority has used the software since 2025, and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said it’s in the early stages of considering the technology.
Supervisors in Long Beach are currently training the program to make sure it is evaluating calls properly.
Some factors the software will determine include whether police dispatchers gather necessary information like a caller’s name, address and phone number, as well as the incident location or landmarks in the area, said Gabriela Jilek, a communications center officer. Calls are also evaluated based on whether the dispatcher can calm callers to gather necessary information and get them the help and resources they need, Harrison said.
If the AI flags a call, a supervisor will listen to the recording to see if they agree with the software’s determination and talk with the dispatcher if necessary for additional training or to let them know they’ve consistently met or exceeded standards. Recordings of 911 calls don’t leave the city’s system, and CommsCoach doesn’t listen to live calls, Harrison said.
“We’re not relying entirely on AI to tell us if our dispatchers are doing a good job or not,” Harrison said. “We maintain human judgment in this process.”
The program will also grade the dispatch center as a whole, which Harrison said will help supervisors and administrators know where they’re doing well, as well as ways they can improve existing training programs.
Harrison believes the program is a net good for the community because it will free up supervisors to take more calls and coach dispatchers to improve callers’ experiences.
Without the AI service, Harrison said supervisors typically spend about 30 minutes evaluating calls from each dispatcher per quarter, which can mean listening to calls from as many as 13 dispatchers during busier shifts. The process, Jilek said, is time-consuming for supervisors and only allows them to evaluate a handful of calls at a time.
Harrison said officials don’t have a set timeline for implementing the program. The department plans to train and review the software’s dispatcher evaluations until officials feel it’s ready to be fully launched.
Capt. Sean Doran, a spokesperson for the Orange County Fire Authority, said dispatch supervisors appreciate how the software standardizes performance expectations. The technology, he said, finds data and trends across all calls and grades dispatchers based on a set rubric, rather than the expectations of different supervisors.
CommsCoach can also find trends in dispatchers’ empathy and compassion when talking with callers, who may be dealing with crises and heightened emotions, Doran said. The software can evaluate these factors by analyzing transcripts of 911 calls to see if dispatchers used reassuring language, acknowledged a caller’s emotions and used active listening skills while still getting necessary information for emergency responders, MacDonald said.
“We’re proud to embrace technology including AI as a way to really strengthen the human expertise, the knowledge, the skills, the training as well as the character that’s inherent with each person that answers that 911 call,” Doran said.