The city of Norfolk, Virginia, has implemented a conversational artificial intelligence system to answer and route thousands of calls made to its 24-hour non-emergency telephone line. Provided by Amazon, the automated assistant currently handles more than 40% of non-emergency inquiries, according to News 3 WTKR Norfolk. Municipal officials deployed the software to reduce wait times for routine city requests and allow human dispatchers to focus on urgent 911 emergencies.

Residents dialing Norfolk’s non-emergency number at 757-441-5610 can now state their requests conversationally in English rather than navigating traditional keypad menus. Norfolk E-911 manager Steven Summerlin told WTKR that the city’s communications center has processed more than 100,000 non-emergency calls and more than 130,000 emergency 911 calls so far in 2026. At its current processing rate, Summerlin estimated the AI assistant could field approximately 50,000 to 60,000 non-emergency calls annually, though independent performance audits and published municipal datasets have not yet confirmed a full year of measured results.

How Norfolk’s Automated Call System Operates

Unlike consumer chatbots that pull information from the open internet, Norfolk’s phone assistant relies on a closed, controlled repository of municipal data. According to Summerlin’s statements to WTKR, the system draws exclusively from city-approved information, official municipal websites, and internal employee procedures to answer routine questions or direct callers to the appropriate city department. Amazon provides the underlying technology and delivers daily analytics reports to the city detailing call volumes and how many inquiries were resolved without requiring a transfer.

The city expects the usage-based Amazon service to cost less than $2,000 per month, with exact billing tied directly to call volume, though official municipal invoices or contract budgets have not been publicly released. While WTKR cited Summerlin’s figure that the system handles over 40% of non-emergency traffic, a separate broadcast from 13News Now noted that both Norfolk and neighboring Newport News are using AI to manage select non-emergency police calls without providing independent metrics to verify the 40% threshold.

City officials emphasize that the automation is designed to support, rather than replace, human employees. Callers can request to speak with a live person at any point during the interaction. Meanwhile, all emergency 911 calls continue to be answered directly by human dispatchers. On those emergency lines, AI operates strictly in the background, transcribing conversations in real time, generating call summaries, and flagging specific keywords that may indicate a severe crisis.

Dispatcher Workloads and Emergency Response Context

The primary operational goal of offloading routine inquiries is to relieve pressure on public safety telecommunicators. In Norfolk, individual dispatchers regularly field between 85 and more than 100 calls over the course of a 12.5-hour shift. By filtering out routine municipal questions, city leaders aim to keep human operators available for high-priority incidents, though municipal officials have not released before-and-after wait time data or measured emergency response metrics demonstrating how the software has affected 911 answer speeds.

Across the law enforcement sector, communications centers are increasingly turning to automation to combat chronic staffing shortages, high turnover, and worker burnout. According to an industry analysis published by Police1, dispatchers face intense strain from managing continuous traumatic events under staffing deficits, leaving traditional call-taking models struggling to meet public expectations for immediate response. Panels of law enforcement professionals and community members convened in May 2025 identified more than 100 trends regarding AI in 911 centers, concluding that while automated triage and real-time translation hold promise, agencies must phase in these systems with strict validation and sustained human oversight to avoid delaying emergency responses or eroding public trust.

Mixed Results Across Virginia Municipalities

Norfolk’s rollout is part of a wider push across Virginia to automate municipal call centers, though performance data from other cities shows varying degrees of success. According to Hoodline, which cited reporting from Axios and local government figures, Norfolk originally announced plans to adopt this class of technology in September 2024. Neighboring Virginia Beach processed 237,207 non-emergency calls through its AI system between April and November 2024, transferring 40.6% of those callers to human telecommunicators and 4.4% to 311 services.

In contrast, the city of Richmond has struggled to meet its automation benchmarks after launching an Amazon Connect AI assistant in April 2025. While Richmond officials set an ultimate goal for the software to field 50% to 60% of non-emergency traffic, the system handled or routed only 19.3% of roughly 111,000 non-emergency calls during the prior fiscal year, passing nearly 81% of callers to the city’s 911 center. Richmond has spent more than $52,000 on its assistant to date and is working with Amazon Connect to reach an interim target of 25% by January 1, 2027.

Richmond’s deployment has also raised questions regarding caller transparency. City Council member Reva Trammell noted that constituents were often confused and unaware they were speaking with an automated machine. That concern mirrors broader legislative scrutiny across the state; in October 2026, Virginia’s Joint Commission on Technology and Science recommended legislation that would require AI chatbots to explicitly disclose their non-human nature and maintain built-in emergency crisis protocols.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does an AI answer the phone if I dial 911 in Norfolk?

No. Human dispatchers answer all 911 emergency calls in Norfolk. On emergency lines, artificial intelligence is used only in the background to transcribe audio in real time, summarize details, and flag keywords that suggest a severe emergency. The automated voice assistant only answers the non-emergency line at 757-441-5610.

Can callers still speak to a human on the non-emergency line?

Yes. Callers using the 24-hour non-emergency line can ask the system to transfer them to a human operator at any time, or the system will route them to a live staff member if it cannot resolve the inquiry using its database of city-approved procedures.

Has the AI system improved Norfolk’s emergency response times?

While Norfolk officials state that the system frees up dispatchers by handling more than 40% of routine non-emergency calls, no independent audits or city datasets have been published yet to verify changes in before-and-after wait times, call-abandonment rates, or 911 dispatch speeds.

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