Willamette Valley Communications Center has started a six-month pilot program using an artificial intelligence system called Ava to handle some non-emergency calls, a move officials say is intended to reduce wait times on routine matters and keep human telecommunicators focused on emergencies. The regional dispatch center, operated under the Salem Fire Department, supports 32 public safety agencies and serves more than 415,000 residents across Marion, Polk and Lincoln counties.
City officials have drawn a clear line around the pilot: 911 calls are not part of it. Every emergency call will still be answered by a trained WVCC telecommunicator, and the city says no staffing positions are being eliminated as part of the test. Instead, Ava is being used on selected non-emergency business lines to gather initial information and help route callers to the right agency resource. The city says the point is to see how the system performs in real-world conditions before any longer-term decision is made.
That distinction matters because WVCC handles a large volume of calls that do not involve immediate danger but still consume staff time. In 2025, the center processed more than 500,000 calls, according to the city, with about half involving non-emergency requests. Officials have framed the pilot as a workload tool, not a replacement plan. “With the Ava system, we aim to provide a seamless experience for callers, ensuring that they can receive assistance efficiently while allowing our staff to focus on more complex or time-sensitive situations,” Salem Fire Chief Dave Gerboth said.
The city says Ava is being used for non-emergency situations such as noise complaints, parking issues, lost property and other administrative requests. That is an important limit, because the pilot is not handing emergency triage over to software. But it still places a machine at the front end of public-facing call intake, which is where the harder questions begin.
The public-interest concerns are not hard to identify. If residents are reporting a problem to what they believe is a public-safety agency, the test is not whether the system sounds efficient. The real test is whether it recognizes urgency, gathers accurate information, handles accents and language differences, and creates records supervisors can review when something goes wrong. The city has said WVCC personnel will continue to manage and oversee all call-processing functions, but it has released little public detail so far about the pilot’s auditing standards, escalation thresholds or long-term evaluation metrics.
The labor angle also deserves scrutiny. Officials say no positions are being cut as part of the six-month trial, but that does not settle the larger question of how automation could reshape dispatch work over time. The civil-liberties issue is just as real: any automated system taking law-enforcement-related service requests is likely to face questions about data retention, misclassification and accountability. For now, WVCC is asking the public to accept a pilot on limited lines. The harder issue is what standards the agency will use six months from now to decide whether Ava actually earned a permanent role.
