911 AI operator weeds out non-emergency calls to free up first responders

Former Chicago 911 dispatcher Keith Thornton Jr. joined "Fox & Friends First" to discuss how the crime surge is affecting law enforcement and communities nationwide. Understaffed 911 call centers across the country field non-emergency calls about stray animals or noise complaints on top of their workload of answering serious reports of medical emergencies, crimes and even death. Officials in Charleston County, South Carolina, however, are now leveraging artificial intelligence to streamline non-emergency calls in an effort to free up 911 operators to focus on getting first responders to the scene of emergency incidents as quickly as possible. "Our job is to serve the public the best way we can. So, I am not in any way demeaning anyone from the public, but someone who has their favorite cat stuck in a tree, that's an emergency for them as compared to someone's just been shot," Jim Lake, director of the Charleston County Consolidated Emergency Communications Center, told Fox News Digital in a recent phone interview.