After 23 years on the job and millions of calls, Denver 911 hopes to retire its aging dispatch system in favor of a new $24 million computer-aided dispatch system from Motorola.

The system, sometimes referred to as CAD, documents all 911 calls, field responder movements, dispatch and arrival times, dispositions and clearances.

City officials said the proposed 13-year contract would bring many of the city’s current emergency and non-emergency services under one integrated system, connecting more of the city’s resources to improve the efficiency of service responses.

Right now, the city’s central dispatch hub interfaces with more than 25 separate public safety platforms, which can be challenging, officials said.

“The CAD system that we’re using today was designed at a time when police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances were the only things that 911 was expected to kind of manage in the field,” Director of Emergency Communications Andrew Dameron told members of the city’s Health and Safety Committee on Wednesday. “Today, things look very different — most notably, STAR, a nation-leading program with civilians and clinicians that we are dispatching directly from 911 calls, and we need technology that supports that effort.” 

STAR is Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response, in which civilian mental health and medical personnel are dispatched to 911 calls instead of police.

In short, the city has outgrown its current system.

The benefits of the new CAD?

Dameron said the biggest plus would be the system unification between the Denver 911 and the Denver International Airport, both of which operate on separate systems “that require an expensive and unreliable over-the-top solution to allow us to collaborate in real time during emergencies.”

“For example, when a 911 call originates at the airport, it is routed through the primary answering point, the Denver 911,” said Paul Donaldson, who manages the airport’s communications center. “From there, their dispatchers send that out to the airport. Our dispatchers and call takers receive the same level of training as Denver 911, so the continuity of technology, the continuity of training and operations is paramount.”

Other benefits, he said, would include a customizable mobile application that allows residents to report non-emergencies and have those reports go directly into the CAD system, rather than into an inbox or another system that must be monitored by a person.

“It (the mobile app) creates a call for service as if they had called,” Dameron said. “So, it reduces our overall call volume, while still getting those reports in, allowing us to dispatch the appropriate response and thereby freeing up call takers to answer the phone when it does ring.”

If the resolution is approved by the full City Council, implementation of the new CAD is expected to take between 12 and 18 months.

Dameron said the lengthy transition is due to the new system being a large platform that needs to connect to many different systems. 

“There’s also a great deal of training that has to happen,” he said. “Every single 911 call taker and dispatcher needs to be intimately comfortable and familiar with the software before we just swap them out.”

Residents will not be affected by the system switch-over, which is expected sometime in the summer of 2027.

“This (CAD) is the documentation system that our call takers use, so they’ll be answering the phone the same way, asking the same questions,” Dameron said. “They’re just going to be documenting it in a different system.”

He added: “So, from a resident perspective, really the only notable change —and it is an important one — is that it’s going to open up the opportunity for us to create additional avenues by which folks can reach out to us and seek support, help or what have you, in a non-emergency scenario. 911 will always be the primary contact option for emergencies, but for non emergencies, to give folks the option of reaching out via text or via a chat bot or via a mobile app, and have that directly integrated into the computer aided dispatch software creates a vast opportunity for us to better serve our residents.”

Funding for the $24 million CAD package will initially come from the Denver 911 Trust and will be “split” with DIA.

Last year, Denver’s public safety agency roughly doubled the fee for 911 emergency services, arguing it was necessary to keep operations afloat and meet response-time requirements. 

The fee hike — from $1.20 to $2.12 per month — applies to all residents with a phone, whether landline or mobile, registered in the city.  

“This change will allow us to maintain operations through the rest of 2025 and set us up for success in some of the infrastructure and staffing moves that we’ve been making over the last few years,” Dameron said previously.

The fee hike would also help keep the 911 Trust afloat, which funds Denver 911 through service charges, he said. 

Dameron said that without the increase, the 911 Trust fund would dip below zero, and raising the fee to $2.12 would “keep us solvent through the end of the year.”

The last time the city saw a 911 fee increase was in 2019.

The committee approved the resolution for the new CAD. It now moves to the full City Council for consideration.