Until now, 911 dispatch centers largely have been the “black box” of the criminal justice system. This article opens that black box. It documents systematically a new mechanism in the policing process: the degree to which a 911 call-taker's “alarmist” response to a call primes police officer perceptions at the scene. This study leverages the quasi-random assignment of 911 call-takers to calls and employs an instrumental variable approach novel to dispatch. The author focuses her analysis on call-for-service data (N = 20,764) involving mental health crises and public assaults—strategic sites for the investigation of call-taker discretion—from a dispatch center in Southeast Michigan and finds a statistically significant difference in the propensity of call-takers to classify the same types of calls as “high priority.” This variation, in turn, affects police perceptions. Calls for which call-taker assignment induces a high priority classification are about three times more likely to be classified as high priority by the police at the scene, relative to the mean of the dependent variable. Effects are strongest for calls involving mental health crises. The theoretical developments and empirical results presented here point to new areas for policy reform for policymakers and practitioners regarding the importance of training 911 call-takers in call triage and diversion.

中文翻译：

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“灯光与警笛”：911 接听者风险评估的变化及其对现场警官感知的影响

到目前为止，911 调度中心在很大程度上一直是刑事司法系统的“黑匣子”。这篇文章打开了那个黑匣子。它系统地记录了警务过程中的一种新机制：911 接听者对呼叫的“危言耸听”反应在多大程度上激发了警察在现场的感知。本研究利用 911 接听电话的准随机分配，并采用新颖的工具变量方法进行调度。作者将她的分析重点放在了来自密歇根州东南部调度中心的涉及心理健康危机和公共攻击的呼叫服务数据（N = 20,764）——调查呼叫者自由裁量权的战略地点——并发现在统计上存在显着差异接听者倾向于将相同类型的呼叫归类为“高优先级”。这种变化，反过来，影响警方的认知。相对于因变量的平均值，接听者分配导致高优先级分类的呼叫在现场被警察分类为高优先级的可能性大约高出三倍。对于涉及心理健康危机的电话，效果最强。此处介绍的理论发展和实证结果为政策制定者和从业人员提供了新的政策改革领域，即培训 911 接听员在呼叫分类和转移方面的重要性。