ORLANDO. — Police chiefs know their response-time statistics. They can tell you how quickly officers are dispatched, how long it takes them to arrive and whether their departments are meeting performance targets. But how often do they examine whether officers received the right information before arriving on scene?
“No response time can cure a miscoded call.”
That was the challenge Allen (Texas) Police Chief Steve Dye delivered during a presentation at IACP 2026.
Drawing on his department’s experience with specialized telecommunicator training, Dye urged police executives to give the quality of dispatch decisions the same attention they give response times. His message was not that speed doesn’t matter, but that speed alone doesn’t guarantee an effective response.
Here are five leadership lessons from his presentation.
1. Stop measuring dispatch performance by response times alone
Dye acknowledged that chiefs know their response-time numbers because city managers, elected officials and communities routinely ask about them. But those statistics don’t necessarily reveal whether a call was appropriately classified or whether responding officers received the information they needed.
“I know my response times,” Dye said. “I don’t know that I was as informed as I should have been as to whether or not the call was handled correctly.”
He encouraged chiefs to examine call handling as part of their operational performance reviews, rather than treating the communications center simply as the starting point of the response-time clock.
2. Listen to actual 911 calls
One of Dye’s most practical recommendations requires no new technology: Review recordings of incoming 911 calls.
“Don’t just look at the response times,” he urged.
Chiefs should review random or targeted samples of calls to determine whether telecommunicators asked appropriate follow-up questions, recognized important information and accurately documented circumstances that could influence an officer’s response.
Dye emphasized that these reviews should be about improving performance, not punishing employees.
He also encouraged chiefs to examine whether dispatchers are applying what they’ve learned in training and whether the department has the appropriate resources to support different types of calls.
3. Your behavioral health call numbers may not tell the whole story
Allen, a Dallas-area community of approximately 116,000 residents, recorded around 24,000 citizen-initiated calls last year. Only 850 were identified as having a behavioral health component.
Dye believes that number significantly understates the actual demand.
His department has begun sending telecommunicators through RESPOND training, designed to improve their ability to recognize behavioral health indicators, ask purposeful questions and document relevant information.
“We’re not asking our telecommunicators to diagnose,” Dye explained. The objective is to recognize when someone may be experiencing an emotional crisis.
As classification improves, Dye expects Allen’s behavioral health call numbers to rise. More accurate data will help determine whether the department needs additional crisis intervention personnel or other specialized resources.
4. Treat telecommunicator training as an officer safety investment
Dye, now in his 42nd year of law enforcement, acknowledged that he would not make a particularly good telecommunicator himself. The job requires specialized skills that police leaders don’t always fully appreciate.
“Maybe sometimes, though, we don’t look at telecommunicator training the same as we do officer training,” he said.
In Allen, RESPOND training has helped improve listening, questioning, documentation and confidence, according to feedback from the department’s communications manager.
Dye said the training also communicates an important message to telecommunicators: Their professional judgment matters.
The department plans to send all its telecommunicators through the program.
5. Ask your dispatchers what needs to change
Dye offered an example of what can happen when chiefs involve communications personnel directly in operational improvement.
He asked Allen’s communications manager to examine whether the department could reduce the time between receiving a call and dispatching officers.
Her review identified opportunities that significantly reduced response times for priority-one, -two and -three calls.
The improvement came from asking the subject matter expert rather than assigning the problem to a sworn supervisor unfamiliar with the communications center’s daily operations.
Dye encouraged chiefs to regularly ask telecommunicators what they’re hearing, which calls are difficult to classify and what resources they need.
“They’re the boots on the ground,” he said.
Ultimately, Dye’s message was about expanding how police leaders define effective response. Getting officers to a call quickly remains essential, but the information they receive along the way can be just as important.
“We need to get there quickly,” Dye said. “We need a timely response, but we need a timely response coupled with more accurate information.”
