AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin Police Department is now sending officers to calls that are considered lower priority, Chief Lisa Davis said. The change started about a month ago. "That is just going to give us better outcomes when it comes to those investigations," she said. Classifying calls APD classifies calls based on priority levels 0-4, with 0 being the highest priority and 4 being the lowest. Below is a breakdown of the types of calls associated with those classifications, according to APD. Priority 0: An incident involving physical harm or injury to a person or property, which is in progress and/or all involved parties are still on scene. (Examples: Shooting, stabbing). Priority 1: An incident involving physical harm or perceived threat to person(s) or property, which just occurred and/or suspect(s) may still be in the area, where a quick response might aid in apprehension. (Example: Robbery) Priority 2: In progress property crimes or just occurred crimes against persons. An incident warranting a rapid police response, however, poses a minimal threat or no immediate threat, which is either in progress or has just occurred. (Examples: Suspicious person, burglary) Priority 3: Incidents where life or property is not at risk and an immediate police response will not likely prevent further injury, loss of property or adversely affect an investigation. (Examples: Ordinance violations) Priority 4: Incidents where a police response is not required, however, the incident does require the documentation and/or dissemination of information to law enforcement personnel. "What we're doing is, I think before they were only dispatching 0's and 1's, and the 2's and 3's were kind of hanging in the air there," Davis said. "So that has changed, we're starting to dispatch those calls now." Why police stopped responding to lower-priority calls in the first place In 2021, amid a staffing shortage coming out of the pandemic and the city council's temporary halting of APD cadet classes, the department revisited the way it handled so-called non-emergency calls. Police asked the public to submit nonviolent, not-in-progress crimes through 311 or ireportaustin.com instead of calling 911. Our previous reporting shows this process helped speed up response times to emergency calls, but it came at the cost of a backlog for lower-level crimes. The department has had to backfill patrol positions to keep up with 911 calls as the city continues to grow. APD is still down around 300 officers. "It's still a reality that we need more officers," Davis said. "But it is important to respond to those calls and it's important to recognize again that most people have never called the police and when they do, they expect to have someone come." KXAN has followed up with APD to see how any operations may have been reworked to allot officers for these calls. We will update this story when we receive more clarification on that. ...read more read less