Not every 911 call is equally urgent, and dispatch systems triage accordingly: a reported shooting gets units assigned ahead of a noise complaint. That triage is expressed as a priority level.
Dispatchr's 1–5 scale
Agencies use different internal priority schemes, so Dispatchr assigns a consistent 1–5 priority to every call based on its harmonized call type: 1 is the most critical (weapons calls, confirmed fires, life-threatening medical), 5 is routine. When a page here says "Priority calls (P1–P2)", it is counting the two most urgent levels of that scale.
Priority describes the response, not the outcome
Priority reflects how urgently the initial report was treated. A person-with-a-gun call is P1 even if it turns out to be unfounded; a routine theft report is low priority even though a crime occurred. High priority means "dispatched as urgent", not "confirmed serious".
Why priority share differs between areas
On neighbourhood pages you'll see the priority share vary widely — often between 5% and 15%. Most of that variation is call mix, not danger. An area dense with automatic alarms and routine medical assists has its priority share diluted by high volumes of low-priority calls; a quieter area where a larger fraction of calls are urgent shows a higher share on a much smaller base. Read the share together with the absolute count: 10% of 60 calls and 10% of 1,600 calls are very different realities.
What priority data is good for
Tracked over time within one area, priority counts are a reasonable signal of how much urgent activity an area sees, robust to the alarm-and-admin noise that dominates raw totals. That is why each neighbourhood page shows priority calls as its own statistic, alongside — never instead of — the total.