Police Priority Dispatch System v7.1

*To take the corresponding CDE quiz, visit the College of Emergency Dispatch.*

A new and improved version of the Police Priority Dispatch System^™ (PPDS^®) is available! As with all updates, PPDS v7.1 is a result of user feedback, changing industry standards, and guidance from the subject matter experts in the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch^® (IAED^™) Police Council of Standards.

If your agency has already updated the ProQA^® software, you may have already noticed the changes without realizing exactly why or when they came about. Some of the most pronounced changes happened in PPDS Protocol 131: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident, which, according to the IAED Data Center, was used to handle over 300,000 calls from June 2024 to July 2025 (roughly 10% of nearly 3 million calls logged). If you haven’t already taken a call using the updated version of Protocol 131, it’s only a matter of time before you do. This article will focus primarily on Protocol 131: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident and Protocol 127: Suicidal Person/Attempted Suicide/Suicide Ideation.

Because ProQA is so intuitive, you won’t have to memorize every single difference in order to triage your calls correctly—the software will take you to the right places and prompt you to ask the right questions if you navigate properly. This article will help you orient yourself before you take a call about a person experiencing suicide ideation or callers involved in a motor vehicle collision so you aren’t caught off guard.

Protocol 127: Suicidal Person/ Attempted Suicide/Suicide Ideation
The biggest change to Protocol 127: Suicidal Person/Attempted Suicide/ Suicide Ideation is right there in the Chief Complaint name—"SUICIDE IDEATION” has been added. Both “Suicidal Person” and “ATTEMPTED SUICIDE” seem straightforward, but what is “SUICIDE IDEATION”? The new definition in ProQA’s Additional Information states that SUICIDE IDEATION is “Having thoughts, ideas, or ruminations to end one’s own life, but without expressing active intent to do so.”

This third option was added because the Police Council of Standards wanted to give individual agencies more flexibility in coding these types of calls while still being compliant with the Protocol standards. There was a need for a code that reflected an event that needed documentation as well as a resource to be either sent in person or provided over the phone. Some police departments will send an alternate response to these types of callers or refer them to a mental health crisis line.

The police subject matter experts also took a closer look at Medical Priority Dispatch System^™ (MPDS^®) Protocol 41: Caller in Crisis to make sure that the wording was similar in both Chief Complaints. They compared the questions and definitions in the two disciplines to ensure they didn’t contradict each other while also addressing their individual priorities and functions.

The Determinant Codes relating to a person experiencing SUICIDE IDEATION “will be used when someone calls up and says they have thoughts of suicide but don’t express when or how that’s going to happen,” explained Dave Warner, IAED’s Police Protocol, Academics and Standards Expert. The caller might phrase it as “I wish I was dead,” “I’m a burden to everyone,” or a variety of other statements without explicitly saying they are planning to kill themselves.

When you ask the Key Question “Are you having specific thoughts of a suicide plan?”, if the caller answers “no” (or if the answer is unknown), you will go forward on the pathway for SUICIDE IDEATION. If the caller refuses to answer the question, that will trigger the THREATENING SUICIDE pathway to ensure the safety of both the caller and the responders.

Speaking on the phone to someone who is exhibiting signs of SUICIDE IDEATION (1st party or a caller in crisis) is going to be different from speaking to a 2nd or 3rd party caller who is reaching out to express concern about their loved one, and this difference is exhibited in the new Determinant Codes on Protocol 127. In PPDS v7, your only options were DELTA- and BRAVO-level Determinant Codes. The expanded use of Determinant Codes will assist in the triage of tiered responses for PPDS user agencies. Now there are ALPHA- and CHARLIE-level Determinant Codes, too.

127-A-1 “PAST SUICIDE IDEATION” “will tend to be a 2nd or 3rd party caller,” Warner said, and is given an ALPHA-level code because while it is concerning, it is not as time-sensitive as the subject experiencing SUICIDE IDEATION right at that moment. 127-C-3 “SUICIDE IDEATION (history of violence)” is taking advantage of two questions that were asked in previous versions of the protocol but didn’t show up in the end coding: “Are you thinking of hurting anyone else?” to a 1st party caller (or caller in crisis) and “Does s/he have a history of violence?” to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th party callers. These two new DELTA-level codes—127-D-3 “SUICIDE IDEATION (subject is violent)” and 127-D-6 “SUICIDE IDEATION (considering harm to others)”—ensure that if a subject is being violent or considering harming others, the responders have that information and can prepare accordingly.

The suffixes on Protocol 127 have also been expanded. In addition to letting responders know that there is a weapon present or that EMS is needed (or both), the suffixes now give you an option to let them know that a CRISIS TEAM/ ALTERNATIVE RESPONSE is needed if your agency has those resources.

Protocol 131: Traffic Collision/ Transportation Incident
The changes that were implemented in PPDS v7.1 for Protocol 131: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident are part of an attempt to distinguish between emergencies that are time-critical and ones that are time-sensitive in order to provide flexibility when accommodating any and all resources available to responding police, fire, and EMS agencies.

Some of the most obvious changes are wording updates and new definitions. If your agency also uses the Fire Priority Dispatch System^™ (FPDS^®), you might notice that the wording in Protocol 77: Traffic Collision/Transportation Incident is nearly identical to the new wording here. However, while the FPDS divides incidents into HIGH and LOW MECHANISM, that wording hasn’t carried over because this is still a police protocol and the Academy wants to use language that’s familiar in police lingo.

“Vehicle vs. pedestrian/bicycle,” “Vehicle vs. building,” “Vehicle rollover,” and “MULTI-VEHICLE pile-up” are all new Determinant Codes that can be BRAVO-, CHARLIE-, or DELTA-level, depending on the presence of injuries. New definitions have been added to the Additional Information page, and the number of cars that constitute a MULTI-VEHICLE pile-up will be decided by your local authority and depend on the types of resources your police department has available.

“The goal is to make sure that the information we send to responders is as descriptively correct as possible based on the EPD’s interrogation of the caller,” Warner said.

There’s another addition to be aware of. In the November 2024 update release, the PPDS added a definition for “Hazardous Roadway,” which are “unsafe roadways posing a potential threat for secondary collisions with vehicles or persons. These include, but are not limited to, high speed, or icy/wet (slick) roads, vehicle obstructing traffic, or low visibility conditions.” This definition was added in tandem with Post-Dispatch Instructions (PDIs) c and d, which tell callers to ask people to move a safe distance away from the vehicle to prevent secondary collisions. This is in accordance with industry recommendations set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

However, some states have laws that prohibit vehicles from being moved from the scene of a collision if injuries are involved, so these PDIs may become Jurisdictionally Approved Instructions in a future version.

If you or your agency need further assistance or have questions about how to enable these important updates, contact software.support@prioritydispatch.net or call 866-777-3911. You can also check out Dave Warner’s lesson on the PPDS v7.1 update on the College of Emergency Dispatch for information about the other changes that were included in the update.