911 vs 311 Guide

Reporting crime is important; if we don’t report crimes that are happening in our neighborhood, the city will focus their limited resources elsewhere.

Recently we had a security update where I was able to get clarification on when to use 911 vs 311. The list below lays out what types of activities to report in which ways.

There has been a question about situations where the danger of a crime has passed, but you still want to report it for statistical purposes. While it is possible to report a crime through 311 that is not an emergency, the process for getting that reported as a crime is much more tedious.

As an example, someone broke into my car and took a few coins I had. There was no damage, and the incident was long over and the perpetrator was gone. I didn’t feel like it was an emergency, so I called 311. They put the report into the system with the APD, but said that APD would need to call me back within two weeks. There is no set time that APD will call back, so when I missed their calls (they will try twice), the crime was never registered in the crime statistics. Alternatively, if I had gone online and used https://iReportAustin.com the crime would have been registered immediately.

So even if the crime has passed, it is best to either report that through 911 or by using the https://iReportAustin.com web reporting tool.

Remember these tips: