Skip to main content

False Alarms

I have never felt the need to be normal or try to fit in and be popular.  My new job is a perfect example of this characteristic.  I am the supervisor of a False Alarm Reduction Unit for a local law enforcement agency.  You can bet that I am  popular with the neighbors when they receive an invoice from my office.  A recent open house at one of our stations highlighted the need for more public awareness of false alarms and the impact that they have on a law enforcement agency.  Unfortunately, this is not just a local issue.  Hundreds of jurisdictions across the country have enacted legislation to address this growing problem.  My unit and the other units like mine are tasked with enforcing the legislation.

A false alarm as defined by many jurisdictions is an alarm dispatch request by an alarm monitoring center where the responding officer finds no evidence of a crime or an attempted crime.  This means that all alarms where no crime or evidence of a crime is found are considered false alarms.  Each jurisdiction with legislation has its own scale for how they will recoup the cost of responding to these alarms.  Many will allow 1 or 2 false alarms before assessing fines but some charge from the first alarm.  Most jurisdictions also require registration of the alarm system and will charge extra fees for an unregistered site that has a false alarm.

I urge you to check with your hometown or your alarm company to see if there are any regulations that govern the use of an alarm system in your area.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ferret Friday #16-Hey, that is my sock...

Before heading back to school after Spring Break, I said one last goodbye to the ferrets. It wasn't until I was back at school that I noticed that one of my socks had made its way into their cage.

Albemarle County Ordinance Update

A dministrators of false alarm units are often called on to present information to the local government officials.  In preparation for my debut briefing the Supervisors in my county, I visited Albemarle County last week for their  Board of Supervisors meeting .  The Albemarle County Police Department was before the board to present some updates to their false alarm ordinance so it was a good opportunity to witness public reaction.  The great thing about local government is that the public has the opportunity to participate.  Albemarle County and many other counties allow citizens to have their time to air their opinions simply by signing up before the meeting begins.  The number of people who sign up, determines how much time each speaker is given.  For this meeting, there were so many people signed up, that the time limit was reduced to two minutes each. The agenda for each meeting is generally posted in advance but the public commentary doe...

Queen of the Dairy

Did you know that the Dairy Queen Blizzard turned 25 last year?  I remember when the Blizzard was introduced which makes me officially...old.  Anyway, there was no Dairy Queen in the town where I grew up but there was one where my great grandfather lived.  Do you remember when a trip longer than 15 minutes lasted fuh evah?  When I was little, the 65 minute drive to my great grandfather's small town felt like an eternity.  Maybe it felt so long  because  I was hoping for that extremely rare occurrence of a stop at the Dairy Queen.  My parents were teachers  and the budget was always tight, but occasionally we would stop at DQ and we could get a small cone.  We never got to choose--it was always just that small vanilla cone, but it was a treat nonetheless. Once I was able to drive and had a job, those stops at DQ were almost mandatory when I ventured on my own to my grandparents house.  I probably tried something different each time-...