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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by my little piece of the web. I look forward to reading what you have to say!

Popular posts from this blog

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-...
2 comments
Read more

Ferret Friday #13-Property Ferret

This semester, I have been enjoying the Property book selected by our professor. The book was written by John G. Sprankling and Raymond R. Coletta, and I have found the book to be very approachable. I have really enjoyed the interactive elements that make the book quite engaging. The authors seem to have a sense of humor as this line from the preface indicates: "As authors, we own any errors in the text, at least until someone with better title comes along." Instead of making the study of law as painful as possible with archaic language and cases that are difficult to fathom, the authors seem to have sifted through related cases until they found the most interesting ones to illustrate the rules. With many text books this year, I have spent much time flipping through a legal dictionary just to decipher the lesson. So far, that is not the case with this book; the authors have used language that is easy to follow. I am not saying that important legal terms have been left out ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ferret Friday Coming Again Soon

After the heartbreak of losing A E Ferret back in September, I wasn't sure that we would ever have ferrets in our lives again. Youngest took the loss extremely hard and has only recently begun to soften to the idea of a new ferret. Over the last few months, the Hubster and I have discussed it and even went to the animal shelter when a ferret pair was available. (We were still unsure so we left without them and they were adopted before we were able to get back). Fast forward to earlier this week when I went to the pet store for cat food. Four tiny ferrets had just arrived and I was hooked. In order to bring them home, I had to undo all the changes that we had made to A E's room--it had been transformed into my office for law school. Over the past few days, I moved furniture, created a "bathroom" annex for the cage, and researched solutions to the behavioral issues that we ran into previously. I even named "my" ferret Bella. So, with most prep done, we heade...
Post a Comment
Read more