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Salt Lake City Alarm Ordinance

Analysis: Part II

Was verified response feasible?

To explore the feasibility of implementing verified response, the alarm unit began a campaign to increase alarm owners' awareness that they could contract with a private guard company as the first responder to their alarm signal. Most alarm owners were otherwise unaware of this option. The first step was to provide alarm permit holders with a listing of private guard services in the mailing with all new permits issued in 1998 and 1999. The number of false alarms decreased by seven percent from 1998 to 1999 and we had reason to believe that this reduction was at least partially due to offering alarm owners this private response option.

Indeed, many alarm owners told us they appreciated having an option of paying for the less expensive services of a private guard responder rather than paying false alarm fines to the city. Some alarm owners even told us that they didn't want "their" officers wasting time on a false alarm. Such comments reflected a feeling among citizens that they preferred that officers were available to respond to genuine emergency calls.

Our search for other police agencies' experiences with verified response led us to the Las Vegas Metro Police Department. The Las Vegas Metro Police Department implemented a verified response policy in 1991. Said Las Vegas police captain Mike Ault: This policy has been effective for us for more than eight years. Terrorists didn't take to the streets when we implemented the policy. In fact, as it relates to the population, the burglary rate is actually going down. A few other jurisdictions had adopted verified response policies or ordinances including: Henderson, Nev.; Lane County, Ore. Sheriff's Office; and West Valley City and Taylorsville, Utah.

We concluded that alarm ownership is a private, personal choice, not mandated by law, the city or the police department. Our research found no legal challenges to these verified response ordinances and policies. According to the Salt Lake City Attorney's Office, "Law enforcement did not have a legal liability to respond to alarms and the alarm contract is a civil contract between two private entities." Concluded the author of the article describing Las Vegas's policy: The police have no legal responsibility to respond to any given situation unless mandated by local law. Litigation aimed at forcing response compliance is unlikely to succeed because this law is so clearly stated and so well understood by judiciaries.

We explored the costs associated with verified response and concluded that private alarm companies could feasibly recover the costs of responding to alarms from their customers. When West Valley City (population of 100,000 located eight miles to the west of Salt Lake City) adopted their verified response policy in May 2000, alarm companies operating in that community began charging their customers an additional $5 per month to pay for a private guard response.

To gauge availability of private guards responding to alarm activations, the police department sent a survey to all private guard firms listed in the Salt Lake City telephone directory asking if they would be interested in responding to burglar alarms and, if so, what they estimated their average response time would be. Nine companies responded positively with estimates of average response times ranging from three to fifteen minutes.

As noted by several researchers, "Already private security guards fulfill most security functions and they number more than three times the total number of federal, state, and local law enforcement personnel."

On the basis of our research we concluded that a verified response policy was indeed feasible and enough private security companies were willing and able to respond to alarm signal activations.

Response

We therefore proposed to the city council a new ordinance. The major elements of the proposed verified response alarm ordinance were:

We realized that educating citizens, business owners and the city council on false alarm issues would be crucial to passage of the verified response alarm ordinance. The average citizen had many misperceptions of the police resources and taxpayer monies involved in false alarm response. The city council members were astonished to learn of the high percentage of false alarm calls.

We contacted all local television stations and newspapers and briefed them on the proposed policy and the rationale behind it. All were willing to cover the story. The majority of the resulting stories were favorably inclined towards the proposed policy.

Upon hearing of the proposed policy, some citizens called the alarm unit to express concern. When we explained that they would receive faster response to their alarm activation from the private guard service than they could expect from the police, would pay a small fee (rather than the $100 ordinance fines), and if the alarm was valid, the police would respond more quickly than they had in the past, a vast majority of the citizens we spoke to supported the ordinance. In the first month after the news stories broke, we received more than 100 phone calls, with only two callers remaining opposed to the proposed policy.

We again presented the proposed verified response policy to local alarm companies. Salt Lake City and several other local police agencies had been meeting with some of the alarm companies and members of the Utah Alarm Association for the past five years so this was not the first time the alarm industry had heard about verified response. One of the Utah Alarm Association's early objections to verified response was the cost to alarm companies to respond to and investigate false alarms. This concern was addressed when alarm companies realized they could pay for this added service by charging alarm owners an additional modest $5 monthly fee. One alarm company even allowed their customers three "free" responses before charging a fee.

The Salt Lake City Police Department offered a three-hour training course to all state licensed guard companies. Improving cooperation between police and the private guard sector was one of the goals of this training. The training stressed that the private guards' role was only to observe and report at the alarm activation scene and not to enter or search the building or try to apprehend offenders. They were instructed that if they discovered an open door, they were to contact the police department and not enter the premise.

A call from a guard discovering an open door, broken window or any criminal activity would result in a "possible burglary in progress" call, a top priority call. Our police department attorney reviewed and approved the lesson materials. Other subjects covered in the training included safety tactics, initial approach, cover and concealment, crime scene containment, and suspect identification. One of the most popular subjects was the Utah state statutes and codes governing the elements of the crimes of burglary and criminal trespass, and laws governing private guards' authority to use force to arrest and defend themselves and others.

The Salt Lake City Council set a briefing date for the police administration to present the ordinance to them. In the staff report to the council it was noted that:

The policy in this proposal may be consistent with guidelines to mitigate City expense in situations where individuals, through personal choices that may not be available to all City residents, are creating additional consumption of municipal resources.

In order for the alarm industry to have sufficient time to participate in the discussions involving the proposed ordinance changes, a public hearing was scheduled one month after the initial briefing. Police administrators briefed the city council on false alarm issues. The police union president wrote a strong letter of support for the verified response ordinance to the city council.

The ordinance was passed by the city council on a 4-2 vote on September 12, 2000. One council member who had a family member in the alarm industry voted against the ordinance. Some of the comments from city council members were:

The better argument supports taking the resources now being used to address situations which were not of the highest priority and use them to address needs of a higher priority.

No matter what side a person was on, it was an undisputed fact that there is a 99 percent false factor involved in alarm system calls. There is not a program in the City which, if only 1 percent effective, would survive scrutiny for even a moment. If properly implemented, an appropriate method of having security companies show up made a lot of sense. This would free up officers to do what they were supposed to do.

The police department was not asking to change the ordinance because they did not want to serve the citizens; they were asking to change it because it was not effective and did not work. It makes sense to create a competitive alarm business, where good alarm companies thrived and poor companies went out of business, because taxpayers of Salt Lake were no longer subsidizing them.

The city council further decreed that the ordinance would take effect three months after it was enacted to allow the alarm companies time to mobilize their private guards and educate the public on the upcoming changes. The ordinance took effect December 1, 2000.

Certified letters were sent to all alarm and monitoring companies to inform them of the changes. In order to reach all citizens of Salt Lake City, an article explaining the drain on police resources caused by false alarms and the new requirements for private guard response was included in two issues of the water bill. This was an efficient way to reach all affected citizens.