Salt Lake City Alarm Ordinance
The False Alarm Solution - Verified Response
False alarm calls were draining patrol resources, comprising 12 percent of all dispatched calls. They contributed to a significant backlog of calls and the average police response time to alarm activations was up to 40 minutes, well beyond the time when police could reasonably hope to apprehend an intruder. Over 99% of all alarm calls proved false. Responding officers were getting increasingly complacent and they risked injury just driving to alarm calls.
Analysis
Past efforts to reduce the volume of false alarms through permits, warnings, fines, and suspensions had only modest effect. Other approaches tried elsewhere, from cost recovery to alarm industry regulation to outsourcing alarm administration, similarly proved only moderately effective. Police response to alarms was most effective and efficient if it could first be verified that an alarm activation was indicative of suspicious activity. Private security guards were ideally suited to make this initial verification.
Alarm owners were receptive to the possibility of having private guards verify alarms once they realized how this option could improve response times and lower their costs. A few other jurisdictions had positive experiences with verified response. A legal opinion established that police were under no legal obligation to respond to all alarm activations. A sufficient number of alarm companies and private guard companies were willing and able to provide initial verification service in a timely fashion.
Response
The police department proposed a verified alarm response ordinance to the city council. A campaign to inform the public, elected officials, and the alarm industry about the purposes and advantages of verified response was undertaken. The city council passed the ordinance and the police department conducted training for private guards to prepare them for their new responsibilities.
Assessment
The volume of alarm-related police calls for service dropped by 90 percent during the first nine months the verified response ordinance was in effect, compared to the same time frame one year prior. Average private guard response times to alarm activations has been much faster than the previous average police response times. Average police response time to other high priority calls for service dropped from five to three minutes. There has been no increase in the number of reported burglaries. The apprehension rate of burglars caught on site actually increased. Revenues for alarm companies and private guard companies have increased through collection of a modest additional monthly fee from alarm owners. Average costs to alarm owners have reduced due to reduced city alarm fines.
Commentary
The Salt Lake City Police Department's verified response to alarms project stands out for several reasons. Most obvious is the impact that verified response has had on reducing the amount of police resources consumed by highly unproductive responses to intrusion alarms. Verified response achieves reduction levels that no other response to the false alarm problem has even come close to achieving, while at the same time showing evidence that it improves the overall community response to the very problem that alarms are intended to address-burglary. Salt Lake City's experience with false alarms prior to adopting the verified response approach was typical of that faced by so many police agencies. Salt Lake City officials justified verified response by detailed documentation of the problem through hard data and professional expertise. They carefully explored and noted the limitations of alternative strategies for reducing the false alarm burden. They methodically built up internal, community, legal, and political support for making the dramatic shift in police policy. Perhaps most importantly, they continue to work closely with the private alarm and security industry to ensure that all aspects of verified response, from legislation to private security training to police operations, remain aligned to advance the community's ultimate interest, the protection of property from burglary.
Scanning
The Salt Lake City Police Department has struggled with the problem of false alarms for the past 20 years. False alarm calls were draining patrol resources and often created a significant backlog of calls. This problem had been apparent since 1980 when the department first began tracking false alarm statistics. Police administrators were concerned that officers responding to alarm calls were getting increasingly complacent, knowing that 99 percent of alarm calls proved false. Complacency put officers checking buildings at risk. Moreover, officers risked injury just driving to alarm calls. We were aware of at least four officers in the United States and Canada who had been killed in accidents responding to alarm calls in the past two years.
Interests in the Problem
- We identified as stakeholders in this problem taxpayers without alarm systems, alarm owners, alarm companies, city government and the police department. Stakeholders had different interests in the problem:
- Taxpayers without alarm systems were subsidizing the costs for police response to alarms, and those police resources were therefore not available to address other public needs.
- Alarm owners wanted a quick response to their alarm signal and wanted to minimize the costs they incurred from false alarm fines.
- Alarm companies were interested in maximizing their profit, which they believed they could do best by having police investigate alarm signals at public expense.
- City government tried to balance citizen welfare with consumption of municipal resources.
- The police department was interested in conserving resources by not responding to so many false alarms and in ensuring that alarmed properties were adequately protected from burglary.
Alarm companies' interests were summarized in a recent report on false alarms:
Alarm dealers view police as a gift to their business. They sell a system, charge monthly fees for managing effective response that is provided and paid by the general taxpayers. Dealers consider false activation to be an issue merely between the police and the customers. There is also little (apparent) interest by individual dealers to spend resources in order to solve their own and the communal problem.
The Impact of False Alarms on City Resources
False alarms appeared to be a universal problem for police. We found studies indicating that 97 to 99 percent of all alarm activations police respond to nationwide are false and they consume about 12 to 30 percent of patrol resources. Salt Lake City's false alarm problem did not appear to be unique. A number of important findings emerged from our local analysis of the problem, including the following:
- In 1999, the Salt Lake City Police Department responded to 8,213 alarm activations. Only twenty-three cases, or three-tenths of one percent, of these calls justified a police report of any sort, only a few of which were for actual burglaries.
- False alarm calls comprised 12 percent of all dispatched calls.
- Nearly $500,000 of the police department's budget was attributable to false alarms. The personnel time alone was the equivalent of five full-time officers. 2 This figure does not include the amount of time complaint takers and dispatchers spent handling incoming alarm activations and the 2,100 canceled false alarm calls for 1999.
- Processing of alarm permits and false alarm fines, and adjudicating appeals created a significant workload for the police department alarm unit, the city treasurer's office, and the small claims court of appeals, respectively.
- Only $150,000 in alarm fines was collected in 1999, which only partially offset the costs of alarm response, creating a net deficit of about $350,000. Alarm permits were required, but were free of charge. (We did not support charging for alarm permits because we felt it created an unwritten promise that police would respond on alarm activations.)
- All taxpayers, regardless of whether they had alarm systems or not, were subsidizing through that portion of their taxes that were spent responding to false alarms false alarm response for the 12 percent of the city's residences and businesses with alarms.
- The average response time to an alarm activation was 40 minutes and occasionally took as long as two-and-a-half hours. Some aggressive alarm sales representatives were making false and unrealistic promises to their customers about how quickly the police would respond to alarms, a matter over which the alarm companies had no control. In fact, due to the tremendous number of alarm activations and the number of false alarms, the priority for alarm activations was downgraded in 1992 to preserve resources for higher priority calls for service such as domestic violence.
- Locally we found that alarm owners became increasingly frustrated by false alarms and the consequent fines. They vented their frustration at both the police department and their alarm companies. Sixty percent of the phone calls received by the police department's alarm unit were from frustrated citizens.
- False alarms in Salt Lake City had three main causes: user errors due to insufficient training 3; inadequate verification by alarm company monitoring stations; and improper installation, inferior equipment and application for the alarm site.