Salt Lake City Alarm Ordinance
Analysis: Part I
How effective was the current response and what alternatives were available?
As early as 1980, Salt Lake City officials realized that preventive measures were needed to reduce false alarms. The city adopted a false alarm ordinance in 1981 that required a permit, established fines for false alarms that exceeded specified limits, and required the alarm owner to disconnect the alarm after excessive alarms. There were no means to enforce the disconnection provision, however. In 1994, a more stringent alarm ordinance was adopted allowing four "free" false alarms and charging a $100 fine on the fifth alarm.
Alarm owners were charged even for false alarms caused by faulty equipment or faulty alarm installation. This 1994 ordinance resulted in a 16 percent decrease in false alarms in the first year after it was adopted, however the following year false alarms increased by 13 percent. These ordinances were only marginally effective, and considering the rising number of new alarm owners, the permit and fine approaches were like putting a finger in the dam to stop the flooding. These responses helped manage, but did not solve, the false alarm problem.
Alternative responses to false alarms
We researched other police departments' efforts to manage their false alarm problems. We found everything from smaller jurisdictions doing nothing to larger jurisdictions dedicating up to twelve employees to deal with false alarms. Police officers were being utilized in a variety of capacities such as inspecting alarm systems and hanging notices on citizens' doors to increase awareness of the problem. Alarm unit staff were billing and tracking false alarms, and sponsoring false alarm awareness courses. Despite intense efforts by many police departments, false alarm rates persisted at over 97 percent false and alarm calls constituted from 12 to 30 percent of total dispatched calls for police service. The following are some of the false alarm reduction efforts we discovered other police departments attempting:
- Traditional Regulatory Ordinance - The most common was the regulatory ordinance consisting of processing permits, warning letters, a certain number of "free" false alarm responses, fines, and suspension of police response to alarm systems with excessive false alarms. Our department adopted this approach as early as 1981. This ordinance attempted to manage the problem, but had no significant long-term reduction. It was very labor intensive for our alarm unit, the treasury department and required an extensive software program. With four "free" alarms, alarm owners were often negligent about solving the problem until the fifth alarm was imminent. Alarm owners placed on suspension received no response to their alarm from the police department and usually had not selected an alternate provider to do so. Thus, when their alarm signaled, no response was forthcoming. Suspension provisions in this traditional ordinance dealt with the chronic false alarm abuser. However, new alarm owners who were poorly trained and unfamiliar with the use of their alarm system caused the bulk of the false alarms. The fines seemed punitive to citizens, complaints were vigorous, and most alarm owners blamed their alarm company for their false alarms.
- Cost Recovery - This method requires a permit with an annual renewable fee. Once again this is very labor intensive for the alarm unit and may require additional personnel. There are usually no suspension features and police continue to respond to all alarm signals. Fees would have to be significantly increased in order to reclaim the full costs of patrol response and would be a financial burden to many alarm owners. The police department seldom retains the monies from the alarm response as it usually goes directly to the municipality's general fund.
- Alarm Industry Regulatory - Only a small number of cities use the method of requiring the alarm company to collect false alarm fines from their customers and remit it to the city. One city charges $73 for every alarm call coming into the communications center. Alarm companies typically resist this approach even to the point of threatening legal challenges. Some police departments were attempting to restrict the alarm monitoring stations' actions by requiring that the alarm monitoring operator place a telephone call to the alarm site to determine if the alarm signal was in error and if the person who answered the telephone knew the pass code. Another approach was to require the monitoring company to receive signals from two different alarm zones before requesting a police dispatch. Alarm monitoring stations are not necessarily located in the same city as the customers they serve. They may be located hundreds of miles away, deal with thousands of police departments, and answer alarm signals for millions of alarm customers. Each police jurisdiction may require different specifications for alarm response, but that does not mean the monitoring company will comply. It is difficult for a police department in California, for example, to try to dictate to a monitoring company in Florida, which approach to use. At least one monitoring company we know of refuses to cancel a request for a police dispatch if the dispatch has aged more than 15 minutes, even if the alarm owner can verify the alarm is in error.
- Outsourcing Collection Agency - In this approach the police department responds to alarm calls, but the administrative tasks of issuing permits, sending out fine notices, and collecting fines is contracted to a private firm. Usually, the private firm returns a small percentage of the fines collected to the municipality. As with other methods, this method merely manages the problem, it does not solve it.
Conclusions from the first phase of analysis
The police department's attempt to manage false alarms with ordinances consisting of warnings, fines and permits had no significant long-term effect and only minimal short-term effect on the overall reduction of alarm activations or the percentage of false alarms. Nearly all alarm activations were false and the current system was yielding slow police response times that were of little value to either the police or alarm owners. The probability of catching burglars in the act after 40 minutes was slim. Even the alarm industry did not believe that police response added much value. The Utah Alarm Association conceded that 90 percent of the deterrent value of an alarm system was in the signs and stickers posted on the premise. The public costs of the current system far exceed what were being recovered in fines. Continuing to waste police resources was not in the best interest of public safety.
We concluded that police response to an alarm signal only made sense if some eyewitness could first verify the signal that the alarm may indeed be valid. Private security guards were a logical fit for this role. We concluded that the initial verification of an alarm activation was a private sector responsibility. Consequently, we began to explore the feasibility of shifting the primary responsibility for verifying alarms signals from the police to the private alarm and security companies. We refer to this practice as "verified response."