Concerned about many false alarms that take police away from other duties, the City of Auburn in January 2009 approved a new ordinance aimed at reducing their number.
Among other things, the ordinance allows the City to suspend police service to repeat offenders. It also authorized the hiring of a third-party vendor, Maryland-based Public Safety Corporation, to administer the program and to find and register alarm companies.
City officials said they also wanted to reduce the half-million dollars the City wastes every year responding to false alarms.
Auburn Police Chief Jim Kelly recently told the Municipal Services Committee that police are seeing encouraging results, but added that a comparison is difficult right now because the City gave residents and businesses a six-month grace period before implementing the new ordinance last July.
Kelly noted:
• A 12.3-percent decrease in false alarm responses in the second half of 2009 from 2008.
• A 18.4-percent decrease in the number of false alarms from 2008 to 2009.
Those numbers are preliminary because “we still have many alarm companies for residential and businesses that need to be registered, and our third party vendor is still working toward getting all of them registered with the city,” Kelly said.
Auburn police identity many of the companies only when officers respond to false alarms, and the PSC then ensures that they are registered.
So far the PSC has registered 52 alarm companies doing business in the city. It has also identified another 47 operating in the area, providing monitoring services or installation.
Kelly said that of the total of false alarms recorded from July through December 2009, 56 percent was to commercial businesses, 36 percent to residential, 7 percent to the Auburn School District and the rest to governmental entities, such as GSA.
“The biggest problem has just been getting all the alarm companies on board, identifying who the players are,” said Assistant Police Chief Larry Miller. “We attempted early in the process to identify the companies, but there were so many out there. What we are finding is that many companies are now calling saying, ‘Hey, we didn’t know anything about this ordinance, please don’t fine us.’ … The whole point of this is not to penalize people out there, it’s to get them into compliance with the ordinance, that’s what we been working toward.”
Here is some of what the ordinance does:
• Allows for the suspension of sites that report three or more false alarms in a year. This means police will not respond. Any alarm company that requests police response to a suspended site without verification is guilty of a violation.
• Outsources administration of the alarm program to the Public Safety Corporation. Kelly remains the ultimate arbitrator on any appeals, but PSC manages the process. The company notifies the police department when three or more violations have occurred during a 12-month period. To be reinstated, the person responsible for the suspended site must compete an online training program and pay a fee.
• Assesses a fine of $100 for each false residential or commercial burglar alarm. For each false holdup, robbery or panic alarm it assesses a $200 fine, double because of the risk inherent in a code response.
While PSC began billing Aug. 1, the City allowed alarm owners one free warning through January, one year from the adoption of the ordinance.
“If people realize there’s going to be a financial impact, it’s going to get their attention,” Miller said. “We can’t have our officers running about the city willy nilly chasing these things down,” Miller said.
• Requires a $24 residential and commercial annual registration fee but allows a $12 senior discount.
• Requires the alarm companies to train all of their operators to limit the number of mistakes.
• Requires “enhanced call verification,” meaning all alarm users or alarm companies must make two calls before they call 911 – the first to the location of the alarm, the second a followup to a second line or a cell phone to try to contact somebody to determine whether the alarm is valid.
• In many cases requires “sequential verification,” meaning before the alarm companies can ask for an officer response, more than a single activation has to go off, like both a front-door alarm and a motion detector.
• Requires alarm companies to install the new “CPO1” technology standards on all newly issued, newly installed alarm systems in the city. People that have existing systems do not have to have them retrofitted, but all new systems must comply with the standards, which are designed to reduce the number of false alarms.
Miller said PSC takes 25 percent off revenues the city would receive. The city netted $77.402 in the six months that PSC has been managing, primarily through registration, and there is an additional $44,800 in outstanding revenue from 2009.
