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Greenville, NC Alarm Rules are Surprise to Some Who were Fined

Greenville's new false-alarm ordinance has surprised some residents and business owners like a thief in the night.

The program requires users of residential and commercial burglar and security alarms to register the systems with the police department so officials know whom to contact.

The ordinance went into effect July 1, but officials held off on enforcing it for three months, until Oct. 1. In the meantime, they mounted a media campaign to publicize the new requirements, said Maj. Kevin Smeltzer, who is overseeing the program for the police department.

But Antoinette Fox said she hadn't heard of the program when her home alarm system went off accidentally and she got a notice that she needed to register or pay a $200 fine.

"I didn't know anything about it until after," Fox said.

The police officer who responded during the incident last weekend informed her that she needed to register her system with the city.

"I said, 'Register?'" Fox recalled. "I said, 'I didn't know anything about I have to register my alarm.'"

"They could at least give the people at least six months" before imposing fines, she said.

"It was a surprise to me," said Fox, who added that she has since mailed the city her $15 check and permit application for the one-year period.

Doug Peterson said the alarm system at his automobile dealership went off when he was changing the battery as part of scheduled maintenance.

He said he "had not been notified at all" about the new permitting system. "No more than hearing people talk about it — but nobody said what you had to do."

That's unfair, he said.

"I think it's a good idea, but they need to notify people and give people a chance to adhere to it," Peterson said.

Smeltzer said the department's efforts included at least two newspaper articles and notification about the alarm ordinance on the city's government channel.

The city sent letters to addresses that had previous false alarms, but a lot of that was based on old information, he said.

Officials identified the 50 locations with the most frequent false alarms and hand delivered letters to those operators, Smeltzer said.

Response was "lukewarm," he said, "until we actually started sending out fines; then it picked up dramatically."

"The problem we've run into is, we don't have a listing for everyone who has an alarm," Smeltzer said.

Alarm companies, for competitive reasons, didn't want to provided their customer lists, he said.

About 1,000 alarm users have sent in money and permitted their systems; but officials don't know how many are out there, Smeltzer said.

He has received "hundreds of telephone calls" about the ordinance, and "most of them said 'I didn't know anything about it,' and 'why didn't you send me something?'"

He asked the five or six alarm companies serving the city to include notices of the ordinance in their bills to customers, but Smeltzer said he didn't know which companies did so.

Betty Lou Howard said her alarm company informed her of the false-alarm program when she purchased her new system.

"When they put it in, they told me there was an ordinance that the police were doing," she said. Howard immediately registered her system, she said.

So when her alarm went off inadvertently, she was informed there was no fine for the first incident.

Roger Wilkins, owner of Action Alarms of Winterville, said going through his 10,000 customer files to find ones inside the city limits would be "a monumental task."

He called the city's alarm ordinance "ridiculous."

"All they need to do is fine the individual that does it without going through all this stuff," Wilkins said. Repeat offenders are a "small percentage" of alarm operators, he said.

When police respond to an alarm call, they sometimes don't have a contact person for the alarm system. Requiring permits gives the department a record of responsible parties, such as homeowners or business owners, when the alarm goes off.

The "vast majority" of burglar or security alarms are false calls, Smeltzer said. The police department says officers respond to about 7,000 false alarms per year. In 2006, officers spent about 1,100 hours of their time responding to false alarms, according to data supplied by the department. The estimated cost for those calls totaled $62,451.

Besides the dollars involved, Smeltzer said the calls unnecessarily endanger the lives of the responding officers as well as the public, take police away from true emergency calls, and take a toll on equipment.

Numbers so far show the ordinance is working, he said. In October, false alarms went down by 20 percent compared to last year, he said.

The incidence of false alarms has been reduced by 30-50 percent in some cities where a permitting system has been instituted, he said. Cities in the state with similar ordinances include Asheville and Charlotte. Annual permits cost $15 for the first year and can be renewed for $5.

The fine for the second false alarm for a permitted system in a given permit year is $25; the third and fourth false alarms — $50 each; fifth and sixth — $100 each; seventh and eighth — $200 each; ninth and beyond — $400 each.

False alarms from a nonpermitted system will be assessed an additional $200 penalty.

Under the ordinance, false alarms do not include: alarms caused by lightning, wind or other weather event; disconnection of the telephone circuit beyond the control of the alarm operator; or alarms caused by continuous disruption of electrical power.