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Melrose, MA, Police Chief: False Alarm Fines Coming

Melrose Police Chief Mike Lyle said he plans to revamp and start using a city ordinance that fines residents and businesses for repeated police responses to false alarms.

The ordinance, on the books since 1992, gives alarm users two “free” false alarms before allowing the police department to issue fines of $25 for a third and subsequent false alarms.

According to Lyle, who has been reviewing the police department’s policies and procedures since being named chief last summer, no false alarm fines have been issued in the past 10 years.

“I’ve been reviewing the whole police function in the city and it’s taken me this long to see it,” he said. “I’m going to revamp that ordinance. The levies will be changed and brought up to 2008 standards.”

The ordinance also calls for those fines to go to the city’s general fund. The Board of Aldermen approved last week Lyle’s request to creating a revolving account solely for false alarm funds, which the chief said the police department would use to subsidize fleet maintenance.

The actual revised ordinance has not gone before the board yet, as Lyle is still working on it with Rob Van Campen, deputy city solicitor.

Van Campen said the revised ordinance might change to a $50 fine for the third false alarm and $100 for subsequent false alarms. He added the chief would like to add a provision requiring any alarm users in the city to register their alarm with the police department on or before July 1 of each year.

“This allows the city to more efficiently monitor whose property we’re responding to,” Van Campen said, who said the revised ordinance will “probably” go before the Board of Aldermen in March.