posted on Thursday, July 17, 2008 11:49 AM
by
klehan
Mountain Village, CO, to Combat False Alarms
Sometimes an electrical short or a falling branch triggers it. A weekend guest who unaware that the house is equipped with
alarms. A visiting real-estate agent who’s doesn’t know the security code.
No matter the tripwire, day after day in Mountain Village, CO, burglar alarms screech and the police come running. These
alarms, which are almost always false, have become a growing headache for the Village, multiplying by about 45 percent from
2006 through this year, according to a Planet analysis of police data.
Village Police fielded 206 alarm calls in 2006 and 249 the following year. And the number of alarm calls this year is already
running 20 percent ahead of 2007’s numbers.
For the most part, it’s a consequence of growth and wealth. Homeowners buy elaborate security systems to protect their
investments and keep their insurance rates down, but they often live elsewhere and aren’t home to defuse a whooping alarm and
keep the police at bay. As the Village grows, so does the problem.
Enter the Mountain Village Town Council, which is examining whether the town should stay in the business of answering
residential alarms, or whether homeowners should be charged a fee every time the police have to deal with a false alarm. The
council and Dale Wood, the Village police chief, will discuss the issue at today’s council meeting.
“I don’t know where it’ll end up,” said council member Dan Garner. “I do believe that we need to make sure we’re not using
valuable resources responding to windows being rattled with wind.”
Cities across the country have set up fines, required homeowners to register their alarms with police or set up a response
mechanism called Enhanced Call Verification. Under this system, alarm companies first reach out to homeowners, then make a
decision about whether to call the police.
Garner’s former haunt, the University Park neighborhood of Dallas, confronted the same issue and decided to simply stop
responding to the alarms, he said.
“Many municipalities have gotten out of that business,” Mayor Bob Delves said in an earlier interview. “That’s what alarm
companies are for, and they’re the first line of defense. I think the concern out here is: is that the right level of service
that citizens want?”
Wood didn’t return a phone message yesterday to discuss the problem, or how much time and money is spent every year
responding to these calls.
But police reports show that alarm calls are the department’s third-highest activity, behind investigations and traffic
contacts. Overall, about 6 percent of their calls are devoted to investigating alarms, according to data from 2007 and 2008.
It hasn’t always been this way.
From 1995 until late 2003, Wood wrote in a memo to council, Mountain Village police didn’t respond to home burglary alarms,
instead letting alarm companies send their yellow-flasher cruisers to investigate the digital harpies.
But at the start of 2004, the council changed its response policy and directed officers to respond to the calls, “regardless
of whether or not the alarm companies sent their own staff. This has been our standing policy for the past four and one half
years,” Wood wrote.
As a corrective, he suggested giving each homeowner two free false alerts, then charging $50 for the third response and
jacking up the price “exponentially” after that. “We will continue to respond to all bank alarms, (panic) alarms and burglary
alarms from commercial businesses,” Wood wrote.