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St. Johns County, FL, Alarm Owners Must Register; Pay Fee for False Alarms

Effective immediately, residents with home alarms in St. Johns County in Florida will have to register with the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and pay a fee for false alarms.

At the April 20 commission meeting, commissioners approved an ordinance allowing the Sheriff’s Office to impose fees for excessive false alarms.

According to Col. Art May, division director of support services, the time it takes the Sheriff’s Office to respond to the number of false alarms in the county is equal to staffing five full time deputies.

"There were over 10,000 false alarms [last year]," May said. "The alarm company is supposed to do a verified response. If you don’t [have the right code when the alarm company calls] it is deemed an active alarm and we send a deputy out."

May said the Sheriff’s Office sends out two deputies on alarm calls for safety reasons, which eats up a tremendous amount of time when the alarms are false.

The new ordinance requires that private citizens with home alarm citizens register with the Sheriff’s Office. The initial registration fee is $25. The first instance of a false alarm nets a notification letter from the Sheriff’s Office, but each subsequent false alarm incurs a $25 penalty. The first fine can be waived for offenders if they attend a training course. After the ninth false alarm, the fine is $125.

"If you can reduce those by half [the number of false alarms] it would be good," said May.

The ordinance outlines the duties of the Alarm Coordinator who’s job will be primarily to administer the program and provide community outreach and education regarding alarm systems.

"This is a tremendous efficiency opportunity," said Commissioner Cyndi Stevenson at the April 20 meeting. "You can use your force as cost effectively as possible."

May said this ordinance came about as a result of a study conducted a few years ago.

"From that study we started going through an alarm ordinance," he said. "Its taken us all this time to come up with this."

May said the previous alarm ordinance, 1978-51, lacked teeth. He said the county looked at fee models from different areas, including the League of Cities, to find one that was successful and could work for St. Johns County.

"This gets people’s attention but [the fees] is not exorbitant," said May. "We are not trying to go and harm anyone. Our main thing is ‘Hey, lets get this thing fixed.’"

May said if residents don’t pay the fees after several fines, the Sheriff’s Office will no longer respond to the alarms from that location.

He said the fees generated from the registration will go back to the administration of the program. Fines for false alarms will be collected by the Clerk of Courts and will go back into the county’s general fund. May said the estimate is this program will cost the county approximately $150,000, which he said the Sheriff’s Office will have to "dig out from wherever they can find."