False Alarm Perspectives: A Solution-Oriented …

1 False Alarm Perspectives: A Solution-Oriented ResourceOhlhausen Research, association of Chiefs of PoliceSeptember 1993 AcknowledgmentsThe author gratefully acknowledges the contributions of the following persons andorganizations: international association of Chiefs of police ,Private Sector Liason Committee, False AlarmSubcommittee; especially:William CunninghamJerry GermeauAnthony FagueClifford MaurerDick MellardCharles ReynoldsJames ScannelThomas SeamonMichael ShanahanIra SomersonCurt WengelerNational Burglar and Fire Alarm association ;especially:Stan MartinRobert KermanCentral Station Alarm association ; especially:Stephen DoyleSecurity Industry association ; especially:John GalanteVirginia WilliamsAlarm Industry Research and Education Foun-dation; especially:Kevin O'MalleyProfessional Alarm Services Organizations ofNorth America; especially:Roy LongworthDean WilsonNational Crime Prevention Institute; especially:Dr. Wilbur RykertUnderwriters Laboratories; especially:Isaac PapierLynn StrattonJohn StrauchsJason WhiteAlthough space prevents listing them all, the author also wishes to thank the scoresof other persons who provided interviews and information for this document is published by the international association of Chiefs of police ,515 North Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314-2357.

2 Telephone (703) 836-6767. 1993 international association of Chiefs of PoliceThis publication is made available with the understanding that the distributing or-ganization is not engaged in rendering legal services. If legal advice is required,the services of an attorney should be you are ready to put an end to the enormous problem of False alarms to halt theunnecessary police dispatches, the waste of time and money, and the loss ofalarms' deterrent value then this document can help. The pages that follow put atyour fingertips a timely compendium of information on False the detailed overview of the False Alarm problem, look at relevant statelaws, see what local ordinances have achieved, examine pertinent court decisions,study the theory and practice of private response to alarms, and search the list ofpublications and organizations that may be able to help document does not lay out the ultimate answer to the False alarmproblem.

3 Instead, it brings together, in one useful package, a range of informationand resources you can use to forge your own solution one that satisfies the de-mands of the citizens, businesses, and public agencies in your particular city,county, or SummaryUnnecessary calls for police service due to False burglar alarms have grown into atremendous problem. Burglar alarms serve as useful deterrents to crime, but theamount of time and money police spend responding to the 7 million to 15 millionor more False Alarm calls every year has become intolerable to many law enforce-ment agencies. Projected growth in the use of alarms portends a worsening alarms are caused primarily by technological, installation, and user er-rors. solutions that are currently being tried or proposed include the following: Alarm verificationuser traininginstaller traininglocal ordinancesstate lawsfinespermitsnonresponse by policeprivate responsetime-of-day differentiationstandardscodesrepair or upgrading requirementsbetter equipmentdispatch cancellationCourt decisions have raised the question of whether particular False alarmordinances are clearly written, whether they are fair, and who must pay the finesthey levy.

4 Other cases have looked at False alarms as the proximate cause of injuryto responding police organizations are currently working to reduce the number of falsealarms. This document was produced under the auspices of the international As-sociation of Chiefs of police with funding assistance from the National Burglarand Fire Alarm association and the Central Station Alarm 1 False Alarms in PerspectiveFalse alarms, nuisance alarms, False activations, False relays. By whatever name,undesired activations of burglar alarms aggravate and confound police depart-ments, Alarm companies, Alarm users, and local governments. The problem of" False alarms" (the most common term) is old but getting worse, and many partieshave called for an increase in efforts to combat the problem. However, it's a com-plex issue. Definitions and solutions are slippery, with different factions holdingmany opposing document, produced under the auspices of the international Associa-tion of Chiefs of police (IACP) with funding assistance from the National Burglarand Fire Alarm association (NBFAA) and the Central Station Alarm association (CSAA), does not purport to solve the problem of False alarms.

5 Nor does it attemptto say everything that can be said about the subject. Instead, it serves as a resourceto which interested parties can turn for an overview, a compilation of relevant statelaws, a sample of local ordinances, a roundup of court decisions, a look at privateresponse to alarms, and a list of helpful organizations and publications. IACP hopes readers will use this document to determine the best solutions for their ownstates and is a False Alarm ? Some definitions of False alarms include all Alarm signalsthat occur when no intrusion has been attempted; other definitions restrict thecategory to include only Alarm signals that are caused by user or mechanical errorbut not those caused by severe weather, power outages, or telephone line distinctions include "nuisance alarms," which are unwanted alarmsystem activations in which a sensor properly responds to a stimulus, but thestimulus is not a burglar.

6 "True False alarms" are system activations due to me-chanical defects. " False dispatches" are unnecessary requests for police assistance;they may result from nuisance alarms, true False alarms, or errors by Alarm moni-toring stations. Many other terms are used and distinctions , the fact that an Alarm system mistakenly sends a signal to acentral station ( False Alarm ) does not necessarily require that police be called (falsedispatch). Some solutions to the " False Alarm " problem focus on reducing the num-ber of times central stations call police rather than the number of times Alarm sys-tems send signals to central stations. Other solutions focus on making alarm6systems "smarter" so that central station operators need not be burdened withdeciding whether to call the addition, some parties would like to see the category of canceled alarmsincluded in statistics. A canceled Alarm occurs when a central station calls policedispatchers to say that the Alarm just reported is now known to be False and thepolice therefore need not travel to the scene.

7 police worry that criminals may can-cel dispatches once they hear an Alarm ; Alarm companies claim they could reducepolice dispatches if police departments would accept cancellations. Various meth-ods including transfer of incident and dispatcher numbers and the use of customcomputer software are being tried in an attempt to ensure that cancellations particular type of False Alarm this paper is concerned with is the typethat causes police to travel unnecessarily to an Alarm site for whatever reason. Tostay within common parlance, this paper will describe that type of Alarm with themost common term, " False Alarm ," whenever it is not essential to use a common are False alarms? Almost everyone agrees they are too common, butexactly how common depends on definition and point of view. The usual way toquantify False alarms is to express them as a percentage of all Alarm calls. Lookedat that way, 95 percent to 98 percent of all Alarm calls are False that is, they donot indicate an actual or attempted That view makes the problem reverse way to quantify False alarms is to quote the number of False ac-tivations per installed system per year.

8 In many areas of the country, that numberequals one to two False alarms per year per system. That view makes the problemlook view reflects the situation quite accurately. The real problem forpolice is not the False Alarm rate but the number of unnecessary calls for service that's what wastes their time. If a city with 10,000 installed Alarm systemsexperiences 100 Alarm -related calls for police service, and 98 of those calls are un-founded, the False Alarm rate is 98 percent. Yet having to respond 98 times overthe course of a year does not constitute a major problem, and in fact the vast ma-jority of Alarm systems did what they were supposed to the other hand, merely examining the number of False calls per systemper year leaves the problem somewhat unilluminated. By one estimate, 7 percentof homes and 40 percent of businesses have Alarm systems, for a total of7 million Other estimates run as high as 15 million installed systems.

9 Ifeach generates only one False call for police response annually, that's still 7 million 1 William C. Cunningham, John J. Strauchs, and Clifford W. Van Meter, Private Security Trends, 1970-2000: The Hallcrest Report II (Stoneham, Mass.: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1990), p. Letter, September 16, 15 million unnecessary police In some regions, Alarm calls account for 10percent to 30 percent of all calls for police Even discounting troublesomesystems that send an inordinate number of False alarms, the occasional False alarmfrom almost every system adds up to a large number of , a figure of one False police notification per system per year isprobably low. CSAA estimates there are about False alarms per system per yearnow overall. Of course, some cities with aggressive False Alarm reduction pro-grams encounter much lower , the problem will snowball along with the steadily increasingnumber of Alarm system installations.

10 Populous cities already typically experiencetens of thousands of False Alarm calls annually; the largest cities dispatch police tohundreds of thousands of False alarms each long have False alarms been a problem? As long ago as 1882, when MarkTwain wrote a short story called "The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm ," falsealarms have been cause for discussion. After describing the miseries he sufferedfrom "three or four hundred False alarms" from his residential Alarm system, thenarrator concludes, "Yes, sir, a burglar Alarm combines in its person all that is ob-jectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and at the same time none of the com-pensating advantages, of one sort or another, that customarily belong with thatcombination."5 That is not to say the False Alarm situation has inhabited its current plane formore than a century. Today's high level of False alarms follows rapid growth in thealarm industry in the 1970s, '80s, and '90s.