Alarms Drown Out a Lone Voice
I’m happy John M. Wilson can take such a lighthearted view of urban America’s latest assault on the human nervous system--the car burglar alarm (“An Alarming Situation Disrupts Life,” Other Views, June 10).
Recently I was prosecuted for criminal vandalism for trying to quiet an alarm that blasted outside my window regularly everyday at 5:30 a.m. Although two city ordinances allow reasonable actions against public nuisances, the public defender urged me to pay, saying I would “go down in flames.” When the judge said the laws were inapplicable and urged me to reconsider going to trial, I tossed in the towel and shelled out $450.
Subsequent letters to my councilwoman, Pat Russell, suggesting an ordinance banning alarms unless they sound in the owner’s ears only, have gone unanswered.
Has anyone reading this ever heard an alarm respond to an attempted burglary? Lives there a car thief in Los Angeles who can’t disconnect them? Who responds to an alarm with anything other than an annoyed shrug: “There goes another one”?
My lone voice has been drowned out by the measured honks of the alarmists.
DON STRACHAN
Los Angeles
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