YORBA LINDA : False Home Alarms Will Cost More

Learning that police responded to 462 false alarms from home security systems last year, the City Council has passed an ordinance to impose steeper fines on residents having chronically malfunctioning security devices.

Police officials estimate that the false alarms have cost the department more than $11,000 in diversions of police time and resources.

“The whole purpose of the ordinance is the safety issue,” said Brea Police Lt. Bill Lentini, whose department patrols Yorba Linda under a contract agreement.

“Only 10% of those (security alarm) responses are real. . . . At one location in Yorba Linda we had 17 bogus responses. On the 18th time, an officer is not going to have as much confidence in it being a good alarm and act as cautiously as he should.”

Under the new ordinance, homeowners are allowed three free police responses to security alarms annually. Residents whose systems are falsely triggered will be fined $25 for the fourth response, $50 for the fifth and $100 for each response thereafter.

Under the previous ordinance, residents were allowed three free responses and fined $25 for every false alarm thereafter.

Of the $11,500 spent for response to false alarms, only about $3,400 was collected under the current city ordinance for fines to homeowners while the difference was drained from the city coffers.

“The fines just were not providing effective incentive for homeowners to fix problems in their system,” said David Gruchow, assistant to the Yorba Linda city manager. “We need to go with a more stringent fee to recover our costs.”

The city will establish an appeals process for homeowners who feel that they were unjustly fined under the new ordinance.