Officials Want Fewer False Alarm Calls

City Council member Laura Chick, who represents a section of the San Fernando Valley, and Police Commissioner Art Mattox are expected today to announce an effort to reduce the number of false alarms by home and business security systems.

The effort is aimed at increasing the amount of time police spend fighting crime on the streets and reducing the time they spend responding to false alarms, a Chick spokesperson said.

Last year, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to about 161,000 security alarm calls. About 95% of them turned out to be false, triggered either by human error, faulty equipment or bad weather, according to police and city officials.

False alarms account for about 17% of all calls police respond to, city officials said.

That amounts to hundreds of police hours wasted, said Karen R. Constine, Chick’s chief of staff. “If we could address the false alarm problem, you could have a lot more police patrolling our streets,” she said.

Constine said Chick and Mattox will try to institute new deterrents to reduce the number of false alarms.

Police currently issue an $80 fine for each false alarm after four false calls within a 12-month period. But Chick and Mattox want the fine to be levied after the third false alarm.

Chick and Mattox will also propose a crackdown on the owners of home and business alarms who fail to pay the LAPD’s $30 annual alarm-registration fee. The money is used to partly reimburse the city for responding to false alarms.