High Price of Crying Wolf

What’s behind the security alarm buying binge? It’s as if humans can’t rid themselves of some distant memory of a time when sleep was a dangerous necessity. Maybe that’s why the sale of ever more elaborate home and office security systems is soaring even as the nation’s serious crime rate, including burglaries, steadily declines.

Alarms and the people who use, install and monitor them probably represent one of the nation’s least fruitful uses of money and labor. Perhaps never before has such a poorly handled product been so popular.

Pick any city and you’ll find that 90% to 98% (Los Angeles is at the high end) of the alarms that police respond to are false. Police and cash-strapped municipalities are fed up with these Chicken Little moments, and with good reason.

Studies have found that homeowners or businesses themselves are most often responsible for triggering the alarm. Some installers set up highly sensitive systems that are as jittery as an espresso addict. Some sellers give customers the bare minimum of instruction before rushing off to the next client. Others push systems so complicated that James Bond couldn’t crack them.

Now, in Los Angeles, the price of peace of mind is about to go way up. Budget-conscious Chief Bernard Parks has floated the idea of taking the LAPD out of the business of answering burglar alarms unless a security company or alarm owner first verifies that the alarm wasn’t triggered by mistake. Eliminating the false 98% of the 150,000 burglar alarms that the LAPD responds to annually would save plenty. But is this the best idea? Probably not. Many cities and states have found solutions. Los Angeles can learn from these examples.

First, the stiffer fines for false alarms proposed by City Councilwoman Laura Chick in 1996 were a good idea that didn’t go far enough. An $80 fine after two false alarms is too lenient.

Portland, Ore., has been successful with progressively tougher fines, and now after five false alarms the police won’t respond to your alarm for the rest of the year. Vancouver, Canada, hits you in the wallet: You aren’t allowed to use your system after four false alarms, and it costs from $75 to $500 to have an alarm permit reinstated. San Francisco’s fines increase with each additional false alarm, hitting $190 on the fifth one.

Maryland is perhaps the most unforgiving state. The penalty for having a defective alarm there (defined as three false alarms in 30 days or eight in 12 months) is a maximum fine of $500 and up to 90 days in the slammer.

The best solution would include hefty fines for repeat alarms and for reinstating canceled alarm permits; a policy requiring police to stop responding after several false alarms in a short time, and mandatory classes at a burglar alarm school. Alarm and security companies should not activate a system until customers thoroughly understand it. Public education and home/office security analyses by police may point to other options, like better deadbolts and lighting.

Yet surveys still show that, despite their aggravation over false alarms, most police officials think that the systems can be an effective crime deterrent and that citizens should have them. That’s reason enough for citizens, police, security companies and alarm manufacturers to find ways to bring false alarms down to a minimum.

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FALSE ALARMS

What Other Cities Are Doing:

* San Francisco--Sliding scale of fines, $52 for 3rd alarm, up to $190 for 5 or more in a year.

* Portland, Ore.--$50 fine for 2nd and 3rd alarm each year, $100 for 4th and 5th, then no police response for remainder of year.

* Seattle--$125 fine for more than 2 in 6 months, no police response after 6 alarms.

* Las Vegas--No response until alarm company verifies. Source: International Assn. of Chiefs of Police