Alarming Trend

When Jacquie and Oren Michels were building a home in Hollywood in 1991, Jacquie issued an ultimatum to her husband: “No alarm system, no wife.”

While it may have been a joking threat, there was no argument. Today, the couple have two young children and the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their home security company--which installed and monitors their system, patrols their street and responds within minutes to an alarm or a call for help--is there when needed.

Jacquie Michels is convinced that the company’s sign on her front lawn, with its pledge of “Armed Response,” serves as a deterrent.

“Our neighbor didn’t have [a security system] and his home was broken into,” she said. “Two days later, the sign went up.”

The Greenfelds--Tina, Peter and their two young children--chose a company that regularly patrols their West Los Angeles neighborhood, quickly responds to alarms and will even, upon request, send its officers to meet them in front of their house and escort them inside when they’re arriving home after dark.

“I feel comfortable knowing that if my husband is working late and I hear a strange noise, I can call and someone will meet me in five minutes to check it out,” Tina Greenfeld said.

The Michels and the Greenfelds represent a growing number of Southland families who are turning to private security companies, knowing that law enforcement officers are increasingly hard-pressed to provide routine neighborhood patrol and timely response to burglar alarm calls.

Residential alarms have proliferated in recent years. In some Southern California neighborhoods, it’s difficult to find a house without a home security sign in the frontyard.

In the city of Los Angeles alone, there are 120,000 licensed home security systems, but officials believe there are many more homeowners whose systems are unlicensed.

More than 1,100 alarm companies are based in Southern California, nearly half in L.A. County, according to the state Department of Consumer Affairs, which oversees the home security industry.

Alarm companies employ nearly 6,000 people in the Southland, the majority of whom are licensed and trained to respond to alarms.

Nationally, 20% of single-family homes are equipped with security systems, according to a survey published in Security Sales, a Torrance-based trade magazine. That’s nearly double the percentage found by the same survey in 1987.

Fueling the increase in home security systems are both the public’s perception of crime and personal safety and declining cost of security technology.

Although crime statistics may be going down in some areas, many homeowners feel a greater need for protection.

And today it’s not uncommon for companies to charge $99 or less to install a basic system, along with a monthly fee of about $20 to monitor it, said George Gunning, president of the California Alarm Assn.

For that, the homeowner typically gets a microprocessor that serves as a control panel, a keypad for turning the system on, a motion detector and magnetic sensors on two or three doors and windows.

Most security experts advise going beyond the basic package. And add-ons--everything from wiring additional doors and windows to installing detectors sensitive to pets, broken glass, heat and smoke--raise the price.

The typical installation cost for a residential burglar alarm system in 1997 was $1,200, with a $20 monthly monitoring fee, according to a Security Sales survey of dealers. But the sky’s the limit--an alarm company owner says he once installed a $450,000 residential system.

Virtually all systems operate the same way:

* When the alarm is on and a point of entry equipped with magnetic sensors is breached, digital signals are sent to the alarm company’s central monitoring station.

* A company operator then calls the homeowner to determine whether there is an emergency or a crime occurring.

* If the homeowner responds with a predetermined password, the alarm is canceled.

* If there is no answer or the wrong password is given, most companies will contact the police.

But as many as 96% of these alarms are false, caused by either a system malfunction or, more commonly, user error. And so, when an unverified alarm is referred to the police, it is likely to go to the bottom of the priority list.

“For years, the alarm companies have marketed the police department as their response tool,” said Richard Rudell, who heads the enforcement section of the Los Angeles Police Commission, which oversees alarm companies and other businesses that require police permits to operate in the city.

“People think that when their alarm goes off, they’re going to have a police officer respond to their call,” Rudell said. “And that’s not necessarily the case.”

The average police response time to an unverified alarm is 55 minutes, according to the LAPD.

“That’s tantamount to no response at all, quite frankly,” said Earle Graham, vice president of patrol and central station services for the Westec Security Group.

Enter Westec and a handful of other home security companies that offer their own responders or that contract with a third-party company for the service.

For another $25 or so a month, these companies will send civilian officers, in some cases armed, to your house in five to 10 minutes.

Often, these companies will offer random patrol services in neighborhoods where they have a high volume of accounts. Patrol officers, many of whom are also the alarm responders, randomly drive by customers’ homes looking for anything suspicious.

About 50 companies have police permits in the city of Los Angeles to do private patrol, and they employ roughly 800 officers, according to Rudell.

Companies typically offer other services, including escort, vacation maintenance (taking in the mail, picking up the newspaper) and monitoring smoke and fire detectors. But for most customers, it’s the protection against break-ins that is most desired.

“A call that would be low priority to a large police department is high priority to us,” said Ed Moore, owner of Security Service Systems, which offers alarm response and patrol in a handful of Westside neighborhoods. “Historically, people here have been willing to pay for that.”

When it comes to the initial response to alarms that are likely to be false, most police officers welcome the help.

“[Private companies] usually have a car right in the neighborhood, so they can get there faster than we could, even if we had twice as many officers as we do,” said Terry Schauer, senior lead officer at LAPD’s West Los Angeles station.

“If they find it’s an actual emergency, they call us and it immediately becomes a high priority,” said Schauer, who has patrolled the Rancho Park area for 20 years. “If not, that’s one less call we have to drive to on a busy night.”

Although private responders can arrive at a scene far more quickly than police, there are limits to what they can do once they’re there. For one, they have no more authority than private citizens. Anyone witnessing a crime can detain a suspect until the police arrive.

One difference is the company’s signed agreement with the customer, which often grants some level of authority to search the property in response to anything suspicious. Generally, companies do not want their officers chasing down suspects, as police officers might.

Said Schauer: “Most criminals know exactly what these services can do and what they can’t do, and they’re not afraid of them like they are the police.”

Another difference between patrol officers and private citizens is that many of the former are armed, although strict protocols dictate when the firearms can be used.

“The officer’s life or the life of another person has to be in immediate danger,” Graham said.

For the most part, private patrol officers are trained that, unless someone’s safety is at risk, they are to observe and report any crime to the police, who take over the scene upon arrival.

“I haven’t experienced any problems,” said Sgt. Jeri Weinstein, watch commander at the LAPD’s Devonshire Division in the San Fernando Valley.

“The majority of the [alarm responders] I’ve dealt with will back off and call us if they see something like a broken window, which is what they should do.”

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In terms of training, there’s no comparing an alarm responder’s level of preparation with a law enforcement officer’s.

“The requirements are very nominal,” said John Nickols, chief of the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Bureau of Security and Investigative Services. “The responsibility really rests on the shoulders of these companies.”

The state Department of Consumer Affairs issues licenses, conducts background checks and investigates complaints about illegal or inappropriate conduct.

In addition, L.A. is one of the few cities that requires companies that patrol, as well as their patrol officers, to obtain police permits.

The state requires armed responders to go through an FBI background check and requires them to take 24 hours of training in the use of their weapons and in de-escalation of violence.

The best companies go well beyond the state requirements, conducting psychological evaluations and academic and field training that adds up to 10 times the state-mandated minimum number of hours, said Graham.

Westec and other companies also provide ongoing education for their officers, he added.

But Graham contends that the diligent companies, though they tend to be the most visible, are in the minority.

Poor screening and inadequate training can result in the employment of officers that Jim Romano, president of Bel-Air Patrol, calls wannabes--overenthusiastic individuals who fail to draw the distinction between their work and a law enforcement officer’s.

A Woodland Hills resident recalled an encounter with one such overzealous private patrol officer.

The unsettling incident began when his back door was blown open by the wind at 3 a.m., setting off his alarm.

As the homeowner sought to determine whether there had been a break-in, he saw the beam of a flashlight in his backyard. At first, he thought the man holding it was an intruder.

Moments later, he noticed a patrol car outside. When the company called, he verified that the suspicious man with the flashlight was a patrol officer who had been in the neighborhood and had taken it upon himself to investigate the matter.

“Someone else [mistaking the man for a burglar] might have shot the guy,” the resident said.

But the Police Commission’s Rudell says that the vast majority of the roughly 800 private patrol officers in Los Angeles are well trained.

“Most provide a valuable service to their customers, are cooperative with police and follow the law,” Rudell said. “The ones that don’t, if they come to our attention, we take action on. But those cases are rare.”

Still, said Doug Wankel, vice president in charge of patrol services for Protection One, “everyone understands that something needs to be done to upgrade the screening and training requirements for private responders.”

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For most consumers, the key question is: Do the alarm, the private patrol and the rapid response add up to a deterrent to home break-ins?

Though Schauer thinks so, he has observed that many alarm company subscribers become less vigilant about locking doors and closing windows.

“It’s easy to get a false sense of security, just because you’re paying for the protection,” he said.

Schauer noted that although a private company might be able to respond within five to 10 minutes, many burglars--and especially those who have set off an alarm--can escape with valuables in less than that time.

On the other hand, home security experts say it’s all about reducing odds.

The most sophisticated criminal can probably circumvent any system, but signs, stickers, blinking lights, motion sensors and neighborhood patrol cars might be enough to dissuade the juvenile down the street.

“All burglars look for the easiest target,” said Nickols.

Greg Bernstein, president of the Beverlywood Homes Assn. in West Los Angeles, says he can recall few instances of criminals being detained by the company contracted to patrol his neighborhood. But, citing the area’s low crime rate, he suggests that countless would-be intruders have been deterred by the visibility of the cars.

Bernstein himself recalls one incident in which he called the company after hearing footsteps in his backyard. The anxious moments he spent as he waited for assistance convinced him of the value of the quick response.

“It seemed like it took them five or six minutes, and that felt like a long time,” he recalled. “Later, they showed me the phone records and it had been only two minutes.”

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Dan Gordon is a Los Angeles freelance writer.