Alarms: LAPD Should Keep Burglars Guessing

Re “A Good Call on Alarms,” editorial, Feb. 2: With the reported 856 false burglar alarms in an 84-hour period, it has to be obvious that this is an expensive -- say, tax dollar -- waste. Add to that the potential for accidental injury while police are needlessly rushing “Code 3” to the peaceful sites, and words like “unnecessary danger” and “pretty dumb situation” come to mind. I would suggest that rather than no response to unverified burglaries, the Los Angeles Police Department set the criteria for a limited number of unverified responses, based on watch commander determination, to be deployed. Even if 5% is the response figure, the burglar wouldn’t know if his act was part of that number.

Another solution would be for those wanting burglar alarms from security companies to hire firms that really do the job and aren’t just middlemen with a telephone. To those who say a policy of limited response to unverified alarms benefits the criminal, I’d suggest that the thousands of police man-hours wasted on false alarms could be much better used to find that same criminal.

Harvey Barkan

Studio City

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The LAPD’s new policy on alarms has risen to a new level of bureaucratic arrogance. The police have declared that elected city officials are exempt from the requirement of proof, presumably, because their lives and property are more valuable than those of the rest of the citizens. Why any self-respecting burglar would want to loot the home of a city official escapes me, other than the fact that they are usually not home because they are spending evenings attending fund-raisers.

Gary A. Robb

Los Feliz