|
Reason for Verified Alarm Response Dear Fremont Resident and Alarm Owner: The Fremont Police Department, like most law enforcement agencies across the United States, has been responding to alarm calls since our existence as a law enforcement agency. Our studies have shown that historically over 98.5% of our alarm calls are false alarms. This number has held for many years and continues even today. In an effort to reduce false alarms, and continuously improve the use of limited public resources the Fremont Police Department instituted the Model States Plan of false alarm reductions back in 1998. This plan, jointly developed by the alarm industry and law enforcement, was developed to have a significant impact on false alarms. The plan included developing an ordinance which contained provisions such as alarm permits to make it easy for law enforcement to know who to contact at the scene of an alarm, a fine structure for false alarms as well as imposing some operational issues on the alarm industry. With respect to alarm permits, the alarm industry was supposed to provide the police department with a customer list and advise all customers that a permit was required. Out of over 200 alarm companies with at least one system installed in Fremont, only 3 have provided a customer list in the past 4 years. We have seen about a 20% to 30% reduction in false alarms, but in 2004 we still responded to 7,000 alarms of which over 6,900 were false. Again in an effort to save limited resources the police department proposed to the alarm industry that we would fine the alarm company for any false alarms and they could recoup the costs from the end user, their customer. We felt that with this plan the alarm industry would be more responsive to getting a problem false alarm location fixed. In November 2004, we received a letter from a law firm representing the alarm industry in which they claimed our proposal was invalid and which could mean the City would end up in expensive litigation to defend the ordinance. Alarm calls represent the single highest volume call for service received by the police department accounting for just over 11% of all calls for service. The next highest call for service is a 9-1-1 disconnect where someone calls 9-1-1 and then hangs up or does not respond to any questions posed by the police dispatcher. We had about 5,000 9-1-1 disconnect calls for service last year, which of course require an officer(s) to respond. The police department was reduced by 52 employees during the budget downturn, 24 of these were police officers and represent an 11.52% reduction in available police officers to respond to calls for service. The police department has done a number of things to reduce the impact of these budget cuts and still provide a critical and valuable service to our community. We have modified, reduced or deleted, among others, the following programs:
Not needing to respond to over 6,900 false alarms is a way to save resources, personnel and equipment costs and still have personnel available for emergencies. In 2004, we responded to 66 calls out of 7,000 that led to a police report, and of these 26 were reported burglaries. Last year the police department spent over $600,000 in staff time and equipment usage just to respond to false alarms. As mentioned earlier, the Model States Plan and City Ordinance have not had an appreciable effect on reducing false alarms. Secondly, and just as important, all of the Fremont homeowners and business owners who do not have an alarm system are subsidizing the minority number of people who do have alarm systems by paying taxes used to pay for the overall costs of law enforcement. In my 38-year history in law enforcement, no alarm company has ever approached law enforcement and asked if it was all right to enter into a private contract with a customer and use a public agency to service the contract. The alarm industry has just concluded that they can sell alarm systems and the public will pay for any response to the alarm whether it is a real crime or a false alarm. A review of research literature on false alarms has shown that law enforcement and the alarm industry nationwide have recognized the problem of false alarms for the past 30 years. Multiple approaches have been tried in order to reduce false alarms and nothing has had an appreciable effect. Most of the programs, which have been tried, have depended on the public agency to do most of the work via ordinances which have a fine structure, permitting process, citations issued by officers, etc. Effective March 20, 2005, the Fremont Police Department instituted a program of "Verified Response" to all alarm calls with the exception of panic, duress and robbery alarms. For this reason, if you have a panic, robbery or duress feature to your alarm system, these will continue to be treated as high priority calls for service by the Police Department, and will need to continue with the Alarm Permit Program and be subject to false alarm fines if your system sends a false duress, robbery or panic alarm. Verified Response will require the alarm or monitoring company to verify there is an unusual occurrence at the location of the alarm. This can be done with a video or webcam visual system or with multiple microphones for a sound feed system, with an eyewitness, or by the alarm/monitoring company hiring private security to check out the location. No police will be dispatched until there is a verified problem. THE FREMONT POLICE DEPARTMENT DISCOURAGES YOU FROM RESPONDING TO VERIFY AN ALARM. THIS IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF YOUR ALARM COMPANY. THERE IS A POTENTIAL DANGER TO RESPONDING TO AN ALARM ACTIVATION AND ENCOUNTERING A SUSPECT, OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO MIGHT HAPPEN UPON THE SCENE AND CONFUSE YOU WITH A CRIMINAL. INSIST THAT YOUR ALARM COMPANY TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ALARM VERIFICATION. Verified Response has been in effect in a number of cities throughout the United States and has shown to be highly effective in saving police resources. No study has shown conclusively that the crime of burglary has risen where Verified Response is the norm for responding to alarm calls. We hope you will understand that our core mission is public safety through the suppression of crime and apprehension of suspects who do commit crimes. We are policing the fourteenth largest city in California and the ninety-eighth in the United States, and we are doing it with less police officers per capita than any other city with a population of 200,000 or more. We really have no choice but to make further reductions in our service model. In reviewing all calls for service, we have determined that false alarms have the greatest financial and staffing impact on the department with virtually no return in apprehension of suspects or reduction in crime. We hope you will understand the situation we are in at this time and the fact that as the Chief of Police I must make very difficult decisions within the financial boundaries that exist today. There are simply no further places I can make reductions which would accommodate our spending over $600,000 annually, and continue to allow us to respond to false alarms.
Sincerely, |