Colorado homeowners and businesses say they want police
response to all alarms – false or not – and they’re willing
to put their money where their mouths are.
The Summit Daily News reports that citizens would
prefer paying fines for false alarm police response to
Summit County’s new alarm policy.
Introduced by county law enforcement on Jan. 1, the policy
calls for each alarm response to be evaluated on a case-by-
case basis.
Police will respond if an alarm sounds at peak crime hours
or at any time from businesses with valuable merchandise.
Response to manually triggered alarms is always guaranteed.
Incident alarms, like motion detectors, require a second
confirmation before officers are dispatched.
In the first week of the new policy, the Summit County
Sheriff’s Office received several dozen letters and
telephone calls complaining about the change.
But officials maintain that the new policy will save money
and time. Capt. Derek Woodman says only two of 1,200
sounding alarms in 2003 were for actual burglaries. Each
false alarm expends 45 minutes of officers’ time, he says.
