When an alarm contractor designs and installs a burglar alarm system, they are providing these services for a specific purpose.
First, a security survey should be conducted, which is an exhaustive search of all risks and vulnerabilities. Secondly, a needs analysis needs to be performed by the alarm contractor to ascertain the motivation of why the prospective customer wants to have an alarm system for their premises.
Based upon the aforementioned findings, the system’s design should follow. Of course, there may be mitigating factors that can change what the alarm contractor can install, such as its limitations based on financial budgetary concerns.
Along those same lines, alarm contractors make certain representations to subscribers. Yet, there are choices that alarm companies make, which by design are not disclosed to their customers. With this in mind, the decision to provide information, or not, to a subscriber may be actionable, or it may be irrelevant.
Similarly, the fact pattern as to the reasons why an alarm contractor failed to disclose certain information could just be de minimis.
In other cases, it might have been material, and/or the information not provided by the alarm contractor might have been intentionally concealed, all of which, if the subscriber relied on the contractor’s representations to their detriment, and there is causation, and damages, liability could resultantly exist.
Contractors Have Certain Duties
Notwithstanding the foregoing, alarm contractors have certain duties, and these responsibilities should be consistent with their statutory requirements, applicable UL standards, NFPA 72 standards and nationally recognized industry standards and best practices.
Against the foregoing backdrop, swinger shutdown is not allowed on UL-certified burglar alarm systems–and for particularly good reason.
In sum, swinger shutdown is touted as a false alarm prevention tool that prevents alarms from going off for a specific sensor if it has tripped an alarm condition multiple times in a 5-minute window. Further, there are other variables to swinger shutdown.
However, it is really not all about false alarm prevention, in that once the alarm signal is received, unless the central station operator can verify the signal(s), it is still going to be dispatched.
On the other hand, a runaway condition can surely be a false alarm concern.
But when an installer connects more than one intrusion detection device to a zone, and/or whereby the zone triggered covers an area where high-value items are located, the implementation of swinger shutdown automatically shunting the zone(s) can foreseeably leave the protected premises no longer electronically protected (as the burglar alarm system was originally represented by the alarm contractor to the customer that it would provide), including the representation to the subscriber that the alarm system was being monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week and 365 days a year by a UL-listed central station.
Dangers Associated with Swinger Shutdown
Importantly, the dangers associated with swinger shutdown is that after the predetermined number of trips on a zone occurs, (being as low as 1 to 2 trips), no more alarm signals can be transmitted from those zones to the central station until the subscriber resets the alarm system.
That said, I have never reviewed an alarm system installation and monitoring contract that explains if swinger shutdown is being enabled, or not, so that the subscriber can make informed choices, and is aware of how this feature can negatively impact upon overall alarm system performance.
Knowing that their alarm system needs to be manually reset, after it is activated, is yet another critical point to those customers who were not provided with this information, on alarm systems employed with swinger shutdown.
Additionally, I have forensically investigated burglary losses across the country where intruders triggered the alarm system, left, and then came back.
Indeed, with swinger shutdown being enabled, all the originally triggered zone(s) that were activated and met the trip count, were then “shunted” as elaborated to above so that subsequent actions by the perpetrator such as intruder movement, did not trigger the alarm system and the central station was not notified. As a result, the subscriber suffered damage.
Subscribers May Not Respond
Realistically, subscribers may not respond to the notification that the alarm system has been activated unless the police call back the central station and tell them that they found signs of forcible entry.
Of course, all alarm signals need to be thoroughly investigated so that access into the interior of the premises can be performed by the responding police, because often times intrusion into the premises happens from an adjacent store and/or from the roof, and/or from an area that is not accessible by first responders.
Consequently, the burglarious entry into the premises may not reveal any signs of forcible entry by the police, yet in actuality the perpetrators are inside the premises committing their felonious act.
Certainly, the danger exists in that there have been cases where an intruder entered into the premises and activated one or more zones multiple times, and then they leave. Instead of the alarm system being ready to detect a subsequent intrusion, with swinger shutdown enabled, all of the zones that have been programmed with swinger shutdown, cannot technically detect an intruder.
To that end, no subsequent alarm signals are transmitted to the central station. Coming full circle, alarm contractors need to make sure that the decisions they make in the way in which the control unit is internally programmed, are consistent with the electronic protection needs of each subscriber.
Finally, in my opinion, swinger shutdown has too many vulnerabilities, as to what can happen to the system once it is enabled. Accordingly, I do not adopt the use of swinger shutdown in any alarm system installation.
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