FREMONT, Calif.
The police chief in Fremont, Calif., has ordered his
officers not to respond to burglar alarms unless there is a
confirmed security breach, making Fremont the first city in
the nation’s most populous state to go to a full verified
response policy. Fremont Police Chief Craig Steckler says
the move was made because of what he says were an excessive
amount of false alarm responses that were burdening his
police department.
Steckler announced Jan. 20 that verified response will go
into effect on Feb. 18 in the city on the east side of the
San Francisco Bay, 40 miles south of downtown San
Francisco. Nearby Oakland
rejected verified
response in 2003 while to
the south, Los Angeles
enacted limited verified
response last year.
Unlike other forms of verified response, where a phone call
by someone on site provides verification, Fremont’s new
policy says police won’t respond to burglar alarms at all
unless a resident, property owner or alarm company employee
will be able to show evidence that a crime occurred, such
as glass breakage or seeing a suspicious person.
Michael Salk, vice president of the East Bay Alarm
Association (EBAA), told Security Sales &
Integration that he and other alarm industry
representatives met with Steckler in early 2004 where he
said his staff was pushing for verified response, but he
said he was willing to work with the alarm industry on a
solution to the false alarm problem.
“He said he would take the information we gave him and said
he would tell us when he would like to meet again,” Salk
says, adding that that next meeting came on Jan. 18. “We
were thinking we were going in to discuss solutions, he
just introduced to policy. He was very adamant about it.”
“He kept it a secret from the industry and gave us 30 days
to react, which is not negotiation in good faith,” adds
Salk, vice president of Oakland-based alarm company Reed
Brothers Security.
Steckler told the San Francisco Chronicle that 98
percent of alarms Fremont Police respond to are false. “I’m
going to get out of the alarm business,” Steckler told the
Chronicle. “I was never asked permission to get into
it.”
In other false alarm news …
MILWAUKEE: The Milwaukee Police Department says it is getting to high-priority service calls three minutes faster because of its new verified response policy that went into effect in September.
Milwaukee PD Assistant Chief Joseph Whiten, speaking for Chief Nannette Hegerty, told the Milwaukee Common Council Jan. 20 that his department has responded to 2,000 fewer calls a month since verified response was enacted, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Hegerty will present a more comprehensive review of the new policy before the council in March.
