The Los Angeles Police Commission Dec. 17 postponed voting on its verified response policy until its Jan. 7 meeting after hearing comments from a number of alarm company owners and other security professionals. The commission concluded that it would rather take additional time for further dialoge to decipher all the available data and statistics provided by the city as well as the alarm industry.
The meeting was scheduled to take place at 9:30 a.m., but it actually didn’t begin until one hour later. It was relocated from a 50-person room to a large auditorium due to the high turnout of alarm and security professionals who were urged to attend by the local alarm associations to demonstrate industry solidarity.
“The board is prepared to support this [policy], but we’ll give it one more chance,” to postpone making a decision, concluded Rick Caruso, commission president.
The alarm industry now has until the next scheduled meeting to provide further statistics that would be considered more realistic than what the city has. Also, it will provide details on a six-point plan GLASAA prepared—with the assistance of an advocate firm—which allegedly will reduce the number of false dispatches. “What we need to do now is to get statistics to Caruso to possibly sway his thoughts,” said Mark Sepulveda, president of the Greater Los Angeles Security Alarm Association (GLASAA).
The police commission had postponed this same item in late October.
