LEWISTON, Idaho—City officials are proposing revisions to the current alarm ordinance. Police officers attribute the vast number of false alarms to user error and have reported they respond, on average, to two or three false alarms daily.
In 1999, officers responded to 1,131 false alarms, with each call taking anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. There were only four legitimate false alarms reported in 1999.
Under the proposed ordinance, officials are looking at a structured fee system for offenders. Alarm owners would not be charged for the first two false alarms, but would be charged $50 for a third or fourth offense and $100 for the fifth and each additional incident thereafter. Another proposed change would be to move the monitoring from the police department to private alarm companies.Source: False Alarm Network (FAN)
