The Utah Alarm Association and Security Industry Alarm Coalition (SIAC) reports that Sandy has one of the lowest false alarm rates in the nation. According to the Reavy Deseret Morning News, after the false alarm data was collected and analyzed, it was discovered that Sandy has a false alarm rate of only 0.27 percent.

Duff Astin with the Sandy Police Department and Bill Cooper with SIAC found that Sandy’s 5,100 commercial and residential alarm systems experience one false alarm every four years. The study compared Sandy with 70 to 100 other cities in the nation..

“The biggest thing by far is education. If alarm companies educate their customers on their accounts … how to turn off the system, how to turn it on, how to cancel it …, if they do those things it results in a big decrease in false alarms,” says Astin. “Eighty percent of all false alarms are caused by user error.”

One of the things responsible for such a low false alarm rate is the fact that Sandy police officials meet with local alarm companies on a regular basis.

“We get together and we talk about false-alarm issues and problems we’re having,” Cooper says. “We sit and talk about things to improve, share ideas and concepts.”

Comparing Sandy’s residential and commercial false alarm rates, the residential side experiences an average of 0.15 percent and the rest are commercial. In terms of numbers, the police respond to approximately 180 calls each month. Fifty of them are canceled prior to police officer’s arrival. Of the 1,417 alarm calls that Sandy police received from Aug. 1 of last year to Aug. 1 of this year, only three were legitimate alarm calls that involved a breaking and entering.

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