Video Plays Verifiable Role in Alarm Response

These chiefs provide priority response as an incentive to encourage their citizens to upgrade their alarm systems to video verification and enhance their security. This incentive provides a wonderful opportunity for alarm companies to upsell real value, and many are doing so and increasing recurring monthly revenue (RMR).

While the incentive approach uses a much more narrow definition of verified, since it promises a higher level of response with the specific intent to make more arrests, nonverified alarms continue to receive traditional police response. If verified alarm delivers priority 1 response as an incentive, the definition of verified tends to be narrower and focus on crimes.

However, if the term is used as a hard filter to lim
it police response only to verified alarms, the definition of verified alarm tends to be broader and focus on false alarm reduction instead. The Texas Police Chiefs are not the only group considering these concepts and definitions. Police Chief David Bejarano of Chula Vista, Calif., recently implemented a new security alarm ordinance for his city that builds on both false alarm reduction tools to filter nuisance alarms and the incentive of priority response for verified alarms.

The new ordinance mandates that central stations use enhanced call verification (ECV) and imposes fines that escalate to $500 for the third false alarm. In addition, verified response can be mandated for any site that has four false alarms in a one-year period. On the “incentive” side, Bejarano, who serves as first vice president of the California Police Chiefs Association, has elevated verified alarms to a priority 1 response instead of the typical priority 3 for traditional alarm systems.

Verified alarms for Chula Vista mean alarms that video, audio or a person onsite has verified that an actual crime may be occurring or has occurred. More effective policing and a safer community is the goal.

“We did a three-year study from July 2009 to June 2012. During this time we had 8,094 residential alarms and made one arrest, and we had 9,604 commercial alarms and made six arrests,” Bejarano explains. “We spent the equivalent of two full-time officers dedicated to alarm response in that period costing $250,000 per year. That means that we spent $750,000 on seven arrests. We believe this new, innovative approach will help us do better with our limited resources.”

Enhanced Call Verification Aims to Reduce User Error

In contrast to more arrests, the false alarm reduction procedures created by the alarm industry tend to focus on canceling a false alarm. False alarm reduction advocates cite user error as causing the lion’s share of all false alarms; something as common as the owner opening the front door and forgetting to disarm the system.

ECV targets user error and is the most successful and widely adopted procedure to verify an alarm is false. Increased arrest rates are oftentimes not even mentioned as a side effect because more arrests are not part of the ECV program. ECV’s goal is to verify user error, not crime. For the alarm industry, this user error-centric approach to verification goes beyond ECV.

A recent white paper published in June by a major alarm manufacturer promotes a cancel/verify button on the keypad as “Electronic Alarm Verification.” The paper presents verification as a feature that offers a one-step cancel button to the user to verify a false alarm. The only possibility of electronically verifying a crime is if: 1) the user happens to be present at the keypad when a burglar breaks into the premises; 2) the user enters the “disarm” code on the keypad; and 3) after disarming the system, the user pushes the verify button to verify a crime-in-progress.

While the verify button will obviously not catch many crooks, the cancel button is a very simple way to reduce false alarms. It must be clearly stated that law enforcement supports false alarm reduction and is actively promoting ordinances that mandate these procedures defensively. From their perspective, false alarm reduction is a good thing but it is not really “verification.”

ECV, crosszoning, permits, fines, two-way voice, cancel buttons and better designed alarm systems have certainly reduced false alarms, but they are not leading to more arrests. As Vinson states, “While these procedures may lead to a reduction in false alarms, we do not consider these to be verified alarms, and certainly they are not the equivalent of a video verified alarm.”

For many in law enforcement verified means that a probable crime-in-progress is being committed, not that someone has verified that the owner made a mistake at the keypad. “We believe it is confusing, however, to label such procedures as actual alarm verification,” Vinson says.

Akron Police Captain Paul Calvaruso concurs: “It sure would have been beneficial to have a definition of a verified alarm that was nationally recognized and accepted by law enforcement when Akron was implementing the new policy.”

At some point, at least in relating with law enforcement, the industry may want to reconsider how it uses the term verified alarm and look for a different word to describe false alarm reduction procedures that focus on verifying false alarms. New terminology could do much to avoid confusion with law enforcement stakeholders who consider video verification something beyond crosszoning and ECV.

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