View from the cop: Crime & punishment
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AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2009 > January > 26
Monday, January 26, 2009
The alarm-ing part of police work
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Now that I’m back in the field - field being the streets, the asphalt jungle, the Golden Ghetto, the—the—whatever else you call it, I’ve reconnected with a few things such as working on the weekends, good ol’ Waffle House breakfasts and lots of reports on mobile field reporting software in the cars, video. and other stuff. It makes me wonder if it wasn’t simpler back “in the day when we used call boxes and smoke signals.
I love the new technology and the databases we compile that make things like recognizing the usual suspects more recognizable because of that photo you took of the burglar a few months ago is stored on your laptop.
That stuff is definitely cool and productive because burglars don’t stop burglarizing until you give them a good reason to stop, such as being way too recognizable in your jurisdiction. Burglars don’t really stop doing that thing they do but rather move on. We know they’ll “burglar” somewhere else so we’re kind enough to point them to DeKalb, Cobb, and Atlanta, whatever. (Don’t feel bad for those places; they’re doing the same thing.)
One thing that I reconnected with was answering alarm calls. False alarms account for all but about one-half of one percent of all alarm calls. That means only a teeny-tiny percent activate when an actual connection is broken and the activation is the result of a burglary. The other ninety-nine point five percent involve a false alarm set off by the weather such as thunder, lightening, heavy rain, tsunamis, or things that are out of the hands of the resident such as birds.
Birds, if you haven’t figured it out, aren’t exactly the Einstein’s of nature. They will fly right into your window and occasionally cause the activation of the alarm. Alarm companies often have sensitivity sensors that gauge the difference between, for instance, a hummingbird hitting your window opposed to zombies, Fabio, or small UFO’s.
The most common reason for the dreaded false alarm is an accidental activation caused by the Homo sapiens species or more specifically, the Homo sapien moronioius dufus variety. They tend to forget the alarm is on, which in itself is something you need to have in your memory bank, or worse, they forget, set it off, and then fail to give any thought as to the response. It is the last part of the previous sentence that needs to be shored up.
Here’s a number that should get your attention—especially if you live in Sandy Springs. We handle between 900 and 1,100 alarms a month with that one-half-of-one-percent being the result of a burglary. The average time out of service for the officer on each alarm call is thirty minutes. This means even on a good month, wasted manpower hours, you know, time away from patrol and flirting with pretty girls is higher than my detention record in high school.
When an alarm activates and the resident and / or the company determines that the alarm was false, they can and should contact the local police department and cancel the response. Sometimes the company is supposed to call, sometimes the resident is, sometimes both, sometimes one thinks the other is supposed to and sometimes nobody (see: Homo sapien moronioius dufus.)
What is it that gets your attention? Other than irritating hemorrhoids, its money! It is common for counties and cities to charge after so many false alarms per month. I expect that we’ll do it as well. I would love to get the false alarms down to a manageable level, say, fewer than nine (%$&^) hundred!!
The fact is this, if you have an alarm system that goes off all the time, it’s an officer-safety hazard of the cry-wolf variety. If you’re setting the alarm off by opening the door when it’s armed, smack yourself in the head a few time and try to remember that the signal means the officer is coming to help. At least call and give the proper codes and then cancel it. Don’t muddy the waters by becoming a chronic false-alarm call. If you get that reputation, the response time will increase more and more because the officer knows it’s a false-alarm problem. That’s dangerous for them and you because if it does activate because of a burglar, you want the cops out there really, really, quick.
Here’s the deal: If your alarm system is faulty then get the company to come out and fix it. If they can’t, get rid of them and hire someone else who can do the job. If it’s an old system, update it. It’s worth the cost. Make your false alarm a rare event. I’d like to go on but you’re cutting into my flirting time!
