Setting up home alarm system (San Jose: crime, house, living)

[salilsurendran]

Hello,
I have setup an home alarm system. When setting it up I got a message from their website that I must get a permit for my alarm system else the police will not respond to my alarm. What do I have to do to get a permit? As per this website Verified Response Protocol Information the police will only respond if there is a person on site that confirms a crime is occurring? How will this work? Say I am in my bedroom sleeping and my alarm goes off, am I supposed to get out and confirm there is someone in the house and then call the police?

[MediocreButArrogant]

Alarm permits are not required in San Jose. They're typically not required in verified response communities.

Verified response explains what happens when your alarm monitoring company receives an alarm notification. It's doesn't apply to you, or if you don't have alarm monitoring. Under a verified response protocol, the alarm monitoring company contacts you first to confirm eyewitness or remote audio/video verification of an intrusion. If you can't confirm, they either don't call the police, or call it in as an unverified alarm, which in most cases the police ignore in verified response communities.

If you're in the house and the alarm goes off, and you know it's a real intrusion, you can call 911 yourself, or wait for your alarm monitoring company to call you, and then tell them it's a valid alarm. I wouldn't call 911 before confirming it wasn't a spouse or other household member accidentally setting off the alarm, but that's just me. You can do whatever you want.

[salilsurendran]

So the situation is such that I was in the bedroom and the alarm started doing it's countdown. It could be the sensor was malfunctioning and I thought so and shutdown the countdown before the alarm went off. However, today I might think that this is a real intrusion but I wouldn't want to go into the living room to confirm there is a person there. In which case should I just call the police without verifying that this is a sensor malfunction. This has happened only once in close to 4 years of owning the alarm monitoring system.

[simboticus]

In San Jose they won't come unless you tell them there is someone in your house right now. If you tell them you THINK there is someone in your house they might come, I don't know. I'm sure they'll let you know when you call.

In the scenario you describe, I'd call 911 myself. If I was a single female, at home alone, I wouldn't want to go looking for an intruder to confirm. I'd just get on the phone with 911. At least you can go look while they are on the line with you.

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by salilsurendran

Hello,
I have setup an home alarm system. When setting it up I got a message from their website that I must get a permit for my alarm system else the police will not respond to my alarm. What do I have to do to get a permit? As per this website Verified Response Protocol Information the police will only respond if there is a person on site that confirms a crime is occurring? How will this work? Say I am in my bedroom sleeping and my alarm goes off, am I supposed to get out and confirm there is someone in the house and then call the police?

They call the number on file and you tell them if it's a false alarm or if you think there might be an intruder. I don't have a monitored alarm just two wireless cameras that record any audio or video to an SD card and sound a beeping alarm on my remote monitor. I used to have an elaborate system and paid for monitoring but the only person who ever set of the alarm was me.