City of Atlanta instituting a penalty system for false burglar alarms. (Register: assess, stats)

[tikigod311]

From here on out, residences and businesses in the city of Atlanta must register their monitored security / alarm systems with the city. Through a program called CryWolf, the city will keep tabs on false alarms and fine repeat offenders. 1st false alarm, no fine. 2nd, $50. The fines will continue with continued offenses.

I'm no fan of excessive regulation/registration type stuff, but this sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Especially if the follow stats are true:

In 2012, the Atlanta Police Department responded to 65,000 alarm system activations, 95% of which were false alarms or alarms that were cancelled in route. These calls represent more than six percent of total 911 dispatches. With every call taking an average of 20-30 minutes, the equivalent of 8-12 full-time police officers were dedicated to responding to false alarms, thereby taking away valuable public safety resources from more pressing matters.

Not sure if its a private company or not providing the service or just the software. Hope it is just the software, I don't like private companies profits coming directly from fines to the public.


City of Atlanta, GA : Press Releases : City Residents, Business Owners Must Register Alarm Systems

[MattCW]

Well what's the criteria for a "false" alarm? The perp got scared away? Baseball crashed through a window triggering the alarm? This sounds like another attempt at heavy-handed enforcement meant to scare people away from doing what's necessary to protect themselves.

[westau]

You could also read that statistic as 5% were very important calls for the police to get their ASAP that otherwise might not have happened without the alarms.

[AnsleyPark]

This might be reasonable if the police would show up within 30 minutes. They don't....

[tikigod311]

Originally Posted by AnsleyPark

This might be reasonable if the police would show up within 30 minutes. They don't....

The goals of this policy will improve exactly that problem.


But good point on determining what is a false alarm.

Never had an alarm system, are "false alarms" frequent? It seems to me that this policy would only effect trouble makers/repeat offenders that are currently bogging the police down.

[Atlwarrior]

Originally Posted by tikigod311

From here on out, residences and businesses in the city of Atlanta must register their monitored security / alarm systems with the city. Through a program called CryWolf, the city will keep tabs on false alarms and fine repeat offenders. 1st false alarm, no fine. 2nd, $50. The fines will continue with continued offenses.

I'm no fan of excessive regulation/registration type stuff, but this sounds like a reasonable idea to me. Especially if the follow stats are true:


Not sure if its a private company or not providing the service or just the software. Hope it is just the software, I don't like private companies profits coming directly from fines to the public.


City of Atlanta, GA : Press Releases : City Residents, Business Owners Must Register Alarm Systems

If the private company is any thing like Park Atlanta, God helps us all.

[jsvh]

I support this (as a alarm system owner in the COA). Police time is important. This provides an incentive to ensure your alarm is configured to do it responsibly, and if not, pay for the police time.

[stan4]

Lots of cities do this already.
Ours does it. AND you have to pay a registration fee to the city every year.

Still took 45 minutes for the cops to show up to ours.

[cqholt]

False alarms waste a lot of APD resources. I've had 2 false alarms and the police showed up in a couple minutes.

[red92s]

Originally Posted by jsvh

I support this (as a alarm system owner in the COA). Police time is important. This provides an incentive to ensure your alarm is configured to do it responsibly, and if not, pay for the police time.

There was already penalties for excessive false alarms in the City of Atlanta, they were just difficult to collect on. In fact, the fines are LESS under the new system than they were previously. I think the new, publicly managed, registration program just makes it easier to assess and collect the fees that they asses.

The same company, CryWolf, has been servicing other metro Atlanta cities for years. I'm guessing they come in, make a pitch about reducing false alarms for a few minutes, then get down to discussing what the cities really want to hear: increasing revenue. You should have seen how high the proposed fees for false alarms were in the earlier drafts of these ordinances. There was also stipulations that homeowners had to pay annual registration fees. I guess that money grab was a bit to obvious, and was eliminated.

Seriously, how does this system reduce false alarm occurrences? "Awareness", or something? We already had a system that punished habitual false alarm offenders. How is this an improvement, other than making it easier for the city to track and collect fines? I'm not saying it's a terrible idea, just don't cram it down our throats by telling us it'll improve police response times.