Reader comments
Cities considering tightening alarm policies

Salt Lake City Police has implemented that policy years ago and it works great.

Alarm companies sell a service they should be first responders by phone or by hired service. Only businesses after hours should have first response by police and only after alarm company verifies with owners the alrams have been triggered. Home users are often responsible users but false alarms are common with them. If the alarm companies want to employ police services they should pay for it. Too many flase alarms is like calling wolf and it puts the police departments in a false alarm mode. A real emergency should be verified by alarm companies and their customers should be warned about excessive false alarms. For the alarm systems to work and get police attention for faster response times a better system must be put in place. Along with individual residents being fined for excessive false alarms so should alarm companies. I have been an on-call contact for business alarms and it is a good system. It doesn't put unnecsary strain on the police departments and all the calls I got were false alarms. Residents should think about how false alarms in homes and business affects police services and response times. A few minutes to verify would decrease response times.

Without police response, alarm systems are little more than an expensive annoyance for homeowners, and provide no more protection than a pretty sign that they hope burglars will read.

POLICE response is an essential deterrant to crime, and if someone has excessive false alarms, then penalize them with a fine or fee of some sort.

98% false alarms is not a valid excuse for no police response. 98% of drivers are not speeding, but the cops still clock them with radar to nab people breaking the law.

Burglary is usually done by crooks who are serial criminals, or subsidizing drug habits. Prompt response will help nab some of those crooks.