False Alarm Fines and User Fees

As time goes on more and more municipal governments are feeling the pinch of reduced revenues to fund police and fire department activities. Some have started to assess false alarm fines for the unnecessary police response as well as user fees for having an alarm system.

Some cities are assessing the fines to the alarm companies as fees but most cities bill directly to the customer. Since these fees are not built into the monitoring or installation fee structure of the alarm company, invariably the fines are paid for by the alarm user.

We are seeing it happen in the Pacific Northwest, and across the country. And if not fined, police response to alarm reports from central stations are getting de-prioritized since they are so often false alarms. As a result, response times went from 15-20 minutes to anywhere from half hour to five hours to not at all.

However, having a security system which has citizen verification of a burglary or suspicious activity changes everything. A verified report is taken far more seriously than a central station automated report without anyone to verify what is happening at your home.

Blockwatch Alarm monitoring service is neighborhood based, where your neighbors, friends and family look out for your home. People you know and trust verify any triggered alarms, and report the suspicious activity as a verified report to the authorities. It’s called signal routing, where you get to choose who is notified by text, email, or phone when your home alarm is triggered.

Neighborhood based alarm monitoring can dramatically improve home security results, while returning control to you and your community to stamp out crime. Police are in favor of community members looking out for each other, as it reduces crime and the problem of automatically triggered false alarms.