May 13, 1997
BALTIMORE COUNTY wasted $5 million of taxpayer money responding to false burglar alarms last year. Other local jurisdictions wasted millions more. Pets, windstorms and homeowners and hired help who don't know how security systems work are tripping alarms at alarming rates.
In 1996, Baltimore County police responded to 77,000 bogus calls, about 17 percent of all police calls. The problem is not local. Police departments across the country are faced with significant losses of money and manpower caused by home and business alarm systems. Nationally and in the Baltimore-Washington suburbs, 98 percent of all alarm calls are false.
This is not just wasteful, it's dangerous. Officers are bound to become complacent responding to bad call after bad call. It's a matter of time before they are caught off-guard when someone's alarm signals a true emergency.
The solution is reducing the number of false calls. This means making security system owners and companies, who now have little reason to care how many times alarms go off, care about preventing false alarms. Fines for repeat offenders are a must.
The model for this region is Montgomery County, where an alarm reduction team registers alarm systems and charges on a sliding scale against those with four or more false alarms a year. That has helped, but last year the reduction was still only 8 percent.
One council member now proposes getting rid of the three "free" bad alarms, which makes sense, and cutting off police response for a year to homes or businesses with more than three false alarms. That would effectively reduce the number of calls but seems destined to lead to trouble.
At this point, Baltimore area jurisdictions need to set up their own reduction programs. Baltimore County officials are working on legislation based on Montgomery's model, with a team to monitor alarm owners and fines -- $50 for the third bad call annually and up to $1,000 for the 14th and every one thereafter.
Time will tell if stiffer incentives are needed to combat this stubborn problem. If its alarm reduction program were only as successful as Montgomery's is now, Baltimore County estimates it would save $1.2 million annually. That's not small change.
Pub Date: 5/13/97
