The Virginian-Pilot
©
SUFFOLK
Burglar alarm users have racked up more than $30,000 in fines since the city put a price on the systems it says were mistakenly summoning police more than a dozen times a day.
Repeat offenders paid the bulk of that.
The Applebee's restaurant on Lake View Parkway and the Wendy's on College Drive ranked at the top of the list. Each had 26 false alarms in a matter of months, according to city records.
The City Council signed off on the fines in an effort to cut down on what police call a waste of money and manpower.
Ninety-five percent of 6,000 burglar alarms a year are set off by something other than a would-be criminal, police have said.
False alarms have dropped by 17.5 percent since the city started billing for them June 1. Police hope to cut the number of calls in half.
While the fees have added thousands of dollars into city coffers, they also have dipped into the profits of businesses and the pockets of residents - dramatically at times.
Homes and businesses must pay an annual $25 registration fee, whether or not their alarms ever alert police.
The first false alarm is free. The second costs $25; the third $50. Calls cost $100 a piece thereafter.
That means Wendy's and Applebee's would each face fines in excess of $2,300.
A manager at Wendy's referred questions about the fees to the restaurant's corporate office, which did not return a message.
A general manager for Applebee's declined to comment.
An alarm system at a residence on Plummer Road alerted police nine times in November, documents show. Fines in that case would reach $675.
Dwane Sherrick of Blanchard's Tire & Auto said the bills faxed on city letterhead to the West Washington Street shop have totaled nearly $1,800.
Birds swoop and dogs saunter through open garage doors, Sherrick said. The feathered make nests. The furry find out-of-the-way places to flop. When the doors are shut at night, the movement sets off the burglar alarm - despite reducing the system's sensitivity to motion and shooing the dogs at the end of the day.
"We've spoken to the Police Department," Sherrick said. "It's no-tolerance. We're thankful for the Police Department. But $100 is $100 you've got to shell out of your profit."
The city hired Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Alarm Tracking & Billing Services to handle the paperwork. The company keeps 20 percent; Suffolk gets the rest.
Most other South Hampton Roads cities charge for false alarms.
Virginia Beach says false alarms cost its department $320,000 in 2006. The city increased its fines for second offenses to $150 for homes and $250 for businesses - up from $25 - to recoup costs.
Calls dropped about 15 percent in 2009, or by some 3,050, according to statistics.
In Suffolk, 33 alarm systems have alerted police five or more times since June. Those include churches, banks, schools, a doctor's office and the downtown DMV.
Except for the two restaurants, no place had more false alarms than Northern Shores Elementary, with 11. Lakeland High School had eight.
State code exempts government property from the fines, Suffolk spokeswoman Debbie George wrote in an e-mail, so the schools won't be charged. Police are working with the school's maintenance division to cut down on the calls, she said.
Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5208, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Not about the money
As a police officer I can tell you that probably 1 out of every 10 calls for service is an alarm call and out of those maybe 1 out of 100 are real alarms. This is time consuming and takes away from other needs. It is the responsibility of the property owner to make sure that the alarm they have works correctly and is properly maintained. Fines are attention getters and $30000 is a very small portion of a cities operating budget.
Balloons set off the alarm?
Baloney! Only if the owners of the restaurant are using antiquated equipment because they are too cheap to get new sensors that are not triggered by such.If the jerks in the restaurant are horsing around, then the restaurant should get one heavy fine! In most cases it is the same offenders that are ruining it for others that keep their alarms up to date and use it properly. The best companies use the best equipment and the majority use call verification to prevent false alarms. The best business will incorporate monitoring service with CCTV that can actually view what is happening during the alarm. The problem is, the business are too cheap to get what is right! There are a lot of people that are posting about alarms that know squat. Nothing but rhetoric they hear from the same ole same ole.Alarm companies have spent millions to do everything to prevent false alarms. By the way, no one mentions how many times they have actually saved lives. People hear just what the want to hear. The editor of the Pilot sure did a one sided bias job of reporting.
Not right
First, I never said restaurant. It is a travel agency. I started working the Second Precinct in 1995 and that alarm went off almost daily until I was hurt in 2005 and retired in 2006. I don't know if it stills goes off but I would bet it does. And if and when we got the key holder to respond, which wasn't very often, we would have them move those balloons into the closet and guess what, no more alarms there that night.
good idea!
I think the fine is an excellent way to stop the annoyance. If the police were delayed in answering your own personal emergancy because they were busy with a false alarm, you know you'd be angry. It wastes their time and resources. I used to work in a restaurant that used just such a security system. We used to have so many false alarms for stupid reasons. Like, horsing around in the office and accidently pushing the button on the alarm necklace or someone's kid pushing the button...or the ones who couldn't figure out how to put thier code in correctly...or managers who leave the store unattended with individuals who aren't listed as contacts with the security company and can't provide the password when the security company calls.
Why should our tax money finance these false alarms when most of them are due to carelessness and not a genuine need for the police?
Alarm Fees
What are the cops for? I don't want to cut into their donut/coffee time but I believe we already pay for this "service."
Service?
If you call 911 falsely, you risk a fine or being thrown in jail, because you're summoning police to a false "emergency".
If you operate a faulty alarm, one that repeatedly summons the police to a false "emergency", why shouldn't the same penalty apply?
Read closely!
Is it just me, or does it seem that we are paying for something we have already paid with our taxes. The article says that false alarms cost extra money ($320,000 in VB). Exactly how do they cost more money? Have the cities hired more police, or worked overtime due to the alarms? I doubt it. It does not cost one penny extra. It is annoying to the police but that is all. Perhaps it costs the donut shops some lost revenue when the police have to leave and do the job we have already paid them for. It is just another excuse for the cities to get in your pockets. Nothing more!
It is more than an annoyance
It is more than an annoyance to police - it is an unnecessary high speed run down our highways putting car and people at possible risk. And the offending alarm usually happens multiple times before it is fixed.
Business taxes do not take this into account and shouldnt beyond the first call, which may be legitimate.
MD addressed this decades ago with fines. Why are we so far behind?
My first job ever was
My first job ever was helping to install security systems. I was fresh out of high school. I was amazed at the people who couldn't handle the instructions. That is, put in your code number and leave in one minute. Then when you get back, put in the code number within a minute. Some customers were just too dumb to be able to handle these instructions. They'd set them off themselves after arming and disarming the thing 5 times.
I always thought the monitoring was a joke, and go for the biggest sirens.
While I haven't worked in that industry for ever, I'd be willing to bet a big part of the issue is the end users of the systems.
I'm actually helping to setup a card access + pin number physical access system now. Pretty neat stuff. Looking for HID card readers and electric strike plates. Got the control board via ebay, $50 for a $1800 controller (Northern Computers N-1000-IV Holla!).
How it works
Here's how it works in Va Beach. Alarm is received and two officers are dispatched and possibly a K-9 officer. That takes 2 maybe 3 officers off the street to check what most of the time is a false alarm, or total waste of the officers efforts. In my personal experience, there is a business in the Hilltop Section of Va Beach that awards the employee of the month with a flower bouquet and balloons. When they go home for the night and set the alarm, the heating/A-C blows the balloons around and sets off the alarm. I have been to that same business five times in one night for the same thing as the "key-holder" refused to respond out. This continued each and every month. I wonder if that has changed since they started getting billed for the false alarms....I'm sure it did.