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Police: 99% Of Alarms Are False

By Dennis Niesborella and Alison Lee Satake, posted May 14, 2010

According to the Wilmington police department, when a police officer responds to a breaking and entering call, 99 times out of 100 it’s not a true emergency, rather it’s due to a security alarm system triggered accidentally.

Downtown property manager, Nancy Bullock said that between the three buildings she manages – the Cotton Exchange, Chandler’s Wharf and 130 North Front Street – an alarm system goes off about once a month due to a tenant’s error.

Wilmington police officers respond about 14,000 alarm-related calls per year throughout the city. Responding to a high percentage of false alarms has cost the police about $572,000 or 42,000 staff hours between 2005 and 2008, according to data provided by the police department.

In an effort to increase efficiency and reduce wasted resources, the police department is in the process of proposing a change to the city ordinance that would transfer the burden of these false alarm calls to residents and business owners through fines.

“We’re not trying to squeeze people, we’re trying to reduce calls from faulty alarms,” said Capt. Marshall Williamson, Division Commander with the Wilmington Police Department.

Although the largest offenders are financial institutions (banks and savings and loans), government buildings (including county offices), schools and hospitals, police respond to a large number of false alarms from breaking and entering calls from businesses and residences.

In 2008, the Wilmington police responded to 13,190 breaking and entering calls of which 13,101 or
99.3 percent were false alarms, Williamson said.

By July 1, residents and business owners could face new fines for each false alarm – after one “freebie” – the police respond to.

The exact amount of the citation will be determined by Wilmington City Council.

If $100 fines were established, that could potentially bring the city as much as $1.3 million to the city’s General Fund annually.

If faced with a false alarm fine, Bullock said she’d most likely pass
it on to her tenants – the businesses. Her alarm system can track which business tripped the alarm through individual codes for each tenant. However the police are rarely
called, she said, because the alarm company calls her or her maintenance person first.

At Mayfaire Town Center, each tenant chooses whether to install a security alarm system, said Sue Rice, director of operations at Mayfaire Town Center.

“If for some reason that security alarm trips, the store manager or owner gets the call. It wouldn’t affect us as landlords. It could affect our tenants,” she said.

Currently, residents and business owners are excused from any penalty for their first two false security alarms the police respond to every year, according to the city’s current ordinance.

But after the third violation, businesses can face a $25 fine and after the fourth violation, the city ordinance says a $50 fine should be assessed. However, enforcement is lacking.

“Police at this point don’t issue citations for false alarms,” said Malissa Talbert, spokeswoman for the city of Wilmington. But that is one of issues that will be considered in a proposed change to the ordinance, she said.

“The checks and balances aren’t occurring,” Williamson said. “There isn’t any enforcement now.”

A large part of the problem is that since the city shifted from having live dispatchers to using the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system, the exact locations of the false alarms are not being recorded. But through the new ordinance Williamson hopes that police officers will enter the name and location of the false alarm offenders into the CAD system.

“Every month we will be able to track it better through the system,” he said. The general plan would be that the existing administrative staff at the Northwest and Southeast division headquarters would compile the information of the false alarm offenders and send over the citations to the city’s collections department, which will send them out about every month, he said.

The Wilmington Fire Department currently has an ordinance that gives property owners two free false fire alarms before issuing a $50 fine when they respond to the third false call in one year, according to the city ordinance.

Mayfaire’s fire alarm company told Rice about the Wilmington Fire Department’s policy a few months ago, she said.

So far the shopping center which has 26 buildings, each with its own fire panel, has not hit the third consecutive false alarm.

“We can pull a history on every fire panel and see what called the fire trucks. If it was something done within a tenant’s store, then we would bill the tenant,” she said.

The city attorney’s staff is working on a draft ordinance that would include both the fire and police departments’ policy.

They hope to present it during one of the June city council meetings in order for it to be approved by the beginning of the new fiscal year on July 1, said Bill Wolak, assistant city attorney.

“We want to free up time to allow our officers to work on quality of life issues for our citizens. Alarm subscribers will hopefully keep up maintenance and this will aid in the process,” Williamson said.

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