by Jason Beardsley
In the Alarm Industry as well as Law Enforcement, there has been a recent growing concern with false alarms. According to the national standard, 97% of triggered alarm signals are ultimately deemed to be false alarms.
To give some perspective, in 2011 alone, Riverside Police Department responded to 7,498 false alarms. Police associations across the United States have become very vocal about the burden false alarms place on their dwindling staff, and many agencies have significantly raised fees for false alarm dispatches in attempt to relieve their departments of such burdens.
Users of security systems are left to pay higher fines for frequent or repeated false alarm activity, and in rare cases, excessive false alarms have prevented authorities from responding to a premise. Furthermore, many police departments have implemented a verified Response protocol which requires proof of security breaches (beyond the receipt of an normal alarm signal) prior to dispatching authorities to your business. Let’s be honest, false alarms are an annoyance to all parties involved, and as a Security provider, we understand that.
There is a solution hitting the market to help with these growing issues. It is a Video Surveillance Solution (commonly known as Video Verification) which will help record and document criminal or suspect events that happen at your business. Through the system, you will be sent an email or text message containing a video of the event or crime taking place at your office when your alarm system is triggered. This is can be a huge benefit to law enforcement, security providers and the business owner alike because it is a way to verify an alarm or crime as it occurs, as well as increase the response time of law enforcement because there is video proof of a crime in progress.
Police would be contacted ONLY when the alarm activity has been determined to be a real security event, thus allowing the business owner to avoid extra false alarm fines.
With technology advancing at increasing speeds, SDA now has the opportunity to create and provide more reliable systems, in essence allowing us to give real security and not merely the perception of security to all of our customers.
Jason Beardsley, MBA, is the Branch General Manager with SDA Security. He can be reached at (800) 896-1144 or visit us at www.sdasecurity.com