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Posted by Bob F on April 10, 2008, 2:26 am
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > My wife is looking for ways to cut some expenses out of our family
>> > budget, and she has suggested that we drop the monitoring of our home
>> > alarm system. She got the idea from a friend of ours who has done the
>> > same at his small business. If his alarm starts going off in the
>> > middle of the night, then it will continue to sound until he shows up
>> > the next morning. I wouldn't say we live in a extremely high-crime
>> > area, but we do live in the suburbs of a city where there is a good
>> > deal of crime. Any of you folks going "unmonitored" out there??
>>
>> > Thanks....
>>
>> > Mike
>>
>> > P.S. Our alarm system consists of sensors on all doors, a motion
>> > detector on the main floor, and a smoke alarm (we have several battery-
>> > operated smoke detectors, too).
>>
>> My understanding is that the police here hardly ever respond to alarm calls,
>> and
>> certainly not quickly, so monitoring is kind of useless.
>>
>> Make sure that your alarm has good outside speakers, and that your neighbors
>> will check if they hear it. Or get a phone dialer to call your cell phone
>> when
>> the alarm sounds.
>
> I'm not sure where your here is, but my here is different. The cops
> show up pronto, and you get two free false alarms, then they send out
> a notice that they won't be responding to additional false alarms
> within a certain period of time. If your alarm goes off and doesn't
> shut off, you get fined. If it were up to me, you'd get shot.
>
> I was installing a kitchen some years back, and was carrying a cabinet
> into the help with my helper. Don't ask me why I'm the one that
> always has to walk backwards when carrying something, but that's what
> happens. Anyway, on one of the bigger base cabinets it was a tight
> squeeze coming in through the door to the garage and I bumped into the
> wall. A couple of more trips with cabinets, and as we're coming out
> of the house there's a cop walking into the garage with his gun
> drawn. Seems I had backed into the alarm keypad and pressed all of
> the keys with my back, including the special combination which sends
> off the silent panic alarm to central monitoring. Needless to say the
> owners were _delighted_ I nearly got shot. ;)
A quick google search suggests that alarms that end up with police response are
between 90 and 99% false alarms. Several major police departments have policies
to ignor all but special classes of alarm calls. Researching the policies of
your police department would be useful in determining if alarm monitoring has
any usefulness.
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