By Joel Griffin
SecurityInfoWatch.com
While efforts by the alarm industry and law enforcement community have helped reduce false alarm dispatches dramatically over the past decade, innovations in surveillance technology are poised to bolster that effort even further.
Police departments and sheriff’s offices across the nation are now implementing prioritized response policies for alarms that have corresponding video clips of crimes in progress.
A city that has implemented one of these policies with positive results is Charlotte, N.C. According to Maj. Eddie Levins of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department, the city passed an ordinance two years ago that required alarm owners to apply for permits and if they suffered too many false alarms, the police department would no longer respond.
However, with the department’s prioritized response policy, if an alarm owner has video evidence that a crime is being committed on their property, Levins said the police department will respond even if they’ve repeatedly violated the ordinance.