Verified Response: A Hot Topic
NOTE: This has been re-posted from July. Thank you.
Regardless of where you stand in today’s heated debate over Verified Repsonse in the burglar alarm industry, one thing is clear: The number of police departments enacting Verified Response policies is growing.
Police departments and security dealers both want to keep people and property safe. However, things start to get interesting (i.e., “contentious”) when it comes to how costs and responsibilities should be divvied up in the event of a false alarm.
So what’s your take? In your experience as a security dealer, do you see Verified Response at the wave of the future? What about Enhanced Call Verification (ECV), where multiple calls must be made by the central station before the police department is notified–is that the more practical solution?
-Greg
Enhanced Call Verification is a great step towards reducing false dispatchs. In addition to this effort, the IQ Certification checklist that is reviewed between the installing technician and the end user at the end of each installation is a TERRIFIC answer. If a customer has a better understanding about the system operation, they are less likely to activate it by mistake. In like manner, if the installer is well trained, a system probably will not activate falsely. More information can be obtained at http://www.iqcertification.org
I also notice SIW has another article about this topic which seems to support the case for ECV… http://securityinfowatch.com/online/The-Latest-for-Security-Dealers/False-Alarms-Drop-after-Little-Rock-Changes-Ordinance/9156SIW302
ECV may reduce false alarms but what does it really do for security? When the alarm goes off, I want the police to be dispached. Not my alarm company wasting time making phone calls because they can’t tell me why the system is going off. The purpose of an alarm is to go alert the police when an intruder is present. If these alarms are this unreliable then it sounds like it time for the industry to adopt new technology. Apparently they resist this so some governments have had to pass laws to make up for their lack of modernization.