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Security Dealer & Integrator
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Seeing is Believing
Visual verification bolsters alarm credibilityThe Latest from SIW
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In most communities when a burglar alarm is activated police are dispatched by a central monitoring station to a specific location to determine the cause of the signal and check on the well-being of occupants. However, because of the fact that many alarms are false (caused by some sort of human error) and police and responding authorities are overloaded and understaffed, some municipalities are experimenting with verified response or non-response if an actual intrusion cannot be verified.
To counterbalance this dangerous policy the security industry developed a widely accepted procedure called Enhanced Call Verification (ECV), which helps reduce false dispatches while still protecting citizens. ECV requires central station personnel to attempt to verify the alarm activation by making a minimum of two phone calls to two different responsible party telephone numbers before dispatching law enforcement to the scene.
The first alarm-verification call foes to the location the alarm originated. If contact with a person is not made a second call is placed to a different number. The secondary number, best practices dictate*, should be to a telephone that is answered even after hours, preferably a cellular phone of a decision maker authorized to request or bypass emergency response.
In-the-field proof that ECV practices are the best solution for false-alarm reduction while maintaining the safety of taxpayers comes from the state of Florida. As of July 1, 2006, the implementation date of the nation’s first statewide ECV law, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department reduced dispatches from 12,712 between October 2005 and December 2005 to 8,802 during the same period in 2006.
Palm Beach County Deputy Charlie Mosher estimated that 80 percent of the department’s dispatch reduction can be attributed to ECV, allowing officers to spend more time in trouble spots and be more proactive on patrol. According to the Alarm Association of Florida other counties in the state have shown a similar reduction in false dispatches as well.
Following the success of Florida’s program, in May 2007 Tennessee passed legislation that requires the practice of ECV throughout the state.
To complement ECV another method the security industry developed to satisfy the requirements of verified response is cross-zoning, first introduced as a software solution for protected premises that consistently requested unwarranted dispatches.
