Reimagining Alarm Response

“There’s a promise at the heart of the industry that was valid in 1970 – that alarm companies get free, preferred access to public safety resources,” says Mark Zimmerman,  CEO of RSPNDR, a company hoping to reimagine how alarms are responded to in the U.S. “That was definitely not a valid promise by 2020, and it is getting less valid every day.”

The industry’s reliance on this “free” service has created deep-rooted tensions – some of which Brian Gartland, Chief Operating Officer at Oregon-based security and monitoring provider Vyanet, characterizes as “troubled.”

“[Alarms] are more often a burden than not,” he says. “I think the problem is that every so often, there is a valid [alarm] and that tends to kind of erase all the issues that law enforcement has to deal with because of them.”

The numbers paint a stark picture of the challenge facing both the alarm industry and law enforcement. Retired law enforcement officer Frank Borelli, now the Editorial Director of Officer magazine (www.officer.com), confirms from his experience: “Through my career,  99% of the alarms we got were false alarms.”

This overwhelming volume of false alarm responses creates cascading problems throughout the public safety system. Gartland explains an often overlooked fact of law enforcement alarm response: “Depending on certain alarms, two different units have to respond, so they can ensure that they’re backing up the other one if the situation happens to be real," he says, noting that this can take up double the number of responders.

Zimmerman adds that customers are becoming aware of the issue as well. “We are seeing more and more evidence that the public is well aware of non-response policies through news stories, defund the police initiatives, increased police response times, and headlines in the local news – all of them are making the public aware that the police are overwhelmed.”

Faced with overwhelming false alarm volumes and strained resources, municipalities have begun implementing non-response policies like the one in Seattle. Gartland reports that it is especially prevalent in his company’s Oregon coverage area, including the cities of Portland, Eugene, and Bend. “More municipalities are absolutely going that way,” he says.

That said, not all law enforcement is on board. Borelli, for one, is particularly critical: “If 911 gets a call and you get dispatched, you are required to go – you can’t pick and choose,” he says. “We’re supposed to be keeping peace in society, and that requires the ability to make judgment calls. I just don’t see the sense in a non-response policy. I think it’s a political move that’s a bad idea.”

The strain has created additional problems through escalating fine structures. “As their resources and budgets are constrained, [municipalities] are turning up the fines from, $400 to even $600,” Zimmerman says, noting that this creates a dynamic where customers become reluctant to use their security systems at all.

Adds Gartland: “We’re getting to the point where it’s not a matter of just non-response, it’s a matter of the fines being punitive enough where people will not arm their systems because they are afraid of being saddled with a $500 false alarm fine.”

A Novel Idea: Changing Unverified Alarm Response Tactics

The alarm industry truly stands at a crossroads. Companies can continue to leverage police response to all alarms – verified or not – and risk further alienating law enforcement, leading to more non-response policies, and customers who will either be disappointed in the response when an emergency happens, or just be afraid to arm their systems until they eventually cancel service.  

Zimmerman and Gartland both have discovered a novel way to solve the issue: Private security. Instead of having a police officer respond to an unverified alarm, what if a private security officer responds and verifies if the situation is an emergency or false before authorizing a police dispatch?   

This is exactly RSPNDR’s approach to solving the alarm response crisis. Zimmerman explains: “We make software that takes incidents in from monitoring stations by integrating with [central station monitoring software]. Then, an operator can do their triage steps, and if the alarm is not verified, they can click a button in the software to dispatch a private officer to investigate.”

The second component is a mobile app that runs on the phones of every private security officer and every guard company linked to the RSPNDR network. Once the central station operator presses the dispatch button, it is broadcast on the app and the closest officer is instructed to respond and investigate – the Uber or DoorDash concept, but for security alarms.

This leads to quick response times inside the company’s coverage areas. “It knows where the guards are, whether they are on duty, what direction they are traveling, the speed of travel – all the things that we need to match the best officer to an incident,” Zimmerman says.

Meanwhile, just like Uber or DoorDash, every step of the process is being tracked and documented for both the customer and the central monitoring center, which receive real-time updates when officers accept calls, are en route, ETA, on scene, and a full detailed report with disposition.

While the company began this journey with successful implementations in Canada, it is now eyeing expansion into the U.S., specifically targeting municipalities with mandated non-response policies. “Last year in the U.S., we had 255 different guard companies on the platform – about 1,900 guards who completed at least one incident,” Zimmerman says.

He adds that response times are competitive with traditional emergency services. “In the U.S., we are averaging a little under 20 minutes right now in terms of response, from the push of the button to arrival,” Zimmerman reports. “There is not a city in the U.S., where [police response to an alarm is] less than 10 minutes.”

The Pitch to the Industry and the Customer

The success of this transformation will depend on the industry’s ability to maintain safety standards, provide genuine value to customers, and rebuild relationships with law enforcement based on cooperation rather than burden. The early results suggest that when properly implemented, privatized alarm response can achieve these goals while creating new revenue opportunities for security companies.

Still, Zimmerman says many long-time alarm company executives are skeptical – why should they add this on-demand response service, and would customers be willing to pay “$5 to $10 more per month” for it?   

“We ran an experiment [in the U.S.] with 15,000 accounts in a [large] market and 85% of the people happily paid more,” Zimmerman claims, adding that it also created additional recurring monthly revenue for alarm companies while reducing attrition rates.

The approach represents a fundamental shift in how the alarm industry positions itself. Rather than continuing to burden public resources, companies can reposition themselves as more of a trusted advisor. For monitoring centers like Vyanet, it represents both an opportunity and a necessity for differentiation.

“We do absolutely see the benefit” of private response, Gartland says, although he acknowledges it “may not be the most cost-effective or time-effective way of handling response in all situations.”

That said, Vyanet does dispatch a guard force via its internal TMA Five-Diamond monitoring center and partnerships with local guard force providers. “Obviously, there are a lot of private security patrols out there, and a lot of companies offer them,” Gartland says. “The whole point is to reduce the stress on response – be it our own response or the police. I don't know if I'd call [privatized response] so much a game-changer as a method for good response that is likely gaining traction in the industry.”

Law Enforcement’s Response: Mixed

From a law enforcement standpoint, the response to privatized alarm verification is nuanced. While Borelli expresses concerns about guard safety and training standards, he acknowledges potential benefits: “Saving law enforcement all of that wasted time and manpower is fantastic,” he says. “But if the responder is a security guard with no arrest authority and no weapon to defend themselves with, it could become a really bad situation where all you’ve done is create a victim.”

The key issue for law enforcement is the quality and authority of the responding personnel. Borelli notes that jurisdictions like Maryland can “empower them as a special police officer with arrest authority while they are on patrol in the community.”

Both Zimmerman and Gartland report that proper protocols minimize these risks. The approach emphasizes observation and reporting rather than confrontation on the part of the responding private officer. Gartland explains: “They don’t engage. They confirm a door open, or broken glass, and then immediately ask [the central station] for police dispatch.”

Zimmerman adds that guards are trained to avoid dangerous encounters: “When our guards do arrive and there is a crime in progress or evidence of a crime, they escalate to police,” he says, adding that RSPNDR provides law enforcement with all the time-stamped events that have taken place up to that point, with photos. “That makes it pretty easy for an officer.”

Alternative Solutions

Gartland says that despite already offering privatized alarm response, Vyanet is exploring complementary technologies, such as drone response, which offers similar advantages to a private guard’s response to an unverified alarm without putting a human at risk.

“We see it as being a huge opportunity,” Gartland says. “You could essentially maintain [alarm verification] services utilizing one or two drones for half the cost of a traditional patrol officer. We see the potential for it to be part of a cohesive effort to reduce the burden on public sector police response.”

A cohesive drone response to unverified alarms could also be a boon to response times in tight geographic areas. After all, drones don’t have to deal with traffic, and they are always in the area. “Honestly, there’s just no way that a person could ever compete with that [level of response time] unless you have a guard station or patrol station that happens to be right in that area,” Gartland says.

Worth the Effort

Using technology or humans to verify alarms before dispatching police, the evolution of alarm response looks poised to proceed. Whether it is an industry transformation or disruption may well depend on how quickly traditional players – both alarm companies and central stations – adapt to this new paradigm.

As monitoring centers and alarm/security companies grapple with these changes, one thing remains clear: the status quo is no longer sustainable, and the future belongs to those who can deliver verified, valuable response to their customers’ security alarms.

“It’s not hard to say it is a problem, but it is hard to say it’s not worth the effort to fix it,” Gartland says. “It very much needs to be an industry effort; a group effort. Everybody needs to be rowing in the right direction and discussing this with the municipalities to come up with a solution – because a false alarm in one place might mean a valid one may not get taken care of quickly enough.”