New fines to be enforced for malfunctioning alarm systems

Published 12:00 am Friday, August 23, 2002

City officials hope that hitting people in their wallets will eliminate security alarm systems that repeatedly go off for no reason

Council adopted an ordinance imposing fines for repeated false alarms from residential and business' security systems.

"I feel this is very sound legislation," said Councilman Richard Price, who sponsored the legislation. "In fact, I think it is overdue."

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Because police officers have to respond to every alarm at high speeds without their lights flashing, this is to safeguard the public and the police, he said.

Last year, the city received more than 365 false alarms. Now, Police Chief Bill Garland will maintain a log of all calls deemed as false alarms.

A false alarm is defined in the ordinance as "any signal or message initiated and transmitted either automatically or manually through an alarm system to the city soliciting an emergency response by police personnel, when upon visual inspection by the responding safety personnel, there is no evidence that theft, criminal trespassing, vandalism, unauthorized intrusion or an attempt to commit any of the foregoing, occurred and was the cause of the alarm."

Three or less false alarms a year will not incur a fine. A fine of $25 each call will be charged for false alarms four through seven and $50 each for alarms eight to 12. More than 13 false alarms within a year will cost $100 per call.

Any natural occurrence such as the weather will not count in the log.

The majority of the false alarms come from residences, not businesses, and many of them repeatedly go off for no reason, Mayor Bob Cleary said when the legislation was originally proposed.

Every time an alarm sounds, the city is obligated to respond and must stay until the alarm owner is contacted, Cleary said.

Securing the area is one of the biggest problems because the responding officers must wait for a key holder to show up and then check the building thoroughly. It can take up to 30 minutes or much longer because on about 90 percent of the call the owners don't want to come out immediately and check on it, Chief Garland said.

Garland said they deal with everything from alarms that go off every twenty minutes to systems that constantly go off, like at the old Memorial Hall. No one knows how to get that alarm to quit.

The goal isn't to make money from the fines, Garland said. They hope to keep officers from responding to calls unnecessarily and get people to take responsibility and maintain their systems.

"We tried to get it sponsored years ago," he said. "It is a great benefit to the police department as well as the public." Michael Caldwell/The Ironton Tribune