Home security alarms may give a homeowner peace of mind, but too many false alarms are a time-consuming pain for police. In posh Lake Forest, where security is a big issue, police answer more than 2,400 alarms a year for the 400 houses and businesses that have alarms connected to the police station.
”Of those, maybe two or three are valid,” Deputy Chief Gary Wieczorek noted.
Libertyville police respond to an average of eight or 10 alarms a day, estimated Police Chief Dan McCormick. At least 98 percent of those alarms are activated not by burglars but by careless residents or employees, equipment failures or bad weather.
In Lake Forest and Libertyville, as in most communities, a response to a burglar alarm requires two squad cars. Depending on how long it takes to check the home, contact the owner or another keyholder and determine that the alarm was false, officers spend anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour or more answering each alarm.
The manpower drain that false alarms place on a police department is already huge and continues to grow because more and more people are putting in alarm systems. ”Still, I really believe that security systems are good, and they have cut down on burglaries,” McCormick said.
To compensate for the costs-and to encourage home and business owners to properly use and maintain their alarm systems-many communities have adopted punitive alarm ordinances. In both Lake Forest and Libertyville, for example, people are allowed three free false alarms within a year. After that, in Lake Forest, they pay $35 for the fourth and fifth false alarms and $75 for each false alarm after that. In Libertyville, the fourth through sixth alarms are $25, the seventh through ninth are $50, the 10th through 12th are $75, and from 13 and on, they cost $100 apiece.
The dollars add up quickly, and some residents with overactive alarm systems have gotten bills that exceeded $4,000 in a year. ”The real purpose is to encourage people to keep their alarms up to date and in good repair. If they never had to pay for it, they might just say, so what?” McCormick explained.
There are other problems inherent in false alarms, Wieczorek noted.
”Anytime you have to make an emergency response, you have squad cars traveling at higher than the posted speeds, and there is a potential danger to officers and the public,” he said.
Police officers on the street quickly learn whose alarms are bad and tend to malfunction, and that can present another danger, said Lake County Sheriff`s Deputy Marty Smith. It`s a modern version of the old story of the boy who cried wolf. ”If the officer is tempted to lower his guard, that`s just human nature, but woe be the police officer who decides that this is just another false alarm. This time, it might not be,” Smith said.
Wieczorek agreed. ”We still have to take each alarm as if it`s a real alarm.”
