Warren takes steps to reduce false alarms

By Tim Yovich

The police chief says he doesn’t think that imposing fines will decrease the number of false alarms.

WARREN — The city is looking to first warn — and then fine — property owners when police respond repeatedly to their false alarms.

“The hope is the false alarms will stop,” said Councilwoman Susan Hartman, D-7th, who chairs council’s police and fire committee.

She said the police department will begin reporting to the law department those property owners whose burglar alarms sound when there is no emergency.

The effort is a safety issue for police officers responding to false alarms, and addressing it can hopefully free them to respond to actual emergencies, Hartman explained.

The city, Hartman said, has an ordinancethat calls for a $25 charge to a property owner if police are called to a business or residence more than three times annually because of equipment malfunction or human error.

After a fourth false alarm, Hartman said, the police department will notify the law department, which will send a warning letter to the owner and the $25 fee for subsequent alarms. Money collected will be deposited into the city’s general fund.

Police Capt. Tim Bowers said the department responds to an average 8.5 burglar alarms daily. The department receives about 130 calls for service per day. According to national statistics, Bowers noted, 93 percent of alarm callsare for false alarms.

But it’s difficult to determine if an alarm is false, Bowers said, because a would-be burglar may have touched a window, triggered the alarm and fled. Just because officers arrive and don’t find a burglary doesn’t mean there wasn’t an attempted break-in.

He argues that some alarm companies aren’t reliable and install a faulty system that generate false alarms.

Police Chief John Mandopoulos said one of the problems with burglar alarms is that they are very sensitive. A bird flying into a window could trigger one, he noted.

Elderly people, the chief said in another example, may take their dog for a walk and forget to reset their alarm — and the system is activated.

Responding to alarms can result in injuries to police and firefighters, Mandopoulos said.

To counter the possibility of injury, his officers don’t activate their lights and siren to locations where alarms go off, the chief explained. Another reason not to respond to these as an emergency, the chief added, is because there are some motorists looking for a cruiser to run into their vehicle at an intersection to generate a lawsuit against the city.

Mandopoulos said he believes property owners shouldn’t be charged for false alarms because they approved a safety forces tax issue, and a fee is penalizing them because they already pay for service.

He also questions if the loss of public relations value, by imposing a fine, is worth the $25 fee. The chief said he doesn’t believe fines will reduce false alarms — noting that fines don’t decrease the number of speeders.

Fire Chief Kenneth Nussle said false alarms are not a problem for his department, which had 212 of them in 2007 out of nearly 1,300 alarms. City law allows for up to a $300 fine if the false alarms from a property become a nuisance.

Most of the bogus alarm calls are from commercial properties such as nursing homes and hospitals, the chief explained.

At nursing facilities, Nussle said, residents are sometimes mentally challenged and set off an alarm. False alarms also occur in hospitals because they have hundreds of sensors that can malfunctions.

He pointed to one resident who routinely calls in false alarms at her home.

“Some of these people are just lonely. We are public servants,” Nussle said.

yovich@vindy.com