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On June 1, 2004 the Lakewood Police Department began handling intrusion (burglary) alarms in a more efficient manner. The Police will continue to immediately respond to robbery, panic, medical, and fire alarms; however, the department has decided to adopt a form of "Verified Alarm Response" as our method for handling intrusion alarms. This simply means that some form of verification will be needed prior to having officers dispatched. Either the alarm company can choose to physically verify the validity of an alarm, or police officers will respond if there are factors that lead us to believe that the alarm is valid.

This new policy will place the responsibility for alarm verification where it belongs-with the companies that market, sell, and install those alarms; and, it will allow the police officers and supervisors to utilize discretion, common sense, and experience to evaluate the need to respond as they see fit.

All alarm calls will still be "aired" on the radio to officers in the area, and they will respond to the alarm if in their opinion, experience, and knowledge, a response is warranted. For example, they would certainly respond to an alarm occurring in multiple zones of a home or business or to an alarm in which a suspicious person is seen nearby. An officer can also use his/her discretion to respond based upon their knowledge of crime patterns in the area, time of day, or other information at their disposal.

For many years, the Lakewood Police Department has averaged well over 6,000 intrusion (burglary) alarms per year, accounting for nearly 10% of the total annual citizen-generated calls for service. Of those calls, about 98% are consistently found to be false alarms and, in each case, required the response of two officers who were then unavailable for other more serious calls such as preventing a crime, generating an arrest, or enhancing the safety of our citizens.

The 98% rate is consistent with that of police departments throughout the nation, and like those departments, our efforts to reduce the number have been unsuccessful. The Lakewood city ordinance mandating a billing system with sliding fees for successive false alarms has had no affect on reducing the false alarm rate. As a result, we will no longer be billing for excessive false alarms.

Similar "Verified Alarm Response" programs pioneered in Las Vegas, Nevada and Salt Lake City, Utah, have been extremely successful. In the case of both cities, the false alarm rate dropped dramatically after implementation of the program with no increase in the incidence of burglary.

During a time in which our department struggles to meet the legitimate public safety demands of our citizens, combined with ever dwindling resources available to meet those demands, it is felt that this is a reasonable and effective method for dealing with a significant source of our call load.
If you have any questions about this new method of handling intrusion alarms, please feel free to contact the Lakewood Police Department at 303-987-7126.