Quote Originally Posted by Crumbled_pavement View Post
Okay, I feel better now, but this whole process is going to cost me an additional $36 a year. Just chalk it up to another tax that must be paid to live in the city. Anyhow, my alarm company sent me a letter explaining they will comply with the city's policy change with the proceedure below:

  • 1) First attempt to contact the customer's premises by telephone to verify whether an alarm event is real.
  • 2) In the event we are unable to contact someone at the customer's premises, a second verification call attempt is made to a designated person on the customer's Emergency Contact list to very the alarm event.
  • 3) If we are still unable to contact anyone by phone, we will attempt [[??? - don't know why this would be an attempt, and not successful, but it's what they wrote) to notify the police department and will dispatch a guard to visually check the exterior of the premises from his or her vehicle to determine if an actual alarm event has occurred [[sounds like the thief will have to break in the front of the house, how will the guard be able to tell if the break-in occured in the back of the house?).
  • 4) If the guard reports evidence of a criminal or other unauthorized intrusion, we will provide follow-up notification to the police department.
  • 5) On your next bill, you will see an additional monthly charge of $3.00 for guard service, a charge unfortunately made necessary as a result of the change in the police department's alarm response policy.
This is workable and acceptable. I hope it saves the city money and the police are able to be more effective. Judging by the last few decades of Detroit's history, I doubt it, but whatever.
That solution sounds reasonable to me, too. This will DEFINITELY save the city more money. As for whether they use that savings to make the police more effective, I guess we will just have to see. You're a bit more skeptical than I, but that's neither here nor there...we'll find out soon enough.

Certainly, if 98% of alarms are false, then you've just cut the response time of DPD by 50x for actual burglaries. Makes me wonder why we waited so damned long to do it.