Critics blast Detroit's new verified response policy

[ferntruth]

What the city should do is start charging these people for false alarms. That way, the city brings in revenue and all you people who want them to respond to false alarms will get what you want. I'm sure after a few bills, the joker who had 26 false alarms might have his alarm readjusted to eliminate this kind of waste.

I'm sure all you folks who are complaining about this would bitch just as loud every time the police failed to come to your aid after an actual emergency because they were busy responding to someone else's shoddy alarm.

Charging for false alarms makes more sense than having a police department not respond at all until it can be proven there was an actual break in.
Detroit is not helping itself any with these new policies regarding the Fire and Policy departments. It's just reinforcing the perception that both agencies are incapable of carrying out their assigned missions.

[iheartthed]

Charging for false alarms makes more sense than having a police department not respond at all until it can be proven there was an actual break in.
Detroit is not helping itself any with these new policies regarding the Fire and Policy departments. It's just reinforcing the perception that both agencies are incapable of carrying out their assigned missions.

...or it might actually free up the manpower to allow them to be more effective at actually policing.

[ferntruth]

...or it might actually free up the manpower to allow them to be more effective at actually policing.

Absolutely it will, because this is the biggest problem facing Detroit and the DPD. It's not the lack of response time in general. Its not their CONSCIOUS DECISION to pull staff from the streets and put them in admin positions behind a desk somewhere. It's false alarms.

I am amazed at how some on this forum have just accepted idiotic decisions as good ideas. You want to charge for a false alarm that is responded to..fine.

But the decision to simply not respond until verified is just plain stupid. It is the job of the police to respond to suspected criminal activity, or at least it used to be.

[iheartthed]

Absolutely it will, because this is the biggest problem facing Detroit and the DPD. It's not the lack of response time in general. Its not their CONSCIOUS DECISION to pull staff from the streets and put them in admin positions behind a desk somewhere. It's false alarms.

I am amazed at how some on this forum have just accepted idiotic decisions as good ideas. You want to charge for a false alarm that is responded to..fine.

But the decision to simply not respond until verified is just plain stupid. It is the job of the police to respond to suspected criminal activity, or at least it used to be.

What's amazing is that you never seem to connect the logical dot between sub par police response times and the problem of limited resources, which is at least in part due to responding to nonsense calls. It's really not rocket science that if 98% of the alarm calls are false then maybe they should de-emphasize responding to alarms as part of their tactics to reduce crime.

[corktownyuppie]

What's amazing is that you never seem to connect the logical dot between sub par police response times and the problem of limited resources, which is at least in part due to responding to nonsense calls. It's really not rocket science that if 98% of the alarm calls are false then maybe they should de-emphasize responding to alarms as part of their tactics to reduce crime.

Agreed.

Part of the problem here is a lack of salesmanship on the policy. Can you imagine if the headline instead read like this:

"DPD Promises 90-Second Response Time to Verified Burglaries"

This whole policy question is a cost/benefit analysis. I, for one, don't hold a strong opinion as to its effectiveness. I simply don't know. What I do know, though, is that almost all the attention on this topic has been given to DPD *not* responding to the alarms without giving much thought to what benefit we will be getting in return.

It stands to reason that if the alarm goes off 50 times and it's false 49 of them, then by eliminating those responses, DPD will be able to respond really, really fast to the 1 real one.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

Agreed.

Part of the problem here is a lack of salesmanship on the policy. Can you imagine if the headline instead read like this:

"DPD Promises 90-Second Response Time to Verified Burglaries"

This whole policy question is a cost/benefit analysis. I, for one, don't hold a strong opinion as to its effectiveness. I simply don't know. What I do know, though, is that almost all the attention on this topic has been given to DPD *not* responding to the alarms without giving much thought to what benefit we will be getting in return.

It stands to reason that if the alarm goes off 50 times and it's false 49 of them, then by eliminating those responses, DPD will be able to respond really, really fast to the 1 real one.

False alarms are a problems. But technology can easily handle those problems. Announcing that the Police will not respond to alarms is bad PR and has to many negative consequences.

The first solution should be putting the 1000 desk-jockeys cops on patrol. If the officers who are sitting on their behind at a desk all day are put on full-time patrol, this will greatly deter crime in the City.