Legal Brief: Has the Alarm Industry Heeded its Wake-Up Call?

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How verified response can be the path to building back its partnership with law enforcement.

Bill Gates once said that “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

Alarm company owners and executives can certainly learn a lot from unhappy end-customers, but there are other stakeholders that they may be overlooking: Law enforcement.

The traditional business model of the private alarm industry was built on the back of law enforcement; however, the high false alarm rate in many communities has undermined that business model and continues to threaten it. This has led some jurisdictions to impose far more rigid regulatory schemes, including significant fines, cancellation of alarm permits, refusal to dispatch first responders, etc.

The Wake-Up Call

Absent some form of verification of the alarm condition, many in law enforcement have simply stopped giving credence to alarms. One of the more notable examples of this came six years ago in Sandy Springs, Ga., which in 2019 amended its alarm ordinance to require alarm monitoring companies to provide “true verification” through audio, video or in-person verification, and prior to calling the police and attempting a dispatch.