Community Oriented Policing Services: False Burglar Alarms. Problem-Oriented Guides for Police Problem-Specific Guides Series No. 5.

摘要

In the United States in 1998, police responded to approximately 38 million alarm activations, at an estimated annual cost of $1.5 billion. Most of the activations were burglar alarms. This guide examines current police responses and presents alternative strategies to address the false alarm dilemma. Purchasers of an alarm system expect a police response if the alarm is activated, even though they bought the system from a private alarm company with no link to a police department. The vast majority of alarm callsbetween 94 and 98 percent are false (higher in some jurisdictions). In other words, reliability of alarms, which can be measured using these false rates, is generally between 2 and 6 percent. Nationwide, false alarms account for 10 to 25 percent of all calls to police. In the United States alone, 'solving the problem of false alarms would by itself relieve 35,000 officers from providing an essentially private service.'