Guest guest Posted June 21, 2002 Report Share Posted June 21, 2002 In a message dated 6/21/02 10:04:05 PM Eastern Daylight Time, cwalt8888@... writes: > I say we should wait until the officer(s) are on scene to tell the > dispatcher to call the business. Some officers agree, yet others say to > call before they arrive. I am looking to the group for some input either > way We do not call any locations of alarms until officers arrive on scene. It is our procedure that an officer will actually tell you to call when they arrive at any silent alarm. If they choose to call on their own from their own cell phone.....well, thats their decision. How do I know if the person that answers is legit? Side note: if we get an alarm and they say the resident is onscene requesting pd, my personal procedure (as there is nothing in writing) is to tell the alarm co to recontact and when they get the proper code from the resident, have them call in to us so that we can ask them some questions (hear/see anything, etc). This way we can also tell them what to expect when officer (s) arrive. (ps: Going to APCO!) Toni Wyman, (CTO and Tactical Dispatcher) Gwinnett County Police, GA (just N of HotLanta) Lawrenceville, GA (These are only my opinions, not my agency's, after all they are the government and they have opinions of their own) For liability reasons my posts and opinions are to be reprinted with my permission only. Email to: E911GAL136@... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 21, 2002 Report Share Posted June 21, 2002 The best policy to have on hold up alarms is to go ahead and dispatch the officers. We have generally toned this call out as a hot priority one call. While the dispatcher is giving the call out. somone, usually me as the shift supervisor, was calling the location back. All officers have been advised to treat this as real even until they arrive and find out otherwise. Most of the agencies in Hamilton County, Tennessee follow this same procedure. We have had success with this in catching several armed robbers before they could escape. As stated in his message, you can get valuable information of suspect, vehicle, direction of travel, what the party was armed with and number of suspects before the officers arrive on the scene and they are able to work better in trying to catch the suspects. We only do this with Hold Up alarms to businesses. We do not ever dispatch a hold up alarm to a residence. We treat them as a silent distress or a duress hostage situation, and we do not call back on regular residential alarms at all.. The one thing that a lot of people forget is that these alarms companies will wait sometimes 5 to 10 minutes before calling law enforcement on a silent hold up at a business. We have had the people who have set the alarm off that have actually been robbed call us on 911 before the alarm company even calls. When we did first implement this, there were some officers that did not want us to even call the location for fear that we might tip off the robber that the police were enroute, or create a worse situation if the would be robber were to answer the phone. The majority of statistics show that over 70 percent of all hold up alarms are false due to employees improperly being trained. Malfunctioning or out of date equipment, and poor overall maintenance of the system. Most of the Central Stations are a conglomerate group and answer for more than one company. They may have as many as 5 to 10 people working or as little as 1 or 2 answering a multitude of alarms. ADT and Sonitrol make it priority for their " dispatchers " to dispatch alarms first and worry later about calling in cancels. Which is another subject all together. There does need to be some effort by the Public Safety community to try to get some reforms of the Central Stations done. They more times than often are the main result of complaints called into a department about their response to an alarm at a business.. Riggs former communications supervisor Hamilton County Sheriff's Department Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 21, 2002 Report Share Posted June 21, 2002 In response to your question, I work for 2 agencies, and each is opposite of the other. My primary employment is to have dispatch call and request a manager. The belief is that if there is something going on, you may hear it in the background. Also, the cars are responding emergency traffic until advised differently. If there is a holdup - we have gotten valuable information reference vehicles, direction of travel, discription of suspects and weapons. We also have this response on panic/duress alarms until we find out differently. When we get to the scene, we have to have someone from inside come outside and we have a clothing discription of that person. They still check the location with the person that stepped outside. My secondary employer does not call due to previous deputies (10+ yrs ago) used to have dispatch call the alarm and the deputy would not respond if the person said everything was ok at the scene. The sheriff then banned calling on any alarms at all. Larew Cornelius/Huntersville/son College Police Iredell County Emergency Communications NC911@... _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 22, 2002 Report Share Posted June 22, 2002 In a message dated 6/21/02 9:04:16 PM Central Daylight Time, cwalt8888@... writes: > Our agency has debated at great lengths the policy on response to alarms and > > when the dispatcher should call the business. I say we should wait until > the > officer(s) are on scene to tell the dispatcher to call the business. Our policy is never call the business or residence. Unless you can recognize the voice on the other end, how would you determine they belonged there? We pretty much insist on a keyholder responding, half the time, the alarm company will advise " keyholder will only respond if there is a problem " . Alarms are my pet peeves, because we have so many, and we don't even charge for em. This one business has a darn cat that sets off the alarm at least 4 times a week, and yes, we have to respond each time.. One time years ago, we did not have a deputy available for a residencial alarm. I broke the rule and called the res, and talk to the supposed home owner.. I ask him his socical security number, he gave me his soc immediately. so I gave myself a case number.. lol On hold up bank alarms, we have to do a broadcast on all frequencies, and call the bank, and go thru this procedure to determine if its real or not.. if you would like the procedure we go thru when calling the bank, email me off-list and I'll get it to ya. It works real well. jamie in iowa Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 22, 2002 Report Share Posted June 22, 2002 " I say we should wait until the officer(s) are on scene to tell the dispatcher to call the business. Some officers agree, yet others say to call before they arrive. " For my county, calling the business depends on the agency making the response. We wait till an officer has advised he/she is on scene when the alarm is in a police department jurisdiction. However, this is not always the case with our sheriff office. We have the 2nd largest county (land mass) in Kansas. It could take 25 to 30 minutes for an officer to arrive, depending on where they were at the time of call. Because of the time factor, if a deputy requests we call the business before they arrive, we do place the call. Once side note, we won't cancel the response just because the business says everything is OK. We will only cancel IF the alarm service calls back. This procedure is followed regardless of the type of alarm. One business owner got very upset with me one day because he had requested we cancel, but the alarm service did not call us with the request. He called us back after the officers left. I told him " I have no way of knowing if you are the person you claim to be. " I went on to explain the alarm services set up codes to indicate everything is fine. This is the way they verify your identity. He did understand. Bob Sawyer, Hutchinson, KS Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 23, 2002 Report Share Posted June 23, 2002 In a message dated 6/22/02 12:28:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time, CRiggs8136@... writes: > The one thing that a lot of people forget is that these alarms companies > will > wait sometimes 5 to 10 minutes before calling law enforcement on a silent > hold up at a business. We have had the people who have set the alarm off > that > have actually been robbed call us on 911 before the alarm company even > calls. We have had that happen so many times its almost laughable how useless the alarm co is, or the person giving the directive to the alarm co's. This brings up another issue too. We have had several bouts with burglaries to drug stores (CVS and Eckerd mostly since last fall. I discovered while talking to one of the Eckerds dispatchers that even in the middle of the night, they call the store first (these busn's are not 24hr). In my discussion with him I politely explained that due to this procedure we are not getting there fast enough and if it is after hours, they needed to call pd first. If they know the busn is closed, when then.......enough said, especially knowing they are getting hit often. They were almost always front smash and grabs and this meant more when the alarm was coming in from front motion. The stores were also then advised by mgmt that they might want to repair their surveillance cameras so that they might actually tape the crime in progress.... Just a thought......... Toni Wyman, (CTO and Tactical Dispatcher) Gwinnett County Police, GA (just N of HotLanta) Lawrenceville, GA (These are only my opinions, not my agency's, after all they are the government and they have opinions of their own) For liability reasons my posts and opinions are to be reprinted with my permission only. Email to: E911GAL136@... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 23, 2002 Report Share Posted June 23, 2002 >On hold up bank alarms, we have to do a broadcast on all frequencies, and >call the bank, and go thru this procedure to determine if its real or not.. >if you would like the procedure we go thru when calling the bank, email me >off-list and I'll get it to ya. It works real well. > >jamie in iowa We have a procedure also, but 9 times out of 10 the employees never remember what the procedure is. . .or they don't train the new employees. We have even tried to have a refersher program once a year but they started complaining that they don't want to come back out after hours for a refresher program. It is a great idea though, so if anyone is interested just email me and I will be more than happy to send it out. Roscommon County (MI) Central Dispatch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 24, 2002 Report Share Posted June 24, 2002 In a message dated 6/22/2002 11:18:51 PM Central Daylight Time, E911bell@... writes: > Our policy is never call the business or residence. Unless you can > recognize > the voice on the other end, how would you determine they belonged there? > We > pretty much insist on a keyholder responding, half the time, the alarm > company will advise " keyholder will only respond if there is a problem. " > Alarms are my pet peeves, because we have so many, and we don't even charge > for em. Alarms are one of my pet peeves, as well. If we get too many alarms from the same business in a short time frame, the old " keyholder will only respond if there is a problem " won't cut. I insist on a keyholder responding. A few times of being awakened at 3am and told to come to their business usually does the trick and they will get the alarm fixed. I am quite sure that charging a fee (which we do not currently do, but are looking into) would also solve the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 24, 2002 Report Share Posted June 24, 2002 > I've just learned to let the keyholders roll off my > back. They don't want to be bothered then they can't crap on me > when they call in the a.m. and I let them know that. Why get > annoyed over the small stuff (and most of it is really small > stuff!). > > Burlington, VT, Police/Fire Dispatcher ******************************************************************** Do you work for a state agency? Was looking at your email address and wondered how alarms worked going through state dispatch. Or maybe just using their email system for your agency? We have but 1 alarm. Fire alarm at one of our district offices. That's it. Local county & city agencies do all the alarm stuff. Iowa State Patrol Communications, Cedar Rapids Werling NØXZY scott@... http://www.ia.net/~anachamb/pumpkin.html http://www.jonescountytourism.com http://www.earthsat.com/wx/dotwx/winter_roads.html I have a new address for my Olympic photos. http://www.photoisland.com Login: ridgeroader password: blah Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 24, 2002 Report Share Posted June 24, 2002 The majority of the state of VT (for now) are on a shared cad/rms system - so the majority of our e-mail addresses end in .dps.state.vt.us I'm at the University of Vermont in Burlington, is at Burlington PD. Diane G. UVM PD > Do you work for a state agency? Was looking at your email address and > wondered how alarms worked going through state dispatch. Or maybe just > using their email system for your agency? > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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