Someone recently submitted a question they found online. We thought that many other businesses may have same question, so we gave it to our president to answer.
Question: “Has the focus of an alarm company’s objective been lost due to police being dispatched? What is the intent of an alarm system? How does an alarm best secure the premises?
The industry has battled to stop false alarms to the point that gun shops are now losing firearms, largely due to the sensitivity of motions being turned down too far, or placed in a position to prevent false alarms. The main focus of many alarm providers is no longer to protect the client’s property.
Police hate false alarms and clients are usually assessed huge fees for false alarms and are required by ordinances to respond to the property. This has resulted in the industry placing priority on preventing a false alarms over protecting the property. Burglars have learned to crawl on their bellies, move around motions and find means to not be detected. This recently resulted in a firearm shop in Tucson, Az. losing a show case full of hand guns. After the shop owner was fined for repeated false alarms, the alarm company turned down the sensitivity and relocated the motion detector. The burglar crawled behind the counter and cleaned it out.”
Answer: “The alarm industry’s objective has absolutely been lost over the years. Alarm companies started to protect buildings from intrusion. They now try to protect themselves from false alarms. Technology has changed and most alarm companies have not. When the alarm industry started, the leading technology was motion detectors. Unfortunately, technology has advanced, but motion detectors have remained the go to option for most alarm companies. Motion detectors are dumb devices. When the device is triggered, an alarm goes off. It doesn’t matter if that trigger is a pet, person, sunlight, or anything else. The detector cannot think, it simply triggers an alarm when activated. This has led to a large spike in false alarms. A problem that causes headaches for businesses and law enforcement alike. The industry has tried to “solve” this problem in a couple ways. In some cases, alarm companies will simply use more detectors in hopes that many dumb devices will somehow become smart. In other cases, alarm companies will dial down the sensitivity of the motion detectors. This may reduce false alarms, but it also compromises the security of the building.
Sonitrol does not agree with this line of thinking. You should not have to sacrifice security for the convenience of fewer false alarms. This is why we have built our company around a different kind of technology, Sound Detection. Break ins make noise and this noise triggers the alarm. When an alarm is triggered, our monitoring professionals can actually listen-in to determine whether a break-in is in progress, or whether a false alarm has occurred. If it is a break-in, we immediately dispatch police and relay real-time information to the responding officers. If it is a false alarm, we simply reset the system without bothering you or the police. Intruders cannot crawl around our system on their bellies to avoid getting caught. Actually, in many cases, we detect intruders before they can even gain access to the building!”
-Mike Wanstreet, President of Sonitrol Tri-County
