Effects of Verified Response

Police firmly believe that the Verified Response Policy is the right policy. Police Dispatch rates are normally reduced by an average of 70% after a Verified Response policy is put in place. Around 70% of jurisdictions show the burglary rate declines, while approx 30% show increases. Many claim that they are able to free officers time and respond more quickly to verified burglaries. Police report that where the policy is put into place, initial public concern quickly dissipates through education. In a post 9/11 world, and despite budget cuts, many police departments have been forced to take on additional law enforcement and Homeland Security duties.

In Los Angeles, the Police Chief says that "if a house is not protected by private guard response, the reality is we’re not going to be coming with lights and sirens on unless there is human verification." The downside of guard services is that guards cannot carry weapons and do not have any powers of arrest. That said, some guard companies say they're increasingly trying to convince customers to opt out of police response.

Whatever your views on the effects of the policy, the security industry has an obligation to assist the police in any way possible to help combat crime. The use of technology to "bond" legacy burglar alarm panels to Internet enabled security cameras is one way in which IP Alarms intend to help.

In order to achieve a verified response, it requires the services of a highly trained monitoring operator. Many Central Stations are realising the importance of having their operators visually verify alarm events before contacting the police and this is where the IP Alarms Verified Response software component comes in.

Pre-Alarm Technology

The Linksys Alarm Monitoring Solution has the ability to communicate a pre-alarm message to the Verified Response component on your server to overcome the limitations imposed by old dialler capture technology in use on the vast majority of legacy alarm panels. Alarm signals sent to a Central Station in the Contact ID format can take anywhere between 10 to 15 seconds - even over the Internet. This is considered far too long an interval when IP cameras rely on an alarm signal received at the monitoring server to trigger them into recording mode.

The Linksys IP Alarm Monitoring Solution reduces this time to around one tenth of a second for recording to commence. The Verified Response software takes care of where to store the images so that they are easily imported into your existing automation system.