Hamilton police will no longer respond to burglar alarms without verification

Hamilton police are following suit with a number of Ontario police services in saying they will no longer respond to property security alarms unless there’s proof of a break-in.

Starting Sept. 1, alarm companies in the city will have to verify there is, in fact, “a criminal offence has/is occurring or there is an imminent threat to personal safety” before officers will be deployed, the service said in a statement on Tuesday.

The service is hoping to reduce police responses to better deploy resources to other emergencies, in addition, to ensure home and business owners will not incur fees for a false response.

READ MORE: Toronto police no longer responding to burglar alarms without verification

Verified response is a practice that a number of Ontario police forces have instituted in the past year in the hope of significantly reducing alarms requiring police attendance.

Sgt David LeClair, who oversees Hamilton police’s False Alarm Response Unit, told Global News that officers responded to over 3,000 alarms in 2018 alone, and 95 per cent of them were deemed false. Even with low validity rates, officers treated the alerts as “crimes in progress” and sent “high priority responses,” Le Clair says.

What the change will mean for security companies is they will have to produce audio or video of criminal activity, a witness, or multiple alarm activation points in a sequence which might indicate suspicious activity.

They will then have to provide structured details through a list of questions from 911 operators to confirm a true intrusion alarm.

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Only duress, panic or hold-up style alarms will not require verification, police say.

Since mid-2018, a number of police services across Ontario have been alerting the Canadian Security Association (CANASA) that they would be changing their alarm response policy, requiring the similar verification criteria.

London police informed companies of their Verified False Alarm Response Program (VARP) in January 2018, saying they would have to “verify the existence of a suspected criminal act.”

Meanwhile, Niagara police instituted a similar policy in July 2018, saying businesses would “be required to answer a structured sequence of questions” to confirm an intrusion alarm.

Send two officers Sgt David LeClair

And Toronto police said 97 per cent of alarm calls they received, before instituting a VARP, were false.

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