Dialing 911/Monitoring Conflict...

[David Pinero <thedave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've wondered about this for years (even as an alarm monitoring clerk
back in the day).  Recent advertisements on TV by alarm companies have
got me thinking again.

Is it really the *safest* thing to "give up" your residential phone
line to the alarm company in the middle of the night, following an
alarm activation?  One commercial has an alarm monitoring operator
calling a panicked woman to check on the alarm status.  She tells the
operator that "someone just kicked in her door", and so I find myself
thinking that the last thing *I* would want in a situation like that
is to have my alarm system, or a responding monitoring operator,
preventing me from dialing 911 myself.  911 is much more efficient at
tracing the call back to one's exact address and subsequently
responding if the call gets cut off.  By advertising with such
scenarios, an alarm company is essentially telling would-be customers
that it is better to have the process of them injecting theme selves
into a known emergency, than a 911 center.  And I just can't agree
with that.  True, the somewhat unspoken assumption is that you CAN'T
call 911, but the commercials that are prompting me here clearly
demonstrate a scenario where someone could.

Wouldn't it be better that the installation of a secondary phone line
dedicated to the alarm system be mandatory, or that a system only use
radio to communicate in the first place?  Or, perhaps, that monitoring
companies use cell phone call-back numbers instead of fixed line ones?
The alarm company could still contact me for all the benefits usually
associated with that process, but I wouldn't lose the option,
efficiency, or benefits, of calling a 911 center directly.

Dave