Re: Commercial Alarm - help

[Nomen Nescio <nobody@xxxxxxxxx>]

>The number of systems in a given area is irrelevant.  The point of
>these systems is to dispatch the police.  If 99% of the time police
>are dipatched because of something other than the thing the damn
>systems were designed to detect, then that's a 99% failure rate.  For
>the love of God, how can you people argue with that.

Let's try it this way.  Suppose the alarm industry set a goal:  cut the
false alarms down to 50% of all dispatches.    Half the time it's a false
alarm, half the time it's a burglar.  Gee, that sounds reasonable, doesn't
it?

But that would mean that the total number of false alarms could not exceed
the total number of burglary attempts at locations with alarms.  No matter
how many alarm systems are in use.  Does it make any sense to equate the
number of false alarms to the number of burglaries?

Of course, ideally the mere presence of an alarm would keep anyone from
ever attempting a burglary, for fear of getting caught.  So the number of
burglary attempts would likely drop as the fear of capture increased.  In
order to maintain that 50% figure, the number of false alarms would also
have to drop by the same amount.  Does it make any sense to expect a
reduction in false alarms because the number of burglaries went down?
Putting it another way, would alarm companies be allowed to have more false
alarms if the number of burglaries increased?

Anywhere there is a large number of alarm systems and a relatively small
number of burglaries, the false alarm percentage will be extremely high,
and there is nothing alarm companies can do about that figure.  If you
believe otherwise, you are expecting nearly all alarm systems  to operate
absolutely flawlessly for indefinite periods of time.  I don't know of any
consumer product that has that kind of reliability.  Do you?