Re: the police was dispatched to ... the wrong house

[Mike <wholet@xxxxxxxx>]

Leo wrote:
> Few days ago I was out of town, the central alarm station received an
> alarm condition from my house, they reached me by cellphone and
> dispatched the police. The police found no signs of break in. When I
> got back in town I found:
> - no signs of break in, doors / windows locked; alarm panel was ARMED
> and not in an alarm-triggered situation.
> - the list of events stored in the security panel did not include any
> alarms triggered.
>
> I questioned the central station and they confirmed that they received
> an alarm report from my panel - or, we should say, from a panel that
> relayed my account number. However they said that the report did not
> include a caller ID from the phone line the alarm came in.
>
> My questions are:
> -is it possible that some other panel is mistakenly/maliciously
> programmed with my account number?

yes, but if it doesn't happen again it was probably a boo boo by someone
setting up an alarm system

> -shouldn't a GOOD central station have a way of capturing/verifying
> the caller ID of the panel reporting the alarm?

yes

> -what are my options now to prevent any future similar occurence?

lobby your legislature to not let diy's set up monitored alarm system,
and to not let unlicensed companies sell alarm systems.