Re: central station monitoring in US/Canada?

[andrew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Andrew Gabriel)]

In article <gvh7ue$mll$03$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
	Toxx <Toxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
>
> I've a question about central station monitoring.
>
>
> Here in Germany a central station monitoring also means that guards of
> the alarm company drive to your premise to verify your alarm and then
> call the police if there was obviously a burglar.
>
> How is it handled in US/Canada?
>
> Does the central station monitoring only call up the premise to check
> for false alarm an the send the police?

In UK, it seems to vary by police area a bit.

The alarm needs to be verified before they'll put in a high
priority callout. That can be by the alarm itself, e.g. by
having two non-overlapping zones trigger, or by having some other
independant verification, such as a phone call, or have the monitoring
station listen in to the premises if the alarm has that facility.
Alarm needs to meet certain minimum standards too to be used for
police/fire callout (and I'm going to be out-of-date on exactly
what those are today), although not for just keyholder or security
company callout.

In London, my observation is the police do seem to get notification
of unverified alarms too (so fast it must be automatic), and if
there is an available car nearby, it comes round immediately (usually
before any phone call to verify), but I suspect they don't drop
everything else to do this if it's unverified. If a neighbor calls
the police emergency number too with confirmation of sighting, that
will turn an unverified call from the monitoring station into a
verified call as far as the police are concerned.

3 false alarms in a rolling 12 month period loses you high priority
police response for 12 months from the alarm alone, although
verification independant of the alarm monitoring company will still
get you a high priority police response.

--
Andrew Gabriel
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