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From: pacolley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Colley)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Burglar Alarm Problems
Message-ID: <12591@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 90 20:13:55 GMT
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 678, Message 5 of 10


In article <12479@accuvax.nwu.edu> ndallen@contact.uucp (Nigel Allen)
writes:

>Walter Kemmerer describes receiving strange calls at five-minute
>intervals that turned out to originate from a fried alarm system.

>It is probably a bad idea to rely upon an alarm system that calls 911
>itself. In Toronto, the police will not respond to computer-generated
>emergency calls because of the large number of false alarms.

As I recall the announcement a couple of years ago, they announced
that they would stop responding after a certain number of false
alarms, something like two in a one-year interval, not that they
wouldn't respond at all.


Paul
  pacolley@violet.waterloo.edu or .ca


[Moderator's Note: In Chicago, the Fire Department continues to
respond to each automatic fire alarm -- false or not. However they
send bills to companies which generate 'frequent' false alarms, to the
tune of $550-575 per thirty minutes of service: responding,
investigating and returning to Quarters. An expensive lesson, eh?
Likewise, the police respond to automatic alarms. Our city officials
said they have no intention of jeopardizing a citizen actually in
distress because of a history of malfunctioning alarms at the same
location. Instead, the offending alarm owner is sued or fined by the
city after the second or third time around.  PAT]