Why intruder alarms benefit the police

01 Feb 10

Emergency calls from intruder alarms represent less than 2 per cent of the total calls responded to by the police service in England and Wales, and that number has been decreasing year upon year for some time now.

This was demonstrated at the end of last year when the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) released figures showing a 13.9 per cent reduction in police attendance to false alarms in 2009 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Looking back over the years, it was in the 1950s that the police service first invested a huge amount of time employing hundreds of policemen as Crime Prevention Officers.

Crime Prevention Officers

These officers promoted the need for the public to be more security conscious and take appropriate steps to protect their property, which encouraged interest in electronic and physical security to soar.

This increase enabled the police service to review traditional policing methods and move the patrol officer away from the ‘beat’.

Previous to this the officer would check all premises, try doors and look for open windows as he patrolled.

However, the advent of alarms meant that he no longer needed to do this as, if an attempted break-in happened, the bells would ring as a deterrent and he would then be summoned by a good neighbour or the alarm transmitter itself.

Steady increase

Throughout the 1990s the number of intruder alarms was steadily increasing, and by 2006 the number of remotely monitored alarms had virtually doubled from 650,000 to just under 1.2 million.

Reported burglaries peaked at just under 1.4 million a year but by 2006 had steadily reduced to just over half of that number. This brought great benefits for the police.

The administrative time saved by recording and documenting fewer burglaries is significant to the service as well as the operational time of officers, detectives and crime scene officers, all of whom would have been involved in investigating each offence.

Furthermore, the significant growth in security has also enabled the service to reorganise and redirect resources in other ways. As previously mentioned, the police used to employ hundreds of employees as Crime Prevention Officers but with the introduction of intruder alarms, forces have been able to disband their Crime Prevention Units and transfer the officers back to other operational tasks creating a huge cost saving.

Benefits and savings

It should also be noted that some police forces employed their own Technical Alarm Inspectors, but with the development of intruder alarm standards, these positions have virtually been eliminated, creating yet another benefit and saving for the police.

When considering what intruder alarms have accomplished, tributes must be paid to the technology. Looking back 40 years the quality of product and installation standards seem somewhat amateurish when compared to today’s standards, as indeed were the signalling methods then employed.

It was only in the major cities that Alarm Monitoring Stations existed because of the cost of renting direct telephone lines. In some rural areas a direct line connection could be made straight into the police station but the majority of systems relied on the auto dialling 999 machines to connect to the emergency telephone network.

These systems, though adequate in their day, soon became swamped by the massive growth in the market and there was a need for the police to amalgamate and centralise their communications.

Digital Communicator

With the introduction of the Digital Communicator, the police service was able to make the decision to stop receiving alarm calls unless they were routed through an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC).

This had two immediate benefits. Firstly, it helped the police save on resources but more importantly it allowed alarms and their administration to be managed by the ARC.

The Metropolitan Police, who had then, as they still have today, the largest concentration of alarms in the force area, devised the ‘Unique Reference Number’ (URN) scheme to speed up the communication process between the ARC and their own command and control room.

Standards and protocols

The security industry then worked in conjunction with the police to draw up a series of standards and protocols to manage alarm event handling and false alarms.

This created vast improvements and where once 300,000 intruder alarms created over one million calls a year, we now have the scenario where over one million systems generate less than 300,000 calls.

The standards and protocols that have been put in place for intruder alarms have now become a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the majority of systems in use are of an old standard, which will automatically be updated if the system's performance drops below the acceptable level.

Alarms have already proved to be a major benefit to the police and with ongoing work to further improve the technology, intruder alarms will only continue to bring huge benefits in protecting premises and assisting the police.

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