|
Verified Response by security officers is working in Dallas
By John Weekley
Like many cities across the country, Dallas, Texas, was expending huge sums of tax dollars, thousands of hours of police patrol time, needlessly diminishing the useful life of many of its fleet-short squad cars, and slowing response time averages to all police calls as a result of demand from the thousands of false alarms from unattended automated business burglar alarms. With one of the worst crime rates nationwide for cities its size, Dallas police officers in the year 2005 were rushing to respond to approximately 5,000 business false alarms every month; around 60,000 for that year.
To address this crisis, the Dallas City Council in February, 2006, voted to enact an ordinance that required the DPD to first have visual verification from professional security officers or others of an actual burglary before answering an automatic alarm signal � almost 98 percent of which are false alarms. To monitor the effectiveness of Verified Response, the City of Dallas assigned to its Commission on Productivity and Innovation responsibility for tracking and evaluating the actual impact of VR on response times, conservation of police resources, and others measures of success.
After its first full year in effect, Verified Response is working and already showing �very positive results�, according to a report to business groups by Dallas insurance executive and businessman Larry Davis, Chairman of the Commission.
In his letter to Dallas Chambers of Commerce and industry associations, Davis noted that, prior to Verified Response � and according to the Dallas Police Department � �the average time ranged from 35 minutes to 2 hours depending on the high volume of calls� for Dallas police officers to respond to an automated business alarm. �Since implementing VR, the average response time has been less than 17 minutes for an armed security officer to be on-scene�, he adds.
�Even more encouraging is the fact that, before VR � and because of long response times, the DPD rarely apprehended an intruder in the act. With Verified Response, security companies have been able to catch and detain for police several burglary offenders,� Davis writes.
On April 2, Dallas Police Department officials met with the Dallas City Council�s Public Safety Committee to present their experiences with VR after its implementation year, and recommended that the city continue with Verified Response for commercial burglar alarms. Citing a 45% reduction in alarm calls, and savings of over $1.5 million in officer patrol time recaptured and redirected as a result of not answering false alarms, their report credits VR as one of several strategies that have driven down overall crime for three consecutive years.
But, there have been other benefits as well, as shown by recent tracking of VR results in Dallas:
-
Dallas Police Department response times have improved 9.5 percent for calendar year 2006
-
26,000 fewer alarms have freed up the equivalent of 24 DPD officers from an already understaffed department, and recaptured literally thousands of hours of patrol officer time
-
Additional 911 operator time was also recaptured from not having to dispatch officers to false alarm calls
-
In terms of the force multiplier, VR has helped the DPD to put 10-15 percent more cars on the street with no tax increase
While Verified Response is a proven successful strategy for recapture and redirection of valuable police resources previously wasted on false alarms, and was never intended to bring down business burglary rates, it appears having armed professional security officers on-scene at actual break-ins is contributing a positive effect. Against what appears to be a rising tide in parts of North Texas, the Dallas Police Department reports that business burglaries are down an average of .6 percent for 2006, and even more heading into 2007.
Verified Response is currently being used in 24 cities around the country, and being considered in many more as a tool for combating the ongoing flood of false alarm calls and giving police departments more crime fighting capacity.
|
