Here's how police in Cornwall, Ont. are cutting down on false alarm calls

The Cornwall Police Service has implemented a new way to respond to alarm calls in the city, intended to cut down on the hundreds of false alarm calls they receive throughout the year.

As of May 1, the service now uses the Verified Alarm Response Program (VARP), a tool that the force hopes will save valuable time and money.

"We've noticed that 99.7 per cent of our alarm call responses are false activations or unfounded complaints," said Insp. Chad Maxwell, inspector of field operations. "It's a different way of operating that we have for the last approximately 25 years."

False alarm calls can include a person inputting a wrong code into a security system, curtains moving from an open window, or even a wild animal wandering around a property. 

Cornwall police said they respond yearly to more than 600 false alarm calls, representing three per cent of their total call volume.

Maxwell says the new program works by verifying every alarm call before they send an officer to the site.

"Approximately 26 minutes is spent per officer on each of those calls, which represents a significant amount of resources," Maxwell said. 

"That is a tremendous amount of police resources that are wasted on non-essential calls," he added. "We feel that could be better used towards traffic enforcement, pro-active policing, emergency call response, in all those areas."

Alarm monitoring stations are now responsible to confirm an alarm call in one of four ways: by video, by audio, having an alarm at multiple activation points, or a witness on scene observing a crime being committed. 

"That being said, we still respond to panic, duress, emergency alarms and medic-alert," Maxwell said. "Those things will all be responded to with a Priority 1 response."

Before, businesses or homeowners could be fined for a false alarm call. Now that fine could go to the alarm company, Maxwell said. 

But some Cornwall businesses worry that with the move, their monthly rates from alarm companies could increase.

"I have not heard anything about rates changing," said Patrick Straw, Executive Director of the Canadian Security Association, a not-for-profit which represents the security industry across Canada.

"Most of the monitoring stations were already implementing themselves for the same reason, either two-step, where two sensors had to go off for an alarm, and then they had to phone the premises just to verify it," Straw said. 

"It was to their advantage to make the efficiency of alarm response a lot higher," he added. 

Straw says with all the new technology now available, it's much easier to confirm an alarm call.

"It's just good business," he said. "You have happy customers if they don't have false alarms and good companies install good equipment, a big thing is making sure that the end users are trained property."

VARP has been used in other major cities for years, including the Greater Toronto Area, Hamilton, London and Sudbury.

"For the mass majority of alarm systems in businesses and homes, we completely support it," Straw said. "We work very closely with the police services because reducing false alarms is their reason for them doing it, and it's something that we also try very hard to accomplish."

"We try as much as possible to screen the potential of an actual alarm before it even goes to the police service," he added. 

"I do believe it's a win for the business owners," added Maxwell. "I believe it frees up resources for a response for their needs as well."

"The taxpayers are better served by the reallocation of those resources into proactive policing, proactive traffic enforcement, community safety," he said. "I think that's what the community expects from us."