Why Police ignore Alarms

To our existing customers:

If you already have our alarms, we're not getting rid of them anytime soon. We serve a mixture of old and new customers on this website. If you are looking at our alarm systems and are new to SCW, please be advised that if you are primarily interested in an alarm system because of the threat of breaking and entering, we now recommend our remote guarding service over our an alarm, especially if you are in a major metropolitan area. If your main purpose for an alarm is smoke, flood, leak, freeze, cold, heat, smoke, fire, or carbon monoxide detection or the panic or safecare button functions, than that product is still your best bet. If you are primarily concerned with breaking and entering, however, we now recommend our remote guarding visual verification service.

What changed: the rise of visual verification laws

Many local or state regulations now mandate businesses or residences utilize security camera systems with video verification capabilities to minimize false alarms when it comes to breaking and entering. (Please note, this applies to burglar alarms only - fire alarms, carbon monoxide poising alarms, and panic buttons are not affected by these laws). The first visual verification law originated in Atlanta but many other places including Salt Lake City, Dallas, Madison, and San Jose have passed them. We expect this trend to continue. Even in areas that have not enacted these laws, police often ignore burglar alarms. Delaying responding to or outright ignoring them, primarily because of the high rate of false alarms triggered by pets, weather, or user error, is becoming more common in areas even without these laws.

Remote Guarding as Alarm Replacement

If your main purpose of an alarm is alerting the police to a potential break in, we now recommend our remote guarding visual verification service. This service does not require an alarm at all, using surveillance cameras, AI, and remote operators to keep an eye on things while your business is closed. Those operators can be instructed to call the police when the observe breaking and entering, but also truancy and vandalism. Overall, remote guarding is the much better option for businesses, governments and organizations.