How much do you pay for an Alarm Company?

[jlee]

If the police see the window is broken, if they look around and don't notice any problem its a false alarm to them. Depending on the area the police may never even get out of their car

Alarm plus broken window = false alarm?

I'm going to disagree with you there, at least from my experience. I'm sorry that your local department sucks.

 

[mikeford]

Not true. Robbery/Panic get responses always also as long as some additional verification is given burglary calls will be responded too. I get called by my monitoring company after the police are called on my cell phone. I have cameras at the house. If I log in and verify people are in/breaking in my house the San Jose Police would roll out.

http://www.sjpd.org/records/Verified_Response.html

The auto caller type of alarms get ignored, the person calling type don't.

Money talks.

Dogs make great alarms, but aren't cheap. Guy I knew in the wholesale jewelry business had 10ft chain link fences around his house and when somebody walked toward it at least two dogs would hit that fence at a run acting very interested coming out to greet the intruder.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I never considered the fact that fugitives might purposely trigger your system then run off though, if they keep doing it and you're gone eventually the cops may stop going because it's always a false alarm.

"Fugitives"? Huh?

That would take a lot of work and a lot of planning, just to burgle a home. Not to mention the possibility of being either caught or shot during one of those purposeful "false alarm" attempts. It would really have to be worthwhile to go through all of that. I'm guessing you don't have any Picassos or Monets hanging in your drawing room.

 

[mikeford]

What some of you kids may not recall is that in the early days of motion detectors false alarms were VERY common. Factory I worked at had a bunch, turned out the AC cycling sometimes got some handing paper patterns moving if they were in just the right spot on a rack.

Maybe hard for some of you to grasp, but a window can be broken sufficient to trigger the alarm, but not sufficient to easily notice.

 

[mikeford]

"Fugitives"? Huh?

That would take a lot of work and a lot of planning, just to burgle a home. Not to mention possibility of being either caught or shot during one of those purposeful "false alarm" attempts. It would really have to be worthwhile to go through all of that. I'm guessing you don't have any Picassos or Monets hanging in your drawing room.

You don't need a lot of Monet to get robbed. Somebody with access, cleaning people whatever notices some valuables and tips the thief on the location.

The false alarm trick gets used on vacation homes or when people are gone for extended times. People don't have to be "real" rich to have $10k of easy to steal items, jewelry, phones, etc.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Some people don't even do it for the value of the goods they steal, but just for the thrill and to mess people's lives up. Typically these are the type of people that will microwave your cat or trash your house or even set it on fire.

Could be some of these random acts are also gang initiations and what not, but I think they're more just random than anything. Typically teenagers with nothing better to do.