With what the city spent on responding to false alarms last
year, it could have hired a full-time police officer, Gilroy Police
Chief Denise Turner said.
With what the city spent on responding to false alarms last year, it could have hired a full-time police officer, Gilroy Police Chief Denise Turner said. As a result, Gilroy’s City Council discussed ideas to improve its policy on responding to alarms Monday.
“There’s really no consequence to that (home or business) owner unless we have a really good false alarm deterrent,” Turner said.
Turner told the council that it had to respond to 1,360 alarm activations in 2009, 99 percent of which were false. Officers spent 533 hours responding to those calls, while 272 hours were spent dispatching calls and 960 hours were spent on clerical work. The cost to respond to those calls last year totaled $145,965, Turner said.
Although the council already has an ordinance in place to respond to false alarms, Turner said it has not been effective. As a result, the majority of the council on Monday agreed to continue to charge $35 for a first-year alarm permit while implementing a new $20 annual permit renewal fee for subsequent years.
They also agreed to fine alarm owners $195 for their third false alarm. Currently, alarm owners get three free passes before they are charged the $195 fee. Turner planned to incorporate the council’s input into a formal document that the council will vote on at an unspecified later time.
Under current policy, the city is allowed to fine someone up to $500 for violations, but that has never happened, Turner said.
Turner described 38 companies as having “chronic activation problems.” Police had to respond to one of those companies 58 times, she said.
The city has not collected fines from 52 companies, two of which have since closed, Turner said. In all, the city collected $6,520 in false alarm-related fines last year, far short of associated expense, she said.
Police would not provide lists of either the alarm owners with “chronic activation problems” and or the companies that haven’t paid fines. An e-mail from Sgt. Wes Stanford cited Government Code Section 6254(f), which exempts the release of any “records of complaints to, or investigations conducted by, or records of intelligence information or security procedures of … any state or local police agency.” However, he did not specify how the government code applied in this instance, and could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
Sgt. Rick Sung of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department said the department is willing to release information about false alarms if the data is easily and readily available. However, he said the police department may have a legitimate reason for not releasing that data, and he did not want to draw comparisons.
The situation is a particular challenge because police have such a small staff these days, Turner said. Police send at least two officers to respond to each alarm, and there are times when there are only three or four officers on a shift, she said.
In response to such challenges, police plan to refer those who do not pay alarm fines over to collections, Turner said. In addition, the city plans to not renew business licenses for businesses who owe alarm-related fines.
Still, Turner said other cities have found success by implementing annual alarm fees and increasing fines, and she proposed that the City of Gilroy consider a similar approach.
For instance, the city of Salinas has lowered its false alarm rate by 50 to 75 percent by increasing alarm fees, according to a city staff report. Monterey County and the city of El Cerrito have also found success by hiking alarm fees, the report said.
Turner also suggested using a third-party vendor to oversee a false alarm management program – similar to the way the city handles pet licensing.
Although most council members favored additional fees, they also wanted to make sure the city focused on the biggest offenders.
“We’ve had this stuff on the books, and the (violators) that we have, we don’t collect from,” Mayor Al Pinheiro said.
He indicated that the false alarm problem was not new to Gilroy.
“Some of us have been through this,” Pinheiro said. “This is dejà vu all over again.”
Council members Perry Woodward and Craig Gartman both opposed implementing a new annual renewal fee, which would apply to current alarm owners as well as new ones.
“I think that you’re on the right track,” Woodward told Turner. “I think that these 1 percent that are repeat offenders, we need to go after aggressively. (But) I’m not in favor of creating a new administrative burden where we impose a fee or a tax on our residents to pay $20 to somebody in some foreign state at a call center to monitor this program.”
Woodward asked Turner how many false alarms had come from City Hall last year, stressing that “people make mistakes.”
Turner said 98 had came from city properties and 74 came from the Gilroy Unified School District, representing a combined 12 percent of all false alarms.
Woodward also expressed concern that the $56,000 or so that the city would reap annually in licensing fees would be canceled out by the cost of using a third party vendor. However, City Administrator Tom Haglund said a reasonable contracting agreement with a third-party vendor would alleviate that concern.
The one thing that council members agreed upon was tougher enforcement upon those who create false alarms on a regular basis.
“You can’t send officers on a false alarm, and somehow we’ve got to recover the costs back,” Councilwoman Cat Tucker said. “But on the other hand, right now your problem is these repeat offenders, and they should pay.”
