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The Spokane County sheriff is calling foul over too many business and residential security alarms crying wolf.
Last year, the sheriff’s office responded to 788 false-alarm calls due to accidentally tripped or faulty security systems. In most of those cases, deputies were taken off the street, and time and resources were wasted with no cost recovery, according to Sheriff Ozzie Knezovich, who addressed Spokane County commissioners Tuesday morning.
The answer, according to sheriff officials, is revamping the current 20-year-old county ordinance dealing with false alarms along with hiring a private company to make sure fines are collected.
“It’s not about raising revenue, it’s about recovering costs,” Knezovich said.
In the city of Spokane Valley and unincorporated county, under the current law, if an alarm goes off at a home or business no fine is levied should it happen twice within a six-month period. If it happens a third time within six months, the fine is $25 plus court fees (about $66). Of that amount, however, the sheriff’s office only receives just over $17 – not enough to pay for the officer’s (many times it’s more than deputy) time and the effort to do the resulting paperwork.
Most of the time, however, the fines are never even collected due to the amount of paperwork involved by the sheriff’s and District Court personnel. Last year, only $5,247 was even billed. That amount should have been over $50,000, according to sheriff’s Lt. Steve Jones, who added that schools are one of the biggest causes of false-alarm calls.
“Schools are not charged for false alarms (under the current ordinance),” Jones said, adding that there were 162 instances in 2008 – 101 from schools in Spokane Valley. “It’s something that our school resource officers have been giving marching orders about. Hopefully, it’s something that isn’t going to continue.”
One of the biggest problems is that when sheriff’s personnel are called out to deal with a tripped alarm, there is often outdated contact information provided to the alarm companies so it is often difficult to reach a business manager or owner.
The sheriff said he’s been impressed by the city of Spokane’s ordinance that requires home owners and businesses with alarms to register annually for $25 apiece with a private, outsourced firm. The registration information includes updated contact names that oftentimes the alarm company doesn’t have. The company can also levy fines directly to the alarm user without involving the sheriff’s office or the court system, Knezovich said.
Commissioner Mark Richard said that, as someone who has an alarm at his home, he wouldn’t be happy paying $25 a year to a private company on top of the service fee already paid to the alarm company.
“Should the average citizen have to pay for someone who is noncompliant? Maybe there’s a more practical way of doing this,” Richard said.
Knezovich said bringing in a separate company to handle the registration and fees is necessary because his staff is overworked as it is.
“Each and every one of my staff already has multiple job duties,” he said. “There is a breaking point. I can’t imagine asking them to do more work with our current manpower levels.”
Jim Emacio, county attorney, said that since a major portion of the calls are coming from Spokane Valley, that city’s government needs to be contacted to update its laws.
“We don’t want to do their work,” he said.
Spokane Valley Police Chief Rick Van Leuven, whose department operates under contract through the sheriff’s office, said he would make a presentation to the City Council at next Tuesday’s meeting.
Van Leuven reiterated that any change to the ordinance is about cost-recovery – not about the work.
“The businesses in the Valley have told me, ‘We don’t want you to stop coming (when alarms are triggered),’” he said. “We just don’t want to spend two and a half hours looking for business owners when we show up.”
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By
Mike Huffman
