KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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More comment on Cancel/Aborts and the Civil Case against the CS / webinar registration
February 28, 2022
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Webinars Schedule: See below for details and Registration
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Webinars:
March 1, 2022:        All-in-One Operations and Accounting Software for Security Integrators
March 8, 2022.         Recruiting, hiring and retaining field talent
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More comment on Cancel/Aborts and the Civil Case against the CS from article on February 14, 2022
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Ken,
          This is a complicated topic, and the devil is always in the details, so I am including details as necessary.
          When you look at these cases or examples, they all have one thing in common and that is you have law enforcement and the home or business owner in the same place at the same time and neither knows the other is there.  It’s easy to understand how some of these horrific outcomes come to be, both parties may be armed, both are assuming the other person is a bad guy and when the proverbial stuff hits the fan there are times when people get seriously injured or death occurs. It’s tragic and we as an industry can do a lot to reduce these types of dangerous interactions.
          The information below is a personal opinion gleaned from 40 + years in the business almost 20 of that specifically in the monitoring center space so I have just a little insight on this problem. Additionally, some of the numbers I am quoting are from a broad range of sources and I believe they are a good representation of the industry at large but like a lot of things your mileage may vary, and your specific operations might be different which means you should evaluate your SOP [standard operating procedure] as necessary to accommodate the differences.
          Abort/Cancels/Open After Alarm/Valid Card Read/Friendly Person Onsight, all of these are signals or data points to let the monitoring center know that there is someone on site that has valid credentials or is specifically allowed to be there. In my opinion we as an industry should NEVER be dispatching law enforcement on alarms that have these modifiers; we should also be cancelling the initial call for service if there was one or at the very least calling back the responders and advising them that there are authorized people onsite. Centers that use these messages along with pragmatic SOPs effectively clear close to 90% of all intrusion alarms coming in and they never get dispatched on.
          As it relates to the failed cs test which I am assuming was really a panel that had a supervised communication path and that path failed thus generating a communication failure you can apply the same logic. Normally only high-risk or UL Burg accounts should have law enforcement responses to communication failures and law enforcement should only be sent when the system is armed, you could apply rules to say if the communications return to normal cancelling the response could be appropriate or at least let the responders know and certainly notifying those on the call list.
          I also want to comment on some of the comments regarding always requiring passwords even when a proper code was entered into the system, approximately 25 percent of all dispatches the subscriber was not able to produce a password over the phone, they either forgot it or were never given one and that is on top of 70%+ of all outbound calls are not answered.  This is a significant problem, if I could go to law enforcement tomorrow and tell them overnight, I could stop 25 % of the alarm traffic do you think that would go a long way?
          We must get smarter about this; we must make sure that those who believe that their risk for ambush is high enough they should know what their duress code is at the keypad, and they know what their verbal duress code is at the monitoring center is;  these are tools that are available to subscribers to help protect themselves that if used properly will ultimately get a better, faster and more accurate response. Many subscribers may think they are not at risk and will not use them, but many will because they have determined that it’s important to them.
          Centers and dealers also need to get smarter on how they communicate with subscribers. With over seventy percent of all calls going unanswered we must look at other solutions, things like SMS Text Messages and push notifications to mobile app are all now normal ways the world communicates with businesses and these need to be used as part of your everyday SOP. Centers also need ways to recover forgotten passwords for people, while not getting into how it can be done think about how easy it is to deal with a lost password in any other industry; we should be the same or better.
          One of things the alarm industry brings to the table compared to other solutions is we have people behind the scenes working these alarms, they all have brains, train them think though these processes and complex scenarios in your SOP and automate as much as possible so that we can potentially avoid some of pitfalls we have experienced in the past.
          I know its long but to sum it up, we need to think through every SOP and consider are you going to knowingly put law enforcement and a home or business owner in the same place and the same time and neither knows, if you are, then re-think your strategy so preferably law enforcement doesn’t even show up or that at very least one party knows the other is there or on the way.
          OK, I am off my soapbox
Morgan Hertel
VP of Technology and Innovation
Rapid Response Monitoring
877-553-4531
www. rrms.com
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Response
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          Thanks for your informed opinion on this difficult matter.  Some would say that resolution runs from no First Responder response to concrete signal verification before dispatch.  Without statistics to back me up I would think that technology is improving rapidly to deal with signal verification, from call verification, cameras, audio and runner service.  We’ll never get rid of human error or customer’s budget for security services. 
See you at ISC
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Webinars:  Registration - sign up today
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Webinars
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Webinar Title:  All-in-One Operations and Accounting Software for Security Integrators
When:  March 1, 2022 12 PM ET
Topic Details:  Software platform created specifically for the security installer industry. FieldHub tackles some of the thorniest operational arenas that other platforms leave behind, including RMR management and inventory tracking, all on a robust, native general ledger platform to keep your revenue and expenses in sync.  Learn how FieldHub provides a single system to manage leads and proposals through project and field service management, inventory, recurring/deferred revenue management, and full accounting.
Presenter:  Miles Fawcett, CEO FieldHub Inc. miles@fieldhub.com   Phone: 202.417.8196
Hosted by:  Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq.,
Who should attend:   Company owners, CEOs, CFOs, Manager, back office personnel who work with management software
Register Here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6859015638805983246
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Webinar Title:  Recruiting, hiring and retaining field talent
When:  March 8, 2022 12 PM ET
Topic Details:  Even before the pandemic, hiring and retaining field talent in the security industry was growing increasingly difficult.  This webinar will explore the best ways to find talent, prequalify them and develop enthusiasm to consider joining your team as well as how to quickly determine if a candidate’s psychomotor skills match their resume. Webinar will discuss skill matrixes and why they are valuable tools to incentivize and retain talent, help improve morale and promote consistent, transparent compensation.
Presenter:  Peter Goldring, SET, NICET #143428 Fire Alarm Systems, Level IV, ACFE Certified Fraud Examiner.  Peter M. Goldring Consulting LLC Phone  516-640-1410   peter@goldringprotection.com   www.goldringprotection.com
Hosted by:  Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq.,
Who should attend:   Company owners, CEOs, CFOs, Manager, Human Resource Personnel
Register Here: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7491717510381999116
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Ken Kirschenbaum,Esq
Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum PC
Attorneys at Law
200 Garden City Plaza
Garden City, NY 11530
516 747 6700 x 301
ken@kirschenbaumesq.com
www.KirschenbaumEsq.com