KEN KIRSCHENBAUM, ESQ
ALARM - SECURITY INDUSTRY LEGAL EMAIL NEWSLETTER / THE ALARM EXCHANGE
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Seattle, WA to require video or audio alarm verification / ISC Private free meeting
September 23, 2024
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Seattle, WA to require video or audio alarm verification
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Ken
NMC got a letter yesterday from SPD letting us know that the City of Seattle is no longer going to respond to unverified burglar alarms as of October 1,, 2024. They will only respond to alarms with video or audio verification, or to panic alarms. They DID NOT share this information with the industry, so it was quite a shock for vested players to get this two week notice. This lack of notice is giving the industry virtually no time to provide solutions to their customers. This could drive wide spread attrition in Seattle unless accounts can quickly be upgraded to video verification, or moved to guard service.
The industry at large needs to know what’s going on here. There could have been a structured way of discussing this issue and coming up with a solution between the industry, the citizens and the SPD, but they chose to forego that route and give us just two weeks of notice of their intent not to respond.
And yes, as you point out, this could definitely be an opportunity to upgrade, but there are probably 100k monitored accounts in Seattle, or more, and you can only realistically upgrade a small percentage of those with video verification in two weeks. They can also move to guard response, but again, the notice only leaves two weeks to get it all done. There’s just no way to do notifications and upgrades in that amount of time.
Mark Matlock, VP of Sales
NMC
210.376.0876
www.nmccentral.com
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Response
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This is indeed shocking and deeply concerning. I didn’t know Seattle still had a police department; haven’t they been itching to defund the police like a few other cities run by misguided and crooked people?
But this step up in verification is not that surprising, other than it gives two week to implement and I am not sure if alarm dealers or alarm customers know about this.
This is great opportunity for alarm dealers to upgrade their customers, but it can’t be done in two weeks from when the notice went to NMC and presumably other central stations. Maybe the SPD didn’t have enough money to notify dealers so they just sent notice to central stations.
OK let’s get back on track. I’m not going to rehash the argument about false alarms, their cause and how best to seek reduction of those alarms. Let’s just say I believe the overwhelming cause is user error, probably while they are at the premises. Sure defective equipment is also a cause, but if I am a typical alarm customer, most of my alarms are user error.
We have seen false alarm fines, almost all aimed at the end user, sometimes the alarm dealer, but I haven’t heard much about that in while. It could be that alarm companies using the Kirschenbaum Contracts™ simply turn to the contract for reimbursement from the end user.
We have electronic verification, which is a telephone call to the subscriber. That delays response dispatch. In a lot of places it doesn’t matter because the response time is too slow anyway to make a difference and in some places the police put the alarm on such low priority that they never respond to it way too late.
I advised you all that video or audio verification was inevitable and here it is. It seems to me that it is better confirmation of an emergency situation. So my take on this is go notify your customers that technology has evolved since their system was installed and much more is available to add to their security.
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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
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