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Item No. 22 <br />memo�andum <br />TO: City Council <br />John Godwin, City Manager <br />FROM: Bob Hundley, Chief of Police <br />SUBJECT: AMENDING THE EMERGENCY ALARM ORDINANCE <br />DATE: January 28th 2013 <br />BACKGROIJND: Burglary and robbery alarms are considered an asset to the prevention of <br />criminal activity. Unfortunately, false alarms become a burden to the resources of law <br />enforcement for the entire community. <br />In 1985, the city council enacted an ordinance regarding emergency alarm systems in the city of <br />Paris. The ordinance provided for a permitting process, a permit fee, a certain number of alarms <br />to be responded to before charges being assessed for that response. The ordinance encompassed <br />fire, EMS and police response to emergency alarms and was administered by the fire department. <br />There were complaints about the ordinance from the business community and evidently the <br />enforcement and adherence to the ordinance waned. There has not been any enforcement of the <br />ordinance that I am aware of for the past 25 or so years. <br />STATUS OF ISSUE: The police department responded to 2,137 alarms in 2009. In 2010 we <br />responded to 2,081 alarms and 2,222 alarm responses in 2011. As of December 16'h of this year, <br />the department has responded to 1,881. Over 95% of these alarms are false. This high number of <br />false alarms creates a drain on police resources. Officers are responding to false alarms in which <br />someone has forgotten an alarm code, have a malfunctioning alarm or is failing to maintain their <br />system. We make a conservative estimate of wasting a minimum of 1200 man hours a year. <br />Looking at actual responses in 2012, there are approximately 28 alarms sites that would have <br />been in violation or close to violation of the proposed amended ordinance. Of those, we have <br />one site that has 94 responses. <br />The requested amendments to the original alarm ordinance allows for the police department to <br />manage this ordinance. Here are the most important aspects of the requested amendment: <br />• Alarms are required to be registered with the police department, but no fee is charged. <br />14G <br />