What Is Priority Police Response – and Why Is It Faster?

False alarms put an unnec­es­sary bur­den on local author­i­ties. To com­bat this prob­lem, in recent years the Toron­to Police Ser­vice took action by ini­ti­at­ing a pol­i­cy called Pri­or­i­ty Police Response to help reduce the num­ber of false alarms occur­ring in the city.

In this post, we look at what Pri­or­i­ty Police Response means and how an ALARM‑i video alarm sys­tem pro­vides the ver­i­fi­ca­tion that author­i­ties need to respond quick­ly to alarm events at your home or busi­ness.

What is Priority Police Response?

Pri­or­i­ty Police Response is a rel­a­tive­ly new pol­i­cy in Toron­to that requires ver­i­fied respons­es for alarms. The new pol­i­cy was announced on Aug. 13, 2018 by the Toron­to Police Ser­vice who stat­ed it would be applied to all bur­glar alarm acti­va­tions. The Pri­or­i­ty Police Response pol­i­cy went into effect on Sept. 10, 2018.

In oth­er words, alarms must now be ver­i­fied as true emer­gen­cies before help arrives. Accept­able ver­i­fied response cri­te­ria for bur­glar alarm acti­va­tions include audio, video, eye­wit­ness­es (either by pri­vate secu­ri­ty or some­one at the scene), or mul­ti­ple zone acti­va­tions.

Pan­ic alarm acti­va­tions are exclud­ed from the above cri­te­ria. Ver­i­fied alarms will be treat­ed by Toron­to law enforce­ment as high-pri­or­i­ty calls for police inter­ven­tion. Solu­tions, such as ALARM‑i, help ensure fam­i­lies stay safer because of the quick abil­i­ty to deter­mine a false alarm from a true one.

Why did alarm events have to be prioritized in Toronto?

Over the past sev­er­al decades, the use of alarm sys­tems in the City of Toron­to has sig­nif­i­cant­ly grown. This has direct­ly impact­ed local law enforce­ment because the bur­den of respond­ing to bur­glar alarms falls on police. False alarms are cost­ly and take away the police service’s abil­i­ty to respond quick­ly to real emer­gen­cies.

Additional reasons why false alarms are problematic

False alarms are not only a bur­den for police, they also become prob­lem­at­ic for the peo­ple the alarms are designed to pro­tect. In addi­tion to resources being mis­di­rect­ed to false alarms, alarms that fre­quent­ly go off can:

• Lead neigh­bours to ignore alarm sys­tems, mak­ing them less effec­tive.
• Cause users to stop using their alarms, expos­ing them to the risk of bur­glary, break-ins and oth­er crimes.
• Result in high penal­ty costs with each false alarm that occurs.

It’s to everyone’s advan­tage to reduce the num­ber of false alarms occur­ring and ensure the fastest pos­si­ble response from police.

That’s where ALARM‑i comes in …

Why video alarm solutions are faster

Video alarm solu­tions help to reduce the num­ber of false alarms while expe­dit­ing response for true emer­gen­cies. When an alarm is ver­i­fied by video, you can be rest assured help will be on the way soon.

ALARM‑i is an inno­v­a­tive video alarm solu­tion that offers the visu­al ver­i­fi­ca­tion need­ed to acti­vate Pri­or­i­ty Police response.

How it works is once an alarm goes off, the alarm sys­tem sends out pre-alarm and real-time video clips to your cell­phone and com­put­er. You can then decide if the alarm should be dis­missed or have the police called. For added pro­tec­tion, in case you’re away from your devices, ALARM-i’s mon­i­tor­ing cen­ter oper­a­tors also assess the sit­u­a­tion and con­tact author­i­ties.

When ALARM‑i ver­i­fies an alarm, police will respond under Pri­or­i­ty dis­patch con­di­tions. Users of ALARM‑i can expe­ri­ence up to an 85% quick­er response rate and an arrest rate of up to 50%. As a com­par­i­son, tra­di­tion­al alarm sys­tems with­out video evi­dence only result in about 0.08% arrests. (SOURCE: Part­ner­ship for Pri­or­i­ty Ver­i­fied Alarm Response)

Visu­al Alarm Ver­i­fi­ca­tion is a huge deter­rent to crime because crim­i­nals sim­ply don’t have the time to make off with your valu­ables and are essen­tial­ly stopped in their tracks. The ALARM‑i response rate is that quick because your ver­i­fied alarm ensures you receive a Pri­or­i­ty Police Response.

With Toronto’s Pri­or­i­ty Police Response, peo­ple have to be vig­i­lant about pre­vent­ing false alarms. ALARM‑i will ensure you aren’t penal­ized if a true break-in does occur.

Learn more

To learn more about the ALARM‑i Visu­al Alarm Ver­i­fi­ca­tion solu­tion, call 1–844-317‑3348 or request a no-oblig­a­tion secu­ri­ty sys­tem con­sul­ta­tion.