1995 Annual Report

As required in Section 3A-11, Report, of Chapter 3A, Alarms, of the Montgomery County Code, following is a report on implementation of the False Alarm Reduction Program by the Department of Police.

False Alarm Tracking and Billing

Based on statistics provided by the False Alarm Reduction Unit (FARU) of the Department of Police, the alarm legislation has clearly had an impact on reducing the rate of false alarms in the County. Attached please find several charts which compare the actual number of alarm calls from 1992 through 1995. Exhibit A, entitled "Alarm Call Comparisons," shows statistics for the entire county. Exhibit B consists of five charts which show alarm call statistics for each of the five police districts. Overall, alarm calls decreased -6.7% in calendar year 1995 over calendar year 1994. This represents almost 3,000 fewer requests for police response to alarm calls over 1994. As you can also see from the charts, many months actually realized a greater than -6.7% reduction rate. Monthly reductions, since enforcement of tracking and billing began, range from a high of -17.0% in November to a low of -4.0% in December.

Exhibit C is an alarm comparison chart that provides a breakdown for banks, commercial and residential alarm calls for 1994 and 1995. This chart shows that commercial alarm users reduced their alarm usage by -8.8% in 1995. Residential alarm users showed a reduction of -5.7% in the same time period. Banks, however, showed an increase of +2.8%.

The FARU began sending notices of false alarms to alarm users in mid-March, 1995. It is estimated that by mid-April, some alarm users were receiving invoices for excessive false alarms. In May, 1995, alarm calls started showing reductions, which remained steady for the entire year. Statistics show that since the FARU began enforcement of the alarm law, there has consistently been a reduction in false alarms each month. It appears evident, therefore, that the alarm legislation is having its intended effect of reducing false alarms.

Of the total 40,967 alarm calls received in calendar year 1995, only 482 were actual verified events; i.e., burglary, vandalism, suspicious situations, etc. This represents a ratio of 1.1% actual verified events to 98.9% false alarms. There were a total of 36,436 registered alarm users in CY95, which reflects 1.12 alarm calls per alarm user per year.

Revenue

FY95	ESTIMATED	ACTUAL
Total Registration Fees Residential Commercial	$ 90,750	$176,740 $140,120 $ 36,620
Total Response Fees (For alarms in CY1995) Residential Commercial	$800,000	$ 91,840 $ 8,750 $ 83,090
Total Alarm Business License Fees	$ 30,000	$ 35,100
TOTAL	$920,750	$303,680

False alarm response fees are incurred based on a calendar year's alarm usage. As such, the majority of estimated revenues are generated in the second half of the fiscal year, as more and more alarm users fall into an excessive false alarm rate and false alarm response fees are incurred. No tracking of or billing for false alarms occurred in the first part of FY95, i.e., July through December, 1994. Therefore, revenues received for false alarm response fees are less than estimated. Revenues for registration fees far exceeded the estimated projections.

CALENDAR YEAR 1995	Commercial	Residential	Alarm Business	Total
Registration Fees	$ 39,110	$161,270	N/A	$200,380
Response Fees (CY 1995 Alarms)	$362,435	$ 67,495	N/A	$429,930
Alarm Business License Fees	N/A	N/A	$35,400	$ 35,400
TOTAL	$401,545	$228,765	$35,400	$665,710

As false alarm calculations run concurrently with each calendar year, in order to gain a better perspective on actual revenues collected as a result of the alarm legislation, it is helpful to look at calendar year statistics. These statistics base the collections on actual false alarms for the calendar year. It should also be noted that a total of $861,050 was actually billed to alarm users for false alarm response fees in CY95, which leaves $431,120 uncollected. Some of that revenue is delinquent or past due. Some of that revenue was billed in December, has not yet been paid, but is not yet delinquent. Commercial alarm users owe the vast majority of outstanding alarm user response fees at $386,465. Residential alarm users owe $44,655 in outstanding alarm user response fees. Finally, a portion of the outstanding response fees are for false alarms that have been appealed, and are in a pending status awaiting final determination of the appeal. The FARU is currently working with the Office of the County Attorney to develop procedures for collecting the delinquent monies owed.

Computerization of False Alarm Tracking and Billing System (FATB)

In an effort to begin enforcing the section of the alarm law that provides for tracking and billing of false alarms, which is the greatest incentive to false alarm reduction, the FARU, through its contractor, CACI, Inc., developed an Interim Operating Capability (IOC) to generate notices and invoices to alarm users. The IOC application utilized existing Clipper and dBase applications, which contained alarm user registration information, and expanded it to include alarm call data. These applications were then merged with an Access program to generate the actual notices and invoices. The FARU began using the IOC application in mid-March, 1995. When the application was ready, the FARU manually entered all alarm call information obtained from CAD beginning on January 1, 1995. The FARU continued to use this method of tracking and billing while working to bring the Final Operating Capability (FOC) on-line. The IOC application was a band aid approach to enforcing this critical part of the alarm law and was, therefore, difficult to use and was fraught with many obstacles which the FARU staff had to overcome.

The Final Operating Capability (FOC) came on-line in October, 1995. The FOC application provides for an efficient and timely manner of registering alarm users, licensing alarm businesses, tracking of and billing for false alarms, report and notice generation, and tracking false alarm appeals. The FOC application is an extremely complex custom software package, written in Visual Basic for operation on a Windows NT Client Server platform. There are approximately 98 tables, 4385 data elements, 50 views, 27000 lines of database code, and 40000 lines of interface code. The FOC application has saved FARU staff a tremendous amount of time and eliminated the duplication of effort necessary to operate the IOC program. This has given FARU staff an opportunity to enforce more vigorously other aspects of the alarm law, such as the non-response provision. The FARU believes that the time and energy expended in designing, developing, and implementing the FOC application was well worth the effort, as it has provided the much needed automated mechanism to operate the false alarm reduction program, streamlined processes for FARU staff, and enabled the FARU to be much more responsive to its customers.

The FOC application was delivered in three separate modules. The first module was delivered in July, 1995, and consisted of the alarm user registration and alarm business licensing functions. This module provides the mechanism to enter alarm user registrations and alarm business licenses, and is the basis from which all other functions of the FATB system flow. This module also provided for the conversion of IOC data into the FOC application.

The second module was delivered on July 31, 1995, and consisted of the automated and manual CAD interface. The FARU anticipated that the CAD vendor would not be ready with its program to immediately allow for an automated transfer of CAD alarm data to the FARU's FATB system. (This will be discussed further in the CAD/FARU Interface section.) As such, CACI was instructed to provide for both an automated CAD link, as well as a manual data entry capability. The second module contained both the automated and manual CAD interfaces. This module provides for the tracking of alarm information to specific alarm users, creation of notices for false alarms, and tracking of false alarm appeal information, which is linked to specific alarm users and alarm businesses in Module 1.

The third and final module of the FOC system was delivered on August 25, 1995 and consisted of the reports and notices sections of the system. This module provides for the generation of 21 different notices, including generation of actual invoices, and 11 different reports for both alarm users and alarm businesses. An index of the different types of notices and reports available is attached as Exhibit D.

CAD/FARU Interface

As you know, the FARU has been working for approximately two years trying to get the electronic interface between the County's CAD system and the FARU system operational. The biggest obstacle to completion of this interface is the CAD vendor, PSSI, and its unwillingness or inability to perform work in a timely manner. At this time, the electronic interface is still not operational. However, great strides have been accomplished this reporting period and PSSI has become more responsive of late.

Initial work on the portion of the interface that allows the FARU to transfer registration and licensing information to CAD is complete, as is the portion of the interface that allows CAD to read registration, licensing, and penalty status information. FARU data is downloaded, transferred and imported into the CAD system daily. This function is driven by the FARU.

Another piece of the interface that is complete is the modification to the Catalog Alarm Screen, which will be utilized by ECC calltakers. A complete redesign of this screen was made to ensure that proper information was relayed by alarm companies when requesting police dispatch, as well as to ensure that all information needed by FARU for enforcement purposes was being captured. The regular call-take screen used in ECC does not provide for specific fields in which to capture data. Rather, the majority of entry made by the call-taker is done in free form fields, where it is virtually impossible to ensure accuracy and consistency of information. The new Catalog Alarm screen was designed to provide specific fields that would either be pre-filled by FARU data or keyed by the call-taker at the time of the request for dispatch. In order to access alarm information for a particular alarm user, the call-taker simply enters the registration number, which is required by law to be provided by the alarm company. All information regarding that specific alarm user will then automatically populate the screen. This will facilitate dispatch on catalog alarm calls, in that most information will already be in the system and will need only be verified. A copy of the Catalog Alarm Screen is attached as Exhibit E.

The portion of the interface that allows CAD to transfer alarm call data to the FARU has been written on both the CAD and FARU ends, but has not yet been tested. This testing cannot be performed because certain bugs have been identified on the CAD end that must be corrected before ECC calltakers can begin using the new Catalog Alarm screens. Once the new screens are utilized, testing can be completed on this portion of the interface. Daily manual data entry of all alarm information continues to be entered by the FARU from hard-copy provided by ECC. This is a very time consuming, labor intensive task that will not be necessary once the entire interface is working properly.

Informal False Alarm Appeals

Section 10, False Alarm Appeal Process and Filing Fee, of Executive Regulation 46-93AMII, Policies, Procedures and Fees for Alarm Businesses and Alarm Users, provides for an informal appeal process through the Chief of the Department of Police or her designee. The Chief has designated the Director of the FARU to review all appeals and provide a decision based on the facts of each case. An alarm user who wishes to appeal the false determination of an alarm signal must make such appeal in writing to the Director of the FARU within 30 days after a notice of a false alarm is mailed to the alarm user. The written appeal must give sufficient information to determine the events surrounding the police response. There is no filing fee requirement for an informal appeal, nor is there any limit on the number of appeals an alarm user may file.

FARU staff spend an inordinant amount of time reviewing, investigating and providing decisions on appeals. The vast majority of appeals require some type of investigation by FARU staff members. Typically, the ECC logs for appealed alarms are reviewed to ascertain if responding officers provided disposition remarks when clearing the call, or if any of the remarks on the log corroborate the alarm user's written appeal. If an alarm user believes a false alarm was caused by severe weather, FARU staff members contact the National Weather Service or the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to ascertain weather conditions on a particular day. If an alarm user claims telephone or power outages caused the false alarm, FARU staff members contact Bell Atlantic or Pepco for corroboration. Finally, if an alarm user claims an actual verified event occurred, FARU staff members will retrieve copies of the written police reports. Once the investigation on an appeal is complete, the FARU provides a written decision to the alarm user with its findings. The FARU has attempted to be as thorough as possible in reviewing, investigating and providing decisions on appeals.

In calendar year 1995, a total of 1330 alarms were appealed to the FARU; 435 commercial and 895 residential. The vast majority of these appeals were denied as unfounded. Below is a chart that depicts actual numbers of appeals, whether they were granted or denied, and unresolved appeals, i.e., those where no determination has yet been made by the FARU. (FARU indicates that after rough review of the outstanding appeals, 98% are unfounded and will be denied.)

Appealed Alarms

	Appealed	Granted	Denied	Unresolved
Commercial	435	98	268	69
Residential	895	161	636	98
Total	1,330	259	904	167

Generally, appeals were granted due to actual verified events, severe weather conditions, and problems with telephone or power lines which were not within the control of the alarm user.

General Statistical Data

Registrations

As of December 31, 1995, there were a total of 36,436 (29,387 residential and 7,049 commercial) alarm users registered with the FARU. In calendar year 1995, the FARU registered 1,304 new commercial and 5,376 new residential alarm users for a total of 6,680 new registrants. This equates to over 500 new registrations received by the FARU per month. This reflects an 18.3% growth in registered alarms for the year.

Inspection and Upgrade Certificates

The following charts reflect the number of residential and commercial alarm users that reached either the 3 or 8 false alarm plateau, which requires inspection or upgrade of an alarm system, respectively. Inspection requires a licensed alarm company to visit the alarm user's site, thoroughly inspect the system for malfunction or defect, and afford the alarm company an opportunity to re-educate all alarm users on the proper use of the alarm system. Upgrade requires that the alarm system either be overhauled or replaced to meet County installation standards as specified in Executive Regulation 46-93AMII.

Inspections Required

Type	Requested	Performed	Not Performed	Compliance Rate
Commercial	1659	1059	600	63.8%
Residential	1519	989	530	65.1%
Total	3178	2048	1130	64.4%

Upgrades Required

Type	Requested	Performed	Not Performed	Compliance Rate
Commercial	206	103	103	50.0%
Residential	19	7	12	36.8%
Total	225	110	115	48.8%

Alarm Users in Violation (Non-Response) Status

The following charts reflect the number of alarm users that were placed in a violation status in 1995. A violation, or non-response status, is one in which the alarm user has failed to comply with the alarm law, after notification by the FARU to do so. An alarm user is considered to be in a violation or non-response status if the alarm user fails to remit a false alarm response fee, fails to upgrade the alarm system to meet County installation standards, or fails to register the alarm system wi