The private sector is filling gaps in law enforcement left by budget cuts, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times. In our opinion, that’s a bad trend.
The story reports on private detectives investigating crimes, security firms patrolling neighborhoods to deter crime and private security forces investigating burglaries. We think our Alarm Management Program is one small step that can help police across the North America combat this trend.
While SIAC’s program doesn’t guarantee our permit and fine-based system will make a local jurisdiction money (nor is it our goal), we have multiple success stories to back up the case that if the ordinance with our recommended best practices is properly enforced, it reduces unnecessary alarms and “at a minimum” pays for itself. Many years ago we had a deputy chief in Toronto point out that those alarm revenues helped fund keeping more officers on the payroll that he could use in combating crime.
The more direct benefit of our model ordinance program is reducing unnecessary alarm dispatches, thus keeping more officers available to address priority issues. We’ve beat this drum for many years. We need you to share this message with others.
Not everyone can afford private security services. Police protection is part of the common good for a community. Police are the experts in handling crimes, not private security services. Those are three excellent reasons to support the Alarm Management Program, which would help keep police on the streets, patrolling and responding to needs of everyone in the community, not just the wealthy.
Let’s work with law enforcement to continue proposing new ways to help them solve funding problems, and in the process keep our communities safe. Go to http://www.siacinc.org, for more information.
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