New limit on false alarms

Published 2:09 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

The North Bend City Council passed an ordinance last week that will regulate commercial alarms, establish penalties and corrective action for false alarms and, hopefully, reduce the number of false alarms occurring in the city and the resulting waste of police resources in responding to those false alarms.

The ordinance was recommended in response to the increasing number of dispatched calls for police services as a result of commercial false alarms. Records compiled by the King County Dispatch center show that in 2000, 14.6 percent of all dispatched calls for service were to commercial alarms. Of that number, 14 percent was false alarms with, 0.6 percent being legitimate alarm responses.

For a first-time offense, if no other false alarm has occurred in the past six months, no fee will be charged. For a second response, $25 will be charged; for a third response, $50; and for a fourth response, $100 will be charged.