Penalties
If you accidentally activate your alarm system, you should immediately notify your monitoring station. The Ordinance allows the City to penalize any alarm subscriber who has more than four false alarms within a consecutive 12-month period. On the third alarm, the subscriber is sent a warning letter to request that corrective action be taken to stop further alarms. Beginning with the fifth alarm, the subscriber is charged $50 for each additional alarm, which is to be paid to the City tax collector within 14 days of receipt. If the civil penalty is not paid within the time prescribed in the citation, the appropriate personnel of the City may initiate a civil action in the nature of debt to collect such civil penalty.
Audible Alarms
Since a central station does not monitor audible alarms, requests for police services on these alarms are usually made by neighbors living in the area or a passer-by. Audible systems should be equipped with an automatic reset device that will reset and cease to sound the alarm after a reasonable period of continuous activation. City Ordinance 18-27.d states that an alarm that sounds continuously for a period of 30 minutes from the time officers arrive at the alarm location, due to failure of the alarm to reset, shall constitute an additional violation of this section, every 30 minutes.
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