The Answer is

In line with the Police Alarms Policy, before a request for a Police attendance is made, alarm system activations received at Alarm Receiving Centres must be filtered in order to establish their validity. This is called ‘Verification’.

The three generally accepted methods of remote verification are:

1) Video Verification

This involves the addition of CCTV cameras throughout the protected premises which can be viewed by the Alarm Receiving Centre operator, to help them to judge whether the alarm activation is valid.

This is a very expensive method and there is no guarantee that an intruder would be in view of any camera.

2) Audio Verification

This involves the addition of Microphones throughout the protected premises which pick up sounds at the premises during an alarm activation. This can be listened to, by the Alarm Receiving Centre operator, who has to make a judgement whether what is heard is in fact an intrusion taking place.

This is less expensive than video verification, but there is no guarantee that intruders will make any noise that would be heard by the microphones. Any noise that was heard has to be interpreted by the Alarm Receiving Centre operator, who would probably not take the risk that an intrusion was NOT taking place and would probably call for a Police response, just in case.

3) Sequential Verification

 This method prevents an alarm activation being signalled to the Alarm Receiving Centre, until two detectors have been triggered. If a good level of protection is required, it involves adding an extra detector of a different technology to the first detector in every protected space. Alternatively, with only one detector in each protected space, an intruder would need to progress further through the property in order to trigger two detectors.

This is possibly the least expensive of the three methods. However, protection is reduced substantially unless the cost of the system is increased sufficiently to allow an increase of up to 50% more detectors.

Whilst use of the above verification methods have substantially reduced the number of requests that the Police receive for their attendance, 92% of all intruder alarm activations are still for the wrong reasons and therefore UNWANTED.

Please allow MSI to show you what we did to improve the situation - 

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