| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
LA votes for 'three strikes' response to false burglar alarms
Tuesday April 22, 2003LOS ANGELES (AP) City Council members Tuesday approved a proposal mandating that police respond only three times to a false burglar alarm before having that alarm verified by a witness before subsequent response.
The proposal returns to the civilian Police Commission, which will determine whether to implement it or keep its own policy that officers only respond to an alarm if it is verified by surveillance camera or a witness.
The policy has not been implemented by the Police Department in order to give the council's Burglar Alarm Task Force time to consider alternatives. City Council members tried to overturn the policy several months ago.
On Tuesday, the council voted 11-0 for its ``three strikes'' burglar alarm response, but the issue rests entirely with the Police Commission.
``Many of us felt like the answer of just a blanket non-response unless it was verified was also not the answer, and it didn't feel right,'' said Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who led the February attempt to overturn the Police Commission policy. ``Certainly, none of us like that 92 percent of alarms are false in the city, and none of us like to think about police officers wasting their time responding to false alarms.''
The council's proposal has not been placed on the Police Commission agenda, but commission president Rick Caruso said the panel would consider the council's ``three strikes'' policy, which also creates an escalating series of fees that have to be paid for police response to subsequent false alarms.
LAPD statistics showed 43 percent of false alarms last year came from homes or businesses where alarms had gone off more than thrice in a year. Police Chief William Bratton has said 15 percent of officers' patrol time, or 100,000, responses, was spent answering false alarms.
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