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City council revisiting alarm ordinance
City and police officials have confirmed when but not why the city council will discuss the city's alarm response regulations.
By Danny Gallagher, McKinney Courier-Gazette
The McKinney City Council will revisit the "no response" alarm ordinance but is not saying why.
The ordinance that took effect on Oct. 1, 2008 says McKinney police officers will not respond to unregistered alarms if they activate whether the nature of the alarm is accidental, a technical glitch or related to a crime progress.
The owners of the alarm can receive fines up to $500 for activating an unregistered alarm. The McKinney City Council approved an ordinance regarding the alarm law in 2007 after the McKinney Police Department proposed the idea to council members at a workshop session.
Police officials were concerned about the growing number of false calls becoming a distraction for officers in the field and police emergency dispatchers.
Permits can be obtained from the city at a cost of $50 per year for residences and $100 per year for commercial buildings or business. Each permit only covers alarms for one building.
Officers will respond to alarm that are activated by a person in the case of a panic alarm, hold-up or witness to a crime in progress regardless of whether they have a permit or not.
McKinney police officials said the ordinance is designed to reduce the amount of time wasted responding to false alarms.
“We’re going to be able to dedicate that time to officers, instead of using them to chase non-permit alarms to things like crime prevention, to being out in the neighborhood and to free up our officers to hopefully do more preventative type of patrols,” McKinney police Capt. Randy Roland said before the ordinance took effect.
Contact Danny Gallagher at dgallagher@acnpapers.com.
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