Current affairs: My worst fears come true

Want first bite of the cherry? So runs the attraction line of one of those circulars that drop through your letterbox. Yes, I know, I am still getting advertising circulars addressed to my old alarm company even though it is now ten years since I sold out. Most of them land in the bin after a quick curious peek at this month's special offer but this one was different – it told me that some of my worst fears for the alarm industry are just about to come true.

You may remember that I had a good old gripe about the new ACPO policy in the March issue. The gist of my argument was that the tougher you make the rules or the higher you make the stakes the more likely you are to find people who will opt out and go the unofficial route – well, now I have the proof of my suspicions.

The circular that dropped through my door was advertising a two-way monitoring microphone/speaker to attach to any old intruder alarm which will talk to a 24-hour monitoring station via the plain ordinary bog-standard telephone line.

With a great deal of curiosity I telephoned the company selling what the advert claimed to be an "Audio verification four-channel digital communicator with 24 programmable features from a standard tone telephone line", and the answers I got were frightening; well, at least they are for the police. Here is what I found.

The two-way speaker can be fitted to any alarm system, therefore I presume that it can and probably will connect via the bell output. So it is possible to buy any old crappy alarm system on the cheap from the big DIY sheds (it's powered by a plug-in transformer with a miniscule battery for the back-up) – and hang this on the end of it. Then, when plugged into the home telephone, it will dial the receiving centre and, in their own words: "If we hear anything that sounds like a break-in we will action it to the police." We could now have a scenario where the householder decides to test the bells, this fires the communicator connected to the bell output, and the unofficial ARC tunes in. The householder may have forgotten his password (quite likely) so the ARC has to decide whether or not to action it.

The end result is quite likely to be yet another run-around for the already overworked police who in turn have no comeback because there is no URN.

With a quality control wired by a reputable installer this should never happen; there are good common-sense safeguards built in and these calls should never get to the police via a reputable installer and ARC.

Back to the phone call. "Do you have to be NACOSS approved?" I asked, trying to sound like a member of the public. "Oh no, you don't need anything like that," was the reply.

I therefore presume that the monitoring station they are using is also non-recognised, hence the monitoring fee of a mere £2.48 per month (plus VAT). So let us have a look at the requirements for such a monitored police response system: -

• Does it have to conform to BS4737? – NO!
• Does it have to be fitted by an inspectorate recognised company? – NO!
• Does it have to have the special alarm outputs to run a communicator? – NO!
• Does it have to conform to the ACPO policy? – NO!
• Does it need a police URN? – NO!
• Does the receiving centre need to be recognised? – NO!
• Does the receiving centre need to conform to BS5979? – NO!
• Does the alarm owner have to pay the £30 registration fee? – NO!
• Does the alarm ring in on one of the premium cost phone lines that the police are now installing? – NO!

And finally, when the police receive a call via the 999 system and are told by the unregistered operator that a crime is now in progress because they can hear it ...can the police refuse to respond – NO!

I have stated in the past that I believe the new ACPO policy to be a rogue's charter and now I can see it coming to fruition. I can see the good guys turning towards getting response from the guarding companies and the cowboys pestering the hell out of the police.

And if you want some more proof, I found one of our top manufacturers displaying a new control panel at IFSEC 2001 that will do everything round the house except tear a piece of paper off the roll. Its features include calling an ARC and yet the unit is powered by a plug-in transformer.

At the end of the day the big losers in this situation will be the police. They have suddenly lost control of the installing companies, they have lost all the £30 registration fees and they have lost the further income from the premium rate phone lines they have installed. Thank God the police are not trying to run on the same profit margins that you and I have to. If they did, I could well see them standing at the bottom of the escalator with their hats turned upside down and a guitar in their hands singing "The answer is blowin' in the wind".

£30 fee is ridiculously cheap
Let's look at the situation logically – those of us who desire to get a special response from the police should expect to have to pay for it, so the £30 registration fee sounds quite fair to me, in fact it sounds ridiculously cheap.

I think it ought to be £30 per year, renewable only upon a written declaration that the system has been serviced in accordance with the ACPO policy. That should at least go some way towards paying for the extra admin required to run the system.

Next ... false alarms are costing the police (and the ratepayer) a small fortune; so I think it only fair that those who err should pay the brunt of that cost. I think it quite reasonable to expect the police to turn up free of charge in our time of need and I have no doubt that the police would agree to that. But! False alarms should be paid for and the costs should reflect what it costs the police in wasted time.

I am convinced that the current ACPO policy is a very ill-timed kick in the marriage tackle

At a wild guess probably £100 per call should cover it. This I believe would be a far better way to reduce false alarms than the "cutting off your nose to spite your face" system currently in force.

I find it incredibly hard to believe that they have not looked at the situation, they are so short of funds that they are allowing people like British Gas and ADT to sponsor police cars and have their company names brandished all over their patrol cars. Yet here they are missing a golden opportunity to cash in on a perfectly legitimate goldmine.

Look at it this way – if you get caught speeding you get fined, if you park where you shouldn't you get fined, and if you are daft enough to carry on you get your licence withdrawn. If you are utterly stupid and carry on after that then you get jailed – and quite rightly so.

I see little difference with false alarms. If you get a false alarm you get fined - £100, if you are daft enough to continue and get more than three in the year then you drop to level two and the fine goes up to £200 per false alarm. More than six false alarms in a year and your URN is withdrawn, the police could still attend but the cost goes up to £300 per false alarm.

The "cowboys" who choose to sidestep the URN system start on level three at £300 per false alarm.

If the police were to adopt that system then they would have extra funding to pay for the wasted time, paid for by the very people who waste that time. The threat of a hefty fine would prompt the alarm companies to install better equipment and the customer to get their staff better trained.

Under those circumstances I could well see the customer choosing an alarm installer on his low false alarm rate rather than "how cheap can you fit it?" At that point the police could tell British Gas and ADT to take their advertising elsewhere.

I have to admit that I find the idea of security companies advertising on the side of police cars to be utterly despicable. It leads the public to think that the police are recommending those companies, and it is downright demeaning to the copper who has to drive around in these mobile advertising boards. I mean, what else will they plaster over the side of the squad car? – an advert for the latest cure for haemorrhoids, or for Viagra , or something for those problems suffered only by ladies?

I can tell you now, if I were a policeman I would be badgering the Police Federation to get the adverts removed as soon as possible, how can you possibly expect to get the respect of the public if you have to drive around in a squad car that looks like a bill posters convention?

Time for a story
A couple of stories have come my way that illustrate the wrong side of the new ACPO policy.

Story no 1 concerns a national chain of bookmaking shops, all of which have got an alarm system with a communicator. The head office is forever changing their shop managers around so as you can imagine false alarms caused by misuse are rife.

The installer of these systems is tearing his hair out because the top brass are not listening and so at any one time there is a collection of these shops off response. Confirmation is not going to help in this case but a nice hefty fine each time might just make these idiots see reason – and prevent a lot of wasted police time.

In story no 2, thieves attacked a business property in a medium-sized town. Their first job was to prise off the bell box using a scaffolding pole or something of that nature, the SAB was destroyed and silenced but the communicator activated and a call was put to the police.

Eight minutes later the second call was received denoting the time taken to break in. Two minutes after that the police arrived and the gang was collared and cuffed. The police were jubilant, the property owner relieved and the installer had a grin like a split cheese – but! If the system had been on sequential response it may have been the customer who was confronting the thieves and the police would not have been called for another eight minutes, giving the thieves ample time to leg it without being caught.

It is stories like this that convince me that the current ACPO policy is a well-aimed but very ill-timed kick in the marriage tackle for the industry. It is only a matter of time before a key-holder is confronted by thieves and sustains grievous bodily harm. When the tabloid press gets hold of it the security industry and the police will be in the brown stuff up to their collective armpits, and that, as I stated earlier is my worst fears coming true.