False alarms can be a frustrating and expensive problem for businesses. They can disrupt operations, waste resources, and result in fines or penalties in some jurisdictions across Western Canada. 

In fact, in some locations, in response to the high rate of false alarms, it’s required that alarms will have to be verified before police response and they will not respond to alarms that are only triggered once.

A false alarm can be stressful for a business owner, wasting their time, money and resources. False alarms cause businesses needless worry, wastes their time while they figure out what happened and is just generally frustrating.

If you have ever had a false alarm, you know the personal stress it has caused you – needlessly worrying about the safety of your property, the inconvenience of having to sort out the problem, and the frustration of the time spent dealing with an issue that actually wasn’t even an issue at all.

If a false alarm results in a call to the police or other emergency services, it isn’t just the time and money of the emergency services that will be wasted - it could also now result in a fine for your business. 

Around 98% of all conventional security alarms that are triggered are actually false alarms. The majority of these activations stem from door and window contact alarms, and conventional motion sensors. Most police departments across North America, will not respond to unverified systems and alarms, or will even levy a fine. They simply do not have the valuable resources to respond to what has proven to be a waste of time.

In a recent blog, I touched upon false alarm prevention programs that many Canadian municipalities have now implemented.

 These by-laws have been created in an attempt to prevent the large number of false alarm calls that the Police receive yearly. False alarms are costly to our Police departments, and they delay response to important calls for Police. For this reason, these laws have been put into place.

In this week’s blog, we’re going to take a look at a couple of different false alarm prevention programs across Canada, focusing on their differences and similarities.