SAN JOSE (CBS SF) – San Jose residents won’t have the luxury of having officers respond when their home alarm system goes off in the New Year.
A new policy went into effect on Sunday in which officers won’t respond to burglar alarms unless someone can verify that a break-in is actually taking place.
San Jose police spokesman Jose Garcia said the new policy stems mainly from the fact that most of the incidents they responded to in 2010 turned out to be false alarms.
“We had about 12,500 estimated alarms that we investigated in 2010 and less than 1 percent resulted in actual incidents at those locations,” he said.
KCBS’ Betsy Gebhart Reports:
Garcia said that only two of those alarms that sounded resulted in arrests.
Because of the declining number of police officers in San Jose, Garcia said the department has decided that it was not utilizing resources appropriately by chasing each and every alarm.
There are some exceptions to the new policy. Officers will still be automatically dispatched to alarms at banks, airports and businesses that sell firearms.
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