Alarm Response

[BadBoynMD]

Hey Colleagues,

I am curious to know if anyone would happen to know, how security companies would go about getting contracts from alarm companies to conduct alarm responses?

Former employer is preparing for such contract, I however, have no idea where to start. Any ideas or first hand knowledge?

Thanks in advance.

[ValleyOne]

In my neck of the woods you typcially carry the contract with alarm holder, i.e. if Big John's Fishing Rod's has an alarm ACME Alarm Co, you contract out with them for the response. They in turn tell ACME Alarm Co. who to call to respond and check it out.

Then again, alarm companies being in the same game as most security companies are in it to make money. So I don't forsee them contracting out with a security company togo and check their alarms. After all, the cost of your services would be trickled down to their clients, who would pay either way. But you never know, one could make a nice offer and garner a lot of alarm contracts.

[Charger]

Agreed. I'm currently working patrol/alarm response, and I've worked it in the past for another company... In both cases, we were contracted directly to the client, not the alarm company. The client hires us, then tells their alarm provider to call us instead of the police.

It's not an easy service to start up, unless you already have a decent patrol division running and can just add it as a service for your clients. If you don't, your company needs to be ready to lose some money for a while, in exchange for the free advertising that a well-marked patrol unit gives. It usually takes a while for a patrol car/district to break even, let alone make a profit. Usually if a patrol unit is at a point where it's actually making a profit, it's got so many sites it's responsible for that the S/O is flying around town like a rocket trying to hit all his patrols. Something to keep in mind.

[EMTGuard]

Around here I've never seen or heard of a private security unit responding to an alarm outside of a gated community with it's own private patrol force. Usually the alarm monitoring center simply contacts the local 911 dispatcher to have police respond.

[Charger]

Around here I've never seen or heard of a private security unit responding to an alarm outside of a gated community with it's own private patrol force. Usually the alarm monitoring center simply contacts the local 911 dispatcher to have police respond.

How many alarms do the police respond to in any given week/night? In areas where alarms are sparse, the market for a security response is slim... But in larger cities, the police were dedicating so much of their time to false alarms that they went to a 'verified response' system, where they won't respond until someone has physically gone to the site to see if it's a real burglary or not... Hence, where the security companies jumped on it and took that role of initial alarm response. The security companies love it, because it gives them another service to provide. The police love it, because they're not responding on false alarms. And (generally) the clients love it, because they're not getting fined by the city anymore for repeated false alarm responses from PD.

But again, it works well in big city areas where the police are already swamped... In smaller towns where alarms are less frequent, (and therefore more likely to be real burglaries), the police generally still handle all responses.

[BadBoynMD]

Thanks for the responses. I now have a better idea on how the whole alarm response works.