Letter Index

Cowlitz County
Sheriff's Office
P.O. Box 390
Kelso, Washington 98626
Tel. (360)577-3092

November 24, 1998

Stan Martin
ADI
12880 Valley Branch Lane
Farmers Branch, Texas 75234

Dear Mr. Martin:

May I take a few minutes of your time to relate to you some of the benefits this office has gained from the current "Emergency False Alarm Reduction" program here in Washington State. Over the years that I have been Sheriff of Cowlitz County, we have experienced a continual increase in the number of false burglar alarms from all over the unincorporated areas of the county. The number of false alarms was simply overloading this agency's ability to deal with them. There seemed to be no desire on the part of the alarm site owners and many of the alarm companies to deal with the issue. Our own alarm ordinance was outdated and had always been ineffective and difficult to maintain. In other words, from the site owners to the line deputies, everyone was fed up with the alarm ordnance and the never-ending growth of false alarms.

In 1996, I issued a general order to all Sheriff's Office personnel that we would no longer respond to any emergency alarms in the county, whether burglary or emergency. To say the lease, this created a series of responses and outcries from alarms owners and alarm companies. Yet, our system simply had broken down. We could not respond to the previous level of false alarms and still provide all the other needed services to the people of this county. Something had to go, and alarm response was that something.

We had heard about the false alarm reduction program at the state association meetings but had failed to take a closer look at what it was all about. We simply decided to stop responding to alarms. Fortunately for us and our many citizens who

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