London Police Service
"Implications of New Verified Response Program"
Q&A
The London Police Service is changing the procedure in relation to responding to alarms in the City of London. This change will affect what alarm calls London Police Service will be attending and may directly impact your organizations. An open meeting was held on March 29, 2017 with the London Police Service, CANASA members, and interested parties to discuss the proposed changes and how members and other alarm companies that will be impacted.
We would like to thank those who attended the meeting. While at the meeting, CANASA recorded several questions for the London Police Service with respect to their announcement about moving towards a “Verified Response to Alarms Program”. Those questions and comments were directed to the London Police Service and we are pleased to provide this summary:
Implications of New Verified Response Program Q&A
Q: Will the London Police inform interested parties that registrations/ACN requests, cautions, terminations, etc. are no longer required within the final version of the communication?
A: Sure, this is not a problem and will clearly state that LPS will no longer continuing with this practice come May 29, 2017.
Q: Is it possible for you to create a brochure on the rules available for alarm companies to give to customers with both hard and soft copies?
A: We will put something on the LPS webpage.
Q: It was suggested that we maintain our back-door number to the dispatchers which is only available to monitoring stations and only monitoring station calls are accepted. Can call volume be tracked (i.e. number of inbound calls per month/ year vs. how many calls were attended) This may help as a measurement tool to see how the new system is performing. If there was a way to track non-dispatched calls via operator entry that could give us a measure of calls we could work towards reducing.
A: The back-door number will remain in play for the convenience of monitoring companies to contact 911 dispatch.
Q: Will you notify monitoring stations if you are unable to attend after 30 minutes?
A: No, it is not current practice to do so, and therefore we will continue that process.
Q: Although the police door hanger was suggested, Windsor police started that and had to stop it as it created a security risk so this was dropped by our group as a suggestion.
A: LPS will not be doing this.
Q: It was suggested to put a strategy in place for identified higher risk customers, such as jewelry stores, pharmacies, etc.
A: All addresses will follow the verified response rule as outlined.
Q: Will there be a new process document for monitoring stations so that they are aware of what information to provide to the dispatcher?
A: We can create a communication paper on what will need to be provided, i.e. alarm definitions, verified definition, etc.
Q: Will dispatchers advise the monitoring station operators at the time of the call that you will or will not attend?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you still require a call to the premise and keyholders prior to calling into dispatch?
A: All initial alarms that come in shall be verified, so it will be up to the monitoring station to determine whether they need to call them. If a keyholder is needed to verify an alarm that will be done prior to the monitoring station calling LPS.
Q: Would you consider maintaining the registration process and charging a nominal fee for registration to offset/recover costs? The purpose would be to maintain statistics and be in a better position to evaluate success of program
A: Not at this time. If we did, it would require a position to monitor those variables. At this time, we are looking to eliminate the position.
We expect to have the final document from LPS shortly and will forward it along when it is received.
Thank you again for your attendance at the meeting.