Alarms

10/1/2009


Alarms

As we are moving into a house in a few days, I have been looking in to alarms for the safety of my wife and our cats.



It is sad that in a society as ‘advanced’ as we claim to be, we still need to have alarms to protect ourselves. It is sadder that the police have a no-response policy. This policy means that unless there is someone on site to confirm that an actual crime is being committed, they will not respond to alarm calls. They say this is to cut down on the number of false alarm calls each year that pull manpower away from real crime, and I do agree with this to some degree. But here in Las Vegas, the number and frequency of home invasions are on the rise.



The news rarely reports them any more except for a 3 second spot on the local news stuck between weather and sports. I think that they should teach firearm safety right along side sex education in schools, and even teach marksmanship as elective classes. It is a little known fact that “police have no general duty to protect individuals” (see Warren v. District of Columbia). We are always told to “wait until the police get here!” But as we can see from today’s news coverage and experiences, most of the time they tell you to call in your report to their automated line. I know that Minneapolis and Las Vegas Metro will not even respond unless your loss is over a certain dollar amount. Then when you do call in your report, they charge you $25+ for the report for your insurance company! :-)



Not only are we going to have to start protecting ourselves from our government by voting new and concerned people into office, but we are going to have to start to protect ourselves at home because the local governments are also feeling the same budget crunches as you and I are feeling and police coverage's are going to start being scaled back.



With God’s Blessing,



Kurt