Surprise in San Jose

The residents of San Jose, California got surprised recently by the passage of a new alarm response ordinance.  According to this article in the San Jose Mercury News from January, 2012, the San Jose police department has decided not to respond to any security system signals unless there is verification of a crime in progress.

Regular readers of our blog know that we have discussed verified response before.  Across the country, the budgets of local municipalities are getting stretched pretty thin and the police departments are tired of responding to nuisance alarms that are not generated by an actual crime in progress.  So, the momentum around requiring some sort of verification prior to dispatching officers to a home or business is building.

The good news is that there are technologies that can help business owners and homeowners with verification.  Video surveillance systems can be set up so that live and recorded video can be viewed remotely over the Internet with a web browser or on a smartphone.  And, new technologies like those in a Videofied system can record brief video clips when motion is detected and transmit it to a security monitoring center so that an operator on duty can determine if an actual crime is in progress.

I don’t think that the calls for video verification by over-worked police departments will diminish–I think they will grow instead.

-Scott Hightower, Verified Security