Right next door to a lot of my customers, the police already stopped coming for unverified burglar alarms. In 2019, Sandy Springs became the first city in Georgia to say it plainly. If your alarm trips and nobody can confirm an actual crime, an officer is not dispatched. Not slower. Not lower priority. Not at all. The reason is a number that should stop every business owner cold. In the five and a half months before the rule took effect, the city reported that 2,656 of its 2,666 alarm calls were false. That is 99.63 percent.
Here is the scenario I think about. A break-in starts on a Saturday night. The siren goes off and screams into an empty parking lot. The system is doing exactly what it was sold to do, and it still summons no one, because there is nothing behind the noise. No camera anyone can see. No monitoring center making the calls. Nothing a dispatcher can tell apart from the hundred false trips that same account sent last year. The owner finds out Monday morning, standing in an open back door.
That is not a burglar problem. It is a verification problem, and it has a fix. An alarm is only worth what it can prove. A siren proves nothing. A monitored system with a camera the central station can actually see proves a crime is in progress, and that is the difference between a report you file later and an officer who rolls now. Making an alarm provable is the whole job. It is the reason we are called Verified Security.
I have spent since 2007 designing and servicing commercial security systems across metro Atlanta, and I will tell you the part most people never hear. A police response was never guaranteed, and cities are getting stricter about how you earn one. Here is what is actually happening, why it is happening, and what it means for your building.
The short version. Police across the country are deprioritizing or outright refusing to respond to unverified burglar alarms, because 94 to 98 percent of them are false. In a growing number of cities, including Sandy Springs right here in metro Atlanta, an officer rolls only when a person, audio, or video confirms a real crime. The fix is verification: professional monitoring that confirms the event, paired with cameras the monitoring center can see. A verified alarm gets escalated as a crime in progress. An unverified one gets a shrug, a fine, or silence.
In Sandy Springs, the Police Already Stopped Coming for Unverified Alarms
Sandy Springs is not a coastal experiment. It is a city of about 100,000 people inside the Perimeter, and on June 19, 2019, it stopped sending police to burglar alarms that nobody could verify.
The city calls its standard True Verification. Before an officer is dispatched to an intrusion alarm, someone has to confirm an attempted or actual crime through audio, video, an alarm user on site, or a private guard at the scene. A bare sensor trip is not enough. To be clear about what did not change, Sandy Springs still responds immediately, with no verification required, to every duress, panic, holdup, and medical alarm, to fire alarms, and to anyone who dials 911 from inside the city. The rule is aimed at one thing only: the burglar alarm that cries wolf.
The results showed up fast. In the roughly ten weeks after the rule took effect, weekly alarm calls reaching the city dropped from about 110 to 28.6, a decline of around 75 percent. “We are down to 28 calls per week,” Sandy Springs Police Captain Dan Nable told Security Sales & Integration, crediting the change with handing officers back the hours they had been losing to false calls. Those hours did not vanish. They went back to patrolling for the real thing.
One more detail tells you how serious the city is. In Sandy Springs, false alarm fines are billed to the alarm companies, not to the individual business. With the financial weight sitting on the monitoring side, getting verification right before a dispatch is not optional.
Why Police Ignore So Many Burglar Alarms
It is tempting to read all this as the police giving up on businesses. They are not. They are rationing a resource that was being burned on noise.
The U.S. Justice Department’s COPS Office, in its guide on false burglar alarms, puts the false rate at 94 to 98 percent of all dispatched alarm calls. Read that the other way: a sensor-only alarm is right about two to six percent of the time. The Security Industry Alarm Coalition estimates that roughly 85 percent of false alarms come down to user error, an employee who forgot the code, a door propped open at arming, a closing crew that did not know the routine.
I will tell you what I actually find on a service call, because it is rarely exotic. It is a back door that does not latch clean, so a gust swings it against the contact at 1 a.m. It is a thermostat that kicks the air on and floats a hanging sign through a motion beam. It is a motion sensor pointed straight at a window where passing headlights sweep the room. It is a brand new hire who was never shown the keypad. After enough years walking these buildings, you can usually name the cause before you reach the panel. None of that is a burglar, and all of it is preventable.
Now stack the false alarm flood against what police are working with. Nationally, only about 14 percent of burglaries are solved at all, according to FBI figures. So a department staring at a pile of alarm calls, knowing almost all of them are false and the underlying crime is hard to clear even when it is real, makes the cold call to stop chasing the unverified ones. That is the whole story behind every verified response policy in the country.
The answer is not to argue with that math. The answer is to stop sending noise and start sending proof. Give a dispatcher an alarm they cannot ignore, and the calculus flips in your favor.
A Siren-Only Alarm Is Not Security. It Is Noise.
Here is a hard line I draw with every business owner I meet. A local alarm, the kind that just sets off a siren on the building, is not security. By the City of Atlanta’s own ordinance, a local alarm is one that is not monitored by a remote facility. It makes a sound and hopes a stranger nearby cares enough to call 911.
Think about what that system can and cannot do. It cannot make the verification calls an ordinance asks for, because there is no monitoring center on the line. It cannot produce anything a dispatcher can prioritize. It gives the police nothing to verify, which in a verified response city means it is the lowest priority there is, or no priority at all. It is theater, and it is loudest at the moment it matters least.
Cameras have the same trap, and I see it constantly. A business buys cameras, they record to a box in a back closet, and not one person can pull them up live when the alarm trips. Footage you review on Monday is evidence for an insurance claim. It is not verification. Verification means the monitoring center can open that camera the second a sensor goes off and see what is actually happening. That is the line between recording a crime and stopping one.
So if you have a siren on the roof and nothing behind it, that is the gap to close first. And if you already run central station monitoring with cameras the station can see in real time, you may be in good shape on this point, and I will tell you that rather than sell you something you do not need.
What Alarm Verification Actually Means
Verification is not a buzzword. It is a defined process, and it is done by the professional monitoring center, not by you. The Monitoring Association, the industry’s standards body, publishes the procedures central stations follow. The methods climb a ladder.
The floor is Enhanced Call Verification, often just called the two-call rule. Before the station requests police, it has to attempt at least two phone calls to two different numbers, so a tripped sensor and a quick callback can catch most accidents before they ever reach 911. The alarm industry built this practice hand in hand with the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriffs’ Association.
Above that sits audio verification, where a trained professional at the station listens in on an open channel and can actually hear a crime in progress. At the top sits video verification, where a sensor trip pushes a short camera clip to that professional, who confirms a human intruder and waves off the raccoon, the deer, or the flag flapping in the wind. A real person looks at real evidence and makes a real call.
Why does that change anything at the police end? Because the industry now scores alarms. The ANSI and Monitoring Association standard known as AVS-01 grades an alarm event from Level 0, no police response warranted, to Level 4, a confirmed threat to life. An unverified sensor trip sits at the bottom. The moment the monitoring center confirms an unknown person on your property, that same event is scored at least a Level 2, the level the standard is built to flag as a likely crime in progress so a 911 center can prioritize it. In 2024, both the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the National Sheriffs’ Association passed resolutions encouraging 911 centers to adopt that scoring. Verification is, in plain terms, a chain of custody for a crime in progress. It is what turns your alarm from a guess into evidence.
Even in Atlanta, a Police Response Was Never Guaranteed
A lot of business owners assume that because they pay for an alarm and the city has police, a response is automatic. It is not, and the City of Atlanta says so in writing.
Atlanta’s alarm ordinance states that registering your alarm creates no contract, duty, or obligation for the city to respond, and that any response depends on the availability of units, the priority of other calls, weather, traffic, and staffing. The city also reserves the right to stop responding entirely to a chronic “runaway” alarm that keeps crying wolf. Read that plainly. Even where police still come, they have told you in advance that they might not, and that a history of false alarms is how you lose them.
There is a bill attached, too. Atlanta requires every alarm system to be registered, and while the permit itself is free, the false alarms are not. On a rolling 365-day basis, your first two are free, the third costs 50 dollars, the fourth 100, the fifth and sixth 200 each, and the seventh and every one after runs 500 dollars. Most metro jurisdictions run a similar ladder. Marietta’s schedule tops out at 500 dollars and adds a 100 dollar penalty for never registering at all. The pattern is the same everywhere: the system punishes noise and is built to reward proof.
This is where verification quietly pays for itself. The same monitoring and cameras that earn you a real response also kill the false trips that rack up those fines. You stop paying the city for alarms it has learned to ignore, and you start getting an officer when it counts. That is one fix solving two problems.
How Metro Atlanta’s 911 Centers Are Already Prioritizing Verified Alarms
I want to be straight with you, because hype is not my style. True verified response, where police flat out will not come without confirmation, is still rare. The Security Industry Association points out that when Seattle adopted it in 2024, it was only the 19th of roughly 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country to do so over 24 years, and about eleven agencies that tried it later reversed course. This is not a wave about to wash over every business tomorrow.
But the thing underneath it, prioritizing verified alarms over unverified ones, is absolutely spreading, and it has already reached Georgia. Two 911 centers in the Atlanta region are running a technology called ASAP-to-PSAP, which delivers an alarm straight from the monitoring center into the 911 dispatch computer, no phone call and no hold music, and shaves about two minutes off every dispatch. Henry County, in the south metro, went live in 2023. Coweta County, about 40 miles south of downtown, went live in 2026 running ASAP alongside AVS-01 alarm scoring, with more than a dozen monitoring companies feeding it directly.
So the direction of travel is clear, and honestly it is good news for an honest business. The 911 system is being rebuilt to move fast on alarms it can trust and to set aside the ones it cannot. A verified alarm is about to mean even more than it does today. An unverified one is going to keep sliding down the list.
What Verified Alarm Response Means for Your Atlanta Business
You do not need to overhaul everything. You need a system that can prove a crime is happening. Here is the order I would put it in.
- Get on professional, 24/7 central station monitoring. A siren alone gives no one anything to verify. Monitoring is the trained human who makes the calls and requests the dispatch.
- Add cameras the monitoring center can see in real time. Video is what turns a maybe into a confirmed, prioritized dispatch, and it is the single biggest upgrade most businesses are missing.
- Use a panel built to the CP-01 standard, installed correctly. Per the Security Industry Association, panels built to that standard have cut municipal false alarms by as much as 90 percent. Fewer false trips means fewer fines and a cleaner record with the city.
- Register your alarm and train your team. Most false alarms are your own people, not burglars, and ten minutes of training prevents a year of 50 dollar charges.
- Ask your alarm company one question. When my alarm trips at 2 a.m., what exactly happens, and can anyone actually verify it? If the answer is a shrug, you have found your gap.
If you run through that list and your answers are solid, you are in good shape, and I will be the first to tell you so. If they are not, the fix is usually smaller and less expensive than people fear.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why might police not respond to my business’s burglar alarm?
Because the overwhelming majority of alarm activations are false. The U.S. Justice Department’s COPS Office reports that 94 to 98 percent of dispatched burglar alarms are false, so a growing number of jurisdictions either deprioritize unverified alarms or refuse to dispatch on them at all. In a verified response city, an alarm triggered by a sensor alone is not enough. Police respond only when a crime is confirmed by audio, video, or an eyewitness. Even in cities that still respond, ordinances commonly disclaim any guaranteed duty to respond and reserve the right to drop chronic false alarm accounts.
What is a “verified response” alarm policy?
Verified response means police will not dispatch an officer to a burglar alarm based on a sensor signal alone. A human, audio, or video must first confirm a crime is occurring. It is different from priority response, where police still respond to every alarm but route verified ones faster. Departments using verified response still respond immediately to human-activated holdup, panic, and duress alarms. Salt Lake City was the first major U.S. city to adopt it, in December 2000, and Seattle adopted it in October 2024.
Does any city near Atlanta refuse to send police to unverified alarms?
Yes. Sandy Springs requires what it calls True Verification, meaning audio, video, or in-person confirmation of an attempted or actual crime, before police will respond to a burglar alarm. The rule took effect June 19, 2019, making Sandy Springs the first city in Georgia to do so. Fire, panic, duress, holdup, and medical alarms still receive immediate response. The city reported that in the five and a half months before the rule, 99.63 percent of its alarm calls were false, and afterward weekly alarm calls fell by about 75 percent. In Sandy Springs, false alarm fines are billed to the alarm companies, not the individual business.
Will registering my alarm guarantee that police respond?
No. Atlanta’s ordinance states plainly that registering an alarm creates no contract, duty, or obligation for the city to respond, and that any response may depend on the availability of units, the priority of other calls, weather, traffic, and staffing. The police may also choose to stop responding to a chronic runaway alarm. A response is never guaranteed. Verification is how you make your alarm a higher-priority call.
What is alarm verification, and who performs it?
Alarm verification is the process a professional monitoring center uses to confirm whether an alarm reflects a real crime before requesting police, and it is done by the central station, not by the business owner. The floor is Enhanced Call Verification, two calls to two different numbers. Above that is audio verification, where a trained professional hears a crime in progress, and video verification, where that professional reviews a camera clip and confirms a human intruder while dismissing animals or other false triggers. Verified events are escalated to police as crimes in progress.
How does verification get my alarm a faster police response?
The industry uses the ANSI and Monitoring Association standard AVS-01, which scores alarm events from Level 0, no response warranted, to Level 4, a confirmed threat to life. An unverified, sensor-only alarm scores at the bottom. When the monitoring center confirms an unknown person on site by video or other means, the same event is scored at least Level 2, the level designed to flag a likely crime in progress so a 911 center can move it up the queue. Metro Atlanta is already moving this way. Coweta County’s 911 center went live in 2026 using AVS-01 scoring alongside ASAP-to-PSAP, which delivers a verified alarm straight into the dispatch system. Both the IACP and the National Sheriffs’ Association have passed resolutions supporting the standard.
Is a siren-only alarm enough to protect my business?
No. A siren-only system is not connected to any monitoring service. By the City of Atlanta’s own ordinance definition, it is a local alarm, not monitored by a remote facility. It only makes noise and relies on a bystander to notice and call 911. With no monitoring center, it cannot perform the verification calls an ordinance directs, cannot produce a score for 911, and gives police nothing to verify. In a verified response city it would be the lowest priority or non-dispatchable, exactly when a fast response matters most.
What causes most commercial false alarms, and how do I prevent them?
According to the Security Industry Alarm Coalition, user error causes roughly 85 percent of false alarms, things like untrained staff, wrong keypad codes, and arming the system with a door or window left open. Other causes include motion from HVAC airflow moving signage, after-hours cleaning crews and animals, aging equipment, and poor sensor placement. Prevention is a stack: a control panel built to the CP-01 standard, professional monitoring with Enhanced Call Verification, video or audio verification, routine service, and staff training.
Not Sure Your Alarm Can Actually Be Verified? We Will Check.
If you cannot say for certain what happens when your alarm trips at 2 a.m., contact us and we will review your current system. We will tell you whether a real break-in could be confirmed and prioritized, or whether it would just make noise while no one comes. It takes a short conversation, and if you are already in good shape, we will say so and you are done. We have been protecting Atlanta businesses since 2007, and we would rather find the gap in a review than after a break-in. Reach my team at 678-924-7480.