It’s interesting that Honeywell’s purchase of RSI Video Technologies (Videofied brand) was announced on the day of this writing (March 1), because Videofied’s President Keith Jentoft has long been devoted to the cause of using video technology to verify alarms and thus, help solve crimes-in-progress.
Some think Jentoft’s tireless efforts to visit police departments throughout North America and ask them to make policy changes to prioritize police response to video-verified alarms (Jentoft also founded the Partnership for Priority Verified Alarm Response — PPVAR) are self-serving given his position as a manufacturer of video-verification products. But few could argue that Jentoft’s vision of a true partnership between the alarm industry and law enforcement in the work of solving crimes was not compelling. After several decades, early on in the growth of home alarms, in which the relationship between security and law enforcement was utterly beleaguered by false alarms, his was a fresh, needed approach that brought the security industry back to its roots.