As you’ve surely noticed if you’ve made it this far into the magazine, this month’s cover story is the SDM 100, an annual ranking by RMR of security companies that “earn their revenues from the sale, installation, service and monitoring of electronic security systems, such as intrusion and fire alarm, access control, video surveillance, and related low-voltage systems.”
The positive side is that the companies on this report produce hundreds of millions of dollars in recurring monthly revenue. The negative — well, let’s call it the cautionary side — is that there is a certain amount of vulnerability in that RMR.
To be effective and trusted — and worth the investment — alarm systems must have a timely response from authorities when they are activated. Some municipalities, though, having grown weary of sending police officers to check out alarm activations that turned out to be nothing, have moved to enact non-response policies. Sometimes euphemistically known as “verified response,” these policies generally state that police will not respond to an alarm unless the property owner first somehow verifies that the activation was legitimate. Such policies not only threaten to diminish the value of alarm systems, they also could make them dangerous. In a verified response community, an alarm activation will probably lead to a civilian responding first to the scene to determine if the police should be called. If no foul play was involved in setting off the alarm, no harm done. But what if the alarm went off for good reason? What if a crime is being committed? A non-law enforcement officer, almost certainly unarmed and untrained, has now been put in possible jeopardy.