In October 2013, the Chapel Hill Town Council passed an ordinance designed to reduce the number of accidental security and fire alarms, a costly problem for the town with 95 percent of calls to public responders in 2012 classified accidental.
As of Dec. 31, the town has issued $50,355 in fines and collected about $30,000 under the new ordinance.
“The council had some good deliberation when it was originally passed,” said Town Councilman Lee Storrow. “We definitely wanted to incentivize businesses and residents not to have incidental alarms.”
In comparison with the same period in 2013, the police department has responded to 35 percent fewer alarms from July 2014, when enforcement began, to December 2014.
The fire department has not seen as significant a reduction in the number of false alarms as the police department.
Deputy Fire Chief Matt Lawrence said it might be because accidental police alarms are due to human error, while fire alarms usually occur from maintenance issues.
“The majority of police alarms are actions people take — taking too long to put in the code or a pet activating it,” he said. “The majority of fire alarms are actually system problems.”
After the ordinance went into effect at the beginning of January 2014, there was a six-month period for public education of the new program before enforcement began in July.
