ALARMED BY THE FUTILITY RESIDENTS UPSET AS PANEL IGNORES OPTIONS TO LAPD PLAN.

Byline: Mariel Garza Staff Writer

The Los Angeles Police Commission is expected Tuesday to affirm a policy that the LAPD won't respond to unverified burglar alarms and to reject a task force's recommendation for a less-restrictive measure.

Critics claim the Los Angeles Police Department never has responded to burglar alarms in a timely manner, with officers showing up hours after an alarm has been tripped - long after a burglar could have made off with the loot.

``I've had many, many calls in recent months where they do not show up for hours or days - or don't show up at all,'' said Bruce Boyer, owner of San Fernando Valley-based Lone Star Security and Video, which is contesting the policy.

One Lone Star client waited 25 hours for police to respond to his tripped alarm, Boyer said.

Another security alarm company owner said response times vary so greatly that there's no telling when police might show up.

``We have alarms go off, and they're there in one minute, two minutes,'' said George Gunning, founding member of the Greater Los Angeles Security Alarm Association and co-owner of USA Alarm Systems. At other times, ``they're not there for hours,'' he said.

During the months-long debate over the alarm issue, LAPD officials have been widely quoted as saying they respond within 45 minutes to tripped burglar alarms.

LAPD Lt. Debra Kirk said that's just an average, however, and more serious crimes always take priority over burglar alarms in deploying officers.

``The best-case scenario is in minutes,'' Kirk said. ``But it frequently does happen that it's not minutes that response time is calculated in, but hours.''

The new policy, adopted by the Police Commission in January, requires a person or video-monitoring equipment at the scene to confirm a break-in before officers will respond. That will result in faster response to real emergencies because confirmed alarms will be given high priority, Kirk said, and officers won't be tied up answering false alarms set off by wind, pets or hapless visitors.

City-installed alarms at the homes of the mayor and City Council members will be exempt from the nonresponse policy, as will high-risk businesses such as banks and gun shops.

The policy shift caused an uproar among city residents, but commissioners and Police Chief William Bratton say it is justified since false alarms have wasted valuable police time in more than 90 percent of the 120,000 alarm responses each year.

The council considered vetoing the policy but compromised by appointing a task force to examine alternatives. That task force proposed a ``three strikes, you're out'' system allowing three false alarms at a home or business before the LAPD stopped responding without verification.

Last week, top Police Commission officials recommended against that proposal, saying it sets the city up for lawsuits if police mistakenly don't show up.

The recommendation angered the members of the Burglar Alarm Task Force who had spent hours reviewing data and laboring over the proposed alternative. It also displeased council members who endorsed the alternative in a unanimous vote.

Under the commission's new policy, if an alarm is verified by a person or video-monitoring equipment, it would get a Code 2 dispatch from LAPD, meaning ``proceed without delay.'' All others alarm calls would essentially be ignored.

This galls residents who purchased and installed burglar alarms to feel safe, only to find that they could be ignored by the police when the alarms go off.

Carol Childers, a Woodland Hills resident, said she and her husband got an alarm system with the expectation that police would come if it was set off.

``The fact that it's not going to happen once this goes through is not fair,'' Childers said. ``I think the police should respond to emergencies.''

City insiders say that negotiations have been taking place in the days before the Tuesday commission consideration and that there's still some hope that a compromise to the nonresponse policy can be reached.

Mariel Garza, [phone]

mariel.garza(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Beside a control panel, Buddy and Carol Childers of Woodland Hills are upset that police may just ignore their home alarm.

Evan Yee/Staff Photographer