L.A. OFFICIALS ADMIT THEY PASSED A ... PHONY FALSE ALARM BAN.

Byline: James Nash Staff Writer

The city's controversial new burglar alarm policy is a failure, hobbled by technological glitches and a lack of cooperation from the burglar-alarm industry, Los Angeles officials said Tuesday as they threatened to scrap the new rule.

The Police Commission scheduled a vote for early next month to consider ending the policy, which was aimed at cutting the amount of time police spend responding to false alarms.

``We were sold a bill of goods and we're paying for it now,'' said Commissioner Rick Caruso, who said the city should consider scrapping the entire response policy because the alarm industry hasn't upheld its end of the bargain.

``It's an example of where public policy is dictated by politics and it's a bad deal. It was a bad deal then and it's a bad deal today.''

Since January, the Los Angeles Police Department has had a policy of responding to no ``unverified'' burglar alarms from any location that produced two or more false alarms in a year. The policy was originally going to be a total ban on responding to burglar alarms unless they were verified in person because 95 percent are false, wasting up to 15 percent of patrol officers' time. But that was watered down after objections from the City Council, community groups and the alarm industry.

LAPD officials admit they continue to respond to some addresses that already have exceeded that limit because of shortcomings in the system that logs false alarms.

And on Tuesday, they said the burglar alarm industry's failure to turn over complete lists of alarm customers crippled the city's efforts to track alarm calls and penalize people who don't have city permits or whose homes or offices trigger too many false alarms.

``That raises serious questions about the fragile compromise we reached,'' Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, chairwoman of the council's Public Safety Committee, said Tuesday.

``It's frustrating. We were sold the idea of this compromise on the idea that this could be done.''

Police, city politicians, alarm industry representatives and residents spent much of 2003 debating whether police should continue to respond to burglar alarms without evidence of a break-in, such as verification by a neighbor or a security-company representative.

Police Chief William Bratton argued for stopping the LAPD's past practice of automatically responding, but opponents claimed that would send a message to criminals that they can burglarize homes in Los Angeles without getting caught.

Mayor James Hahn and other officials worked out a compromise that police would continue their automatic response unless an address had two or more false alarms in a preceding year.

As part of the new policy, residents and businesses would face increasingly expensive fines, beginning with the first false alarm.

But alarm company officials have not turned over lists of their customers - citing security and privacy concerns - which has hindered efforts to track the alarms.

Alarm industry officials said they're attempting to meet city deadlines for turning over customer lists while respecting the confidentiality of the names and addresses.

Although state legislation was passed recently to ensure the confidentiality of the lists, the city hasn't gone far enough, said George Gunning, president of the Greater Los Angeles Alarm and Security Association.

``We made an agreement from the GLASA standpoint to turn over our client list to the city if they would give us a confidentiality letter,'' Gunning said. ``That was the agreement from Day One.''

LAPD officials said about 60 percent of alarms in Los Angeles are from companies represented by GLASA. The remainder are from separate companies that do not belong to an association and have no specific agreements to submit customer lists.

LAPD data show that police responded to virtually all alarms in January - the first month of the new policy - even from the 1,163 locations that had already tallied two or more false alarms that month.

LAPD Lt. Debra Kirk said Tuesday that officials still are fine-tuning the technology for tracking false alarms and canceling police response to them.

Some city officials said it's too early to declare the new policy dead.

``I see no reason at this point to give up on the compromise that we made not with the alarm industry, but with the people of Los Angeles and the businesses that use alarms,'' Councilwoman Janice Hahn said. ``We need to give this compromise a chance. We need to let it work.''

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel agreed.

``We always knew there would be a potential for a few kinks,'' Greuel said. ``The bottom line is, the community I represent says they don't want to open the door to the potential burglar and say, Come on in.''

The Police Commission is scheduled to discuss the alarm policy at its next meeting, April 6.

James Nash, [phone]

james.nash(at)dailynews.com