Kensington businesses to be fined $200 for false alarms

KENSINGTON, P.E.I. - Kensington town council has taken steps to promote the reduction of false alarms, but there’s been no noticeable decrease yet.

In February, the town council passed a bylaw which would fine business owners $200 when police responded to a false alarm.

“False alarms add up to about five per cent of our call volume. Those calls could have been prevented by companies ensuring that their alarms work correctly and by making sure their employees are properly trained,” said Geoff Baker, the town’s chief administrative officer.

“This bylaw ensures that businesses have properly operating alarm systems and are training their employees. Secondly, it acts as a cost recovery mechanism.”

At varying periods of time, officers are on call after a regular shift. If they respond to an alarm while on call, they are paid three hours at time and a half rate. That’s about $150 to pay the officer, but there are also vehicle use expenses, fuel expenses and administrative costs, said Baker.

When a false alarm comes in, an officer responds “making them unavailable if a true call were to come in.”

This year, nine false alarms were received by Kensington police, but only one invoice for a fine was actually processed.

“It may not seem like things are changing, but when the first false alarm comes in from a company, they are issued a first occurrence notice. So within the next 12 months if a false alarm from that company comes in, they will be fined," said Baker. "It may not seem like a reduction in false alarm calls, but I think it will take a year or two for it to really work.”

The bylaw classifies false alarms as alarms that could have been prevented. But if one were to go off because of a storm, electrical work or power outage, it would not be deemed a false alarm, Baker explained.

At this point, the bylaw only applies to commercial operations.