Belleville City Council has asked staff to proceed with preparing a Verified Alarm Response by-law to reduce the number of false alarm calls officers attend to.
The proposed by-law, which will be developed using a Cornwall policy as a template, comes at the request of the Belleville Police Services Board.
Councillor Tyler Allsopp, who is also the Chair of the Police Services Board says this is one of the ways they are trying to reduce call volume.
Allsopp says approximately three per cent of calls come from businesses, however 81 per cent of those calls are false alarms.
“Police get called, two officers attend. It ties up a lot of time and also a lot of resources so very much hoping for your support on this. It will put the onus on the alarm companies and on business owners to upgrade their alarm systems so that we can properly verify if there is criminal activity going on before we send people out.”
The motion was passed without discussion.
