OPINION - LA Times

by Christine Todd Whitman

January 13, 2009

Finally. Hoo-rooty-toot-rah.

The city of LA has been rolling over to the burglar alarm crowd for years, footing the bill to send police out to check on ringing alarms in homes and businesses, alarms that turn out to be false 90 percent of the time. Nine-oh percent.

To everyone who gripes about police response time, listen up -- patrol officers spend about 15% of their time answering these non-emergencies.

Time is big money. Between 2004 and 2008, that cost the city almost $27 million. That's all of us, footing the bill for private security alarms that one way or another get their wires crossed.

Last year, the city managed to collect only $8 million in false-alarm fines, evidently because so few alarms have permits, and for some reason that makes it hard for the city to bill them. [It sounds so muddle-headed. The LAPD responded to a false alarm. They know where the alarm is. It's all there in the report. So why is it hard to hunt down the owners and make them pay up? The city should be able to get more money out of people whose alarms aren't legal, but that's the city for you in a nutshell.]

Now, at last, City Council member Wendy Greuel wants to take a nibble -- not a big bite, not quite yet -- out of that time-wasting and money-wasting exercise. If this measure gets through the City Council, it'll be up to alarm companies to make sure every home and business that installs an alarm also gets a permit and pays the $31 permit fee.

I divine that this means the city will now be able to go after the false alarms more aggressively, and fine people when the LAPD shows up for nothing. The fines start at $115 per call and $50 more for every additional call. If there's no permit for the alarm, the fine goes up by $100 increments.

Four years ago, the city began requiring permits for the alarms, and let people get two ''freebies'' a year -- two false alarms, no harm, no foul. If the alarm rings a third time, someone has to verify that there's a real emergency, or no black-and-white rolls out to respond.

I'd prefer something meatier in the way of enforcement, but at this point, if the city can just recoup wasted millions, it'd be one fine start.

Until the city puts some teeth in its false-alarm program, how about a better solution with some real teeth?

All you people with alarms -- get dogs instead. There are hundreds upon hundreds in the city's shelters in desperate need of homes. Dogs are smarter than electronic alarms, a lot cuter, admirably territorial about their homes and yards, and pretty sound judges of character:

Christine Todd Whitman is the former New Jersey governor and EPA administrator who quit after butting heads with Vice President Dick Cheney. Her dog Coors was the mother of President George Bush's dog Barney. Whitman told me on KPCC radio today, "I figured it was a telling sign right at the beginning: the Vice President never liked Barney.'' And maybe vice versa.