Marlboro, New Jersey Police To Start Home Alarm Monitoring Service
In an effort to boost town revenues, the Marlboro, New Jersey police department is looking to “cut out the middleman” of New Jersey home alarm system monitoring companies and allow consumers to have the police department be their monitoring service.
According to SecuritySystemsNews.com:
According to Chris Mosley, president Complete Security Systems and past president of the NJBFAA:
“They’re going to do it. No matter what we say or do, they’re going to do this,” Mosley said. “This was a recommendation from the department of community affairs to help boost revenue in the police department.”
According to a report in the Marlboro News Transcript, the mayor of Marlboro estimated that the town could raise between $351,000 and $900,000 by monitoring home alarm systems. The police chief is quoted in the report as saying that residents who opt to have their systems monitored by the police department rather than by a private security company “will cut out the middle man,” and may see faster response times when an alarm is received.
The idea behind the police department providing monitoring services is that there will be a decreased response time as well as an increase in revenues for the police department. Not everyone agrees that this is a good idea, in fact on local community not too far from Marlboro recently looked into the residential home alarm security monitoring and opted against getting involved:
This is not the first time that a city police department has tried to raise revenue by offering monitoring to residents. Earlier this year, the Nassau County, N.Y. police department looked into monitoring residential accounts. After security industry representatives got involved, Nassau officials decided it lacked the expertise, manpower and liability coverage to get into the residential monitoring business.
Whether it works or not, one thing is clear – police departments need more revenue and citizens need to be sure that a reliable, stable entity is monitoring their home alarm systems.
