This is what I've come to learn about urban residential burglaries, alarms, and monitoring companies.
First the obvious, most residential burglaries are committed by amateurs.
An audible residential alarm will drive most of these away. No monitoring company is necessary.
A residential alarm will give false alarms resulting in annoying your neighbors and training them not to pay any attention and possibly even file a complaint with the police or city. The cities I'm familiar with all have ordinances that can result in fines for repeated false audible alarms.
None of the alarm companies I had experience with were too good. Some were better than others but most of the call takers as you'd expect weren't too sharp or motivated. Depending on the service subscription you pay for the alarm still sits in their lap as they follow your specific subscription order or until they call the police.
If you have an alarm company it will usually trigger a police response. Repeated police response to false alarm can result in a charge by the city. I'm familiar with a $90 per response charge for three or more false alarms within a six month period or maybe it was within the year (I don't remember right now). It's likely higher now.
Police know 99% of residential intrusion alarms are false and so do not give it a high priority which results in slow response time. The non-amateur burglar knows this too. However depending on the agency a glass breakage alarm might get a higher priority and a manually activated panic alarm usually assures a higher priority. Again most of these are false too and so if your system has given more false alarms in a set time period you'll likely receive bills from the city.
As I said in the last paragraph, non-amateurs know these things too and do not care whether a house is alarmed or not. They enter, take what they're after, and get out long before the police arrive. Amateurs take stupid stuff like TVs, game consoles, DVD players, etc. They will often (eventually) get caught with them in their possession, get backtracked to from a pawn shops, or be rolled over on by whomever buys it from them once they're caught with it.
Just my two cents worth.
First the obvious, most residential burglaries are committed by amateurs.
An audible residential alarm will drive most of these away. No monitoring company is necessary.
A residential alarm will give false alarms resulting in annoying your neighbors and training them not to pay any attention and possibly even file a complaint with the police or city. The cities I'm familiar with all have ordinances that can result in fines for repeated false audible alarms.
None of the alarm companies I had experience with were too good. Some were better than others but most of the call takers as you'd expect weren't too sharp or motivated. Depending on the service subscription you pay for the alarm still sits in their lap as they follow your specific subscription order or until they call the police.
If you have an alarm company it will usually trigger a police response. Repeated police response to false alarm can result in a charge by the city. I'm familiar with a $90 per response charge for three or more false alarms within a six month period or maybe it was within the year (I don't remember right now). It's likely higher now.
Police know 99% of residential intrusion alarms are false and so do not give it a high priority which results in slow response time. The non-amateur burglar knows this too. However depending on the agency a glass breakage alarm might get a higher priority and a manually activated panic alarm usually assures a higher priority. Again most of these are false too and so if your system has given more false alarms in a set time period you'll likely receive bills from the city.
As I said in the last paragraph, non-amateurs know these things too and do not care whether a house is alarmed or not. They enter, take what they're after, and get out long before the police arrive. Amateurs take stupid stuff like TVs, game consoles, DVD players, etc. They will often (eventually) get caught with them in their possession, get backtracked to from a pawn shops, or be rolled over on by whomever buys it from them once they're caught with it.
Just my two cents worth.
