Do I need Monitoring?

First what is monitoring? Monitoring is when your alarm system is hooked into your phone line and when it goes into alarm it call and alerts a central station the alarm and many details of the alarm. Normally the alarm company then calls your home or business to check to see if it is a false alarm and then calls the proper law enforcement agency.

Will monitoring help me?

To answer that question you first need to understand how the various law enforcement agencies view automated alarm systems. In most cases these systems have very low priority. Most Police and Sharif departments are already heavily worked so many times these alarms fall through the cracks.

In a way that is understand able. In most cases the alarm triggers a loud audible that scares away the intruder and when the police get there, there is little more they can do but look around. That coupled with the strong possibility of a false alarm makes it hard for them to put this above other calls. That doesn’t mean that it is worthless and they won’t come, it just means that it is very likely it is going to take them a while and some departments are much slower than others.

Likewise the further you are from the officer’s normal beat, the longer it will take them to get there when they do decide to come.

High Priority Alarms

Not all alarms are of the same priority. An alarm panel is capable of telling the Central Station monitoring company what type of alarm is happening. If you have a key fob with a panic alarm, or a hard wire panic alarm in the house or you used the panic alarms on the keypad, this triggers a different response. These are manually created alarms that tell the central station that this is a life threatening situation.

Life safety alarms include fire, medical and manual panic alarms. All of these have a very high priority and receive a much quicker level of response. Of source the time it takes for the proper agency to respond is still governed by availability and distance but is usually much less that automated burg alarms.

Should you pay for monitoring?

If you are purchasing an alarm panel for the purpose of Fire safety, medical or panic alarms, then yes. For these to have much benefit you will likely need to have the panel monitored. If the panel is mostly for burglar or intrusion detection and you have nearby neighbors, likely an exterior audible will do far more than monitoring will.

If you are a distance from local authorities it is possible that a combination of audible alarms and a voice dialer to call nearby neighbors may be more effective. The neighbors don’t necessarily need to come out guns blazing, often just pulling up to the house and shining the car lights or honking the horn will be enough to be sure any trespassers have left.

In any case there is no one answer that works for everyone. If you feel safer with the alarm panel being monitored then the small amount you pay is justified.