City leaders, NOPD take aim at false alarms

18th May 2015   ·   0 Comments

Emails show Serpas proposed similar changes to law four years ago

A new ordinance aimed at reducing false alarms is also designed to help the NOPD to cut down on what the NOPD superintendent is calling “wasted manpower.”

NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told WWL that thousands of hours are wasted, as well as taxpayer money. The chief said last year they responded to about 48,000 false alarms.

Harrison, along with members of the City Council, said last week that the new ordinance would help cut down on about 12,000 hours of wasted manpower.

The ordinance would also aid an undermanned police department whose dwindling numbers have reached the crisis level, some say, and hold civilians accountable for repeated false alarms.

WWL reported that although there is already a false alarm ordinance in effect, it’s not enforced and the penalties are very relaxed.

Under the old ordinance, civilians get 10 false alarm calls before they are removed from the response list. The new ordinance only gives you three, and the fines are much more significant. You get a warning and then a $75 or $150 fine.

Here in the city, a report shows about 98 percent of all alarm calls are false, which make up about 10 percent of the total calls.

Supt. Harrison told WWL that this was needed by the department.

“The way we police is becoming different,” Harrison said. “With all the new technology that is out now, we can be a department of the 21st century. My people have said they simply want to see more police out in the community.”

The chief said the new ordinance will save taxpayers about $400,000 and will save about six officers from running out to the call.

Under the proposed ordinance, alarm system users would receive a warning for the first false alarm, a $75 fine for a second violation, and a $150 fine for the third violation. The study also claimed approximately 5,300 addresses were responsible for most of the false alarms with three or more false alarms, and these addresses accounted for 73 percent of the false alarms.

“For every minute police spend responding to a false alarm, is another minute they could be responding to an actual crime or to engage in proactive community policing. With more than 130 false alarms a day on average, this problem has gotten way out of hand. I fully support Chief Harrison’s proposals as they are reasonable, well-researched and are in line with best practices being adopted by police departments around the country. Most importantly, these proposals will make NOPD more effective and responsive, and they will make our communities safer,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said.

While the City Council’s new get-tough false alarm proposal appears to be on a fast track, the proposal isn’t exactly new. Similar measures were proposed by previous NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas several years ago, but reception to the idea was less than enthusiastic.

At a press conference Wednes­day, newly appointed Chief Mic­hael Harrison was joined by four council members to express support for an ordinance designed to cut done on false burglar alarms and free up overburdened police officers.

“We have studied best practices by police departments around the country, and our proposal is a middle-of-the-road approach that will reduce false alarms, improve police response times to actual crimes and free up police resources,” Harrison said.

But documents show that the idea was floated by former NOPD Supt. Ronal Serpas as far back as 2011. There was a note about the issue in a 2011 PowerPoint budget presentation by Serpas to the council, and it also was suggested by Serpas in an email to deputy mayors Andy Kopplin and Col. Jerry Sneed.

“This is a strategy that means unless we get a call from a homeowner, an alarm company or a business that there is, in fact, been a break in or robbery event, we do not dispatch,” Serpas wrote.

WWL reported that neither the council nor the mayor’s office pushed to reform the city’s existing false alarm policy when it was raised earlier, not even after the Office of Inspector General strongly pushed the idea in a May 2014 report.

“The city should make revisions to the city code designed to reduce calls for service due to burglar alarms,” the OIG report states.

Councilwoman Stacy Head, a strong supporter of the new ordinance, served on the council when the issued was raised several years ago. When asked why the idea didn’t gain traction back then, she conceded it should have.

“Getting things to happen in government is a lot slower than, frankly, I think it should be,” Head told WWL. “This has moved with lightning speed since the chief took over. So we can look back and say we should have done it before now. And I can say that about 50 or 60 other things that I wish had happened five, six, seven years before now.”

But not only is this proposal not new, at least one council member has serious misgivings. Councilman James Gray said he spoke to Chief Harrison about the proposal and expressed misgivings about cutting off police response to alarms after a third false alarm violation.

“The ordinance has some details that I’m not sure everyone is on board with,” Gray said. “Right now, after the third (false) alarm, you come off the list for police to respond. I’m not sure everyone’s going to agree to that.”

Councilman Gray, however, said he does believe that some reform action should be taken.

“It’s been raised before,” Gray told WWL. “It’s a continuing problem and there needs to be something done.”

Although he declined to comment on a series of recent stories about him warning the Landrieu administration of the current NOPD manpower crisis, former Supt. Ronal Serpas, who took a teaching position at Loyola University after resigning last fall, issued a statement about his previous attempt to change the city law, noting that all stakeholders in the problem should have input.

“As far back as 2011, I informed the council of the need to implement new verified response strategies and to false alarms and the drain on NOPD resources,” Serpas wrote in an email to WWL. “That didn’t happen. Changing the city law on this has to involve residents, businesses and the alarm industry.”

This article originally published in the May 18, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.