Milwaukee's police have been doing their job over the past six months by not responding to some burglar alarms.

Chief Nan Hegerty of the Milwaukee Police Department gave the Common Council Public Safety Committee an update about the verified response alarm policy Thursday.

The policy, put into effect Sept. 19, requires police to respond only to burglar alarms that have been verified, either by the owner or the alarm company.

Hegerty said after examining the policy for the first six months, the police are going to keep it.

False alarms have gone down from 97 to 78 percent, and police have saved 5,331 labor hours that would otherwise have been spent checking out false alarms.

"It's just a matter of redirecting those hours to something that's more productive," Hegerty said at the meeting.

Officers on the street are now free to do other work with the time they would have spent checking false alarms, Hegerty said. She said it was estimated that 15,500 hours a year were spent checking false alarms.

"Please keep in mind, we do respond to burglar alarms," Hegerty said. "We respond to all verified burglar alarms."

Hegerty said it would take 1,500 officers on the street for MPD to be able to respond to all alarms, verified and unverified. This would be an increase of 119 officers.

But not everyone agrees.

"I think (Hegerty's presentation) was very misleading for a number of reasons," said 14th District Alderman Tony Zielinski.

Zielinski said it is too early to judge whether or not the program has been a success, and Hegerty is ignoring the fact that if more officers are hired, MPD can do more things, including cutting response time and responding to alarms.

"I think the general feeling of our members is it's too early to deem this a success or a failure," said Mike Horgan, president of the Wisconsin Burglar & Fire Alarm Association.

Burglaries have actually increased for the association's two main companies, Horgan said. Burglaries are up 32 percent for ADT and 160 percent for Brink's, he said.

At the meeting, Hegerty proposed creating an ordinance that would require alarm companies to provide security guards to verify alarms.

"It has, and always will be, my official position that private citizens, or any untrained individuals, should not be the first responders to an alarm," Hegerty said.

Horgan said the Alarm Association agrees with Hegerty that it is not safe to have people verify their own alarms, but this policy would require alarm companies to charge more and to respond to all alarms.

"The people with alarm systems who can't afford it are going to maybe stop using it," Horgan said.

Zielinski is working on another proposal with state Sen. Jeffrey Plale (D-South Milwaukee).

Currently Hegerty has the power to unilaterally enforce the verified response policy, but the legislation would require the police to respond to all alarms.

"I think that in this particular case, given the importance of public safety, that this warrants going to the state legislature," Zielinski said.

If that measure passed, Zielinski said he would then reintroduce his measure of fining Milwaukee alarm customers $70 so alarm response costs would be covered, which would generate about $3.5 million for the city.

This article appeared in The Marquette Tribune on Mar. 10 2005.