At the council meeting on Tuesday, September 3, Director of Protective Services Greg Peters briefed council on the changes to the RCMP alarm policy. The new policy is regarding
responses to property alarms. The new policy states that police will verify an alarm before
responding and will not respond to alarms only triggered once.
“In 2017 the RCMP in Alberta responded to approximately 15,500 false alarms consuming approximately 8,000 hrs of resource time and therefore it was felt that a change in policy was needed,” explained Greg Peters Director of Protective Services. “A verified alarm means an alarm where a possible criminal offence may be occurring or has occurred, as determined by, but not limited to, an eyewitness, real-time video observation, or two or more zones being activated.”
“These changes pose a significant change to the RCMP response to alarms and we wanted to ensure the public and council were made aware of the changes,” added Julia Fielding,
Communications Officer.
“If anyone has any questions about what this change means to them, feel free to contact the RCMP or Protective Services at the Town of Drumheller.”
The K division Alberta RCMP policy states they ‘seek to ensure public safety by responding to all panic, duress, ATM, multi-zone, glass break, holdup, domestic violence and verified alarms, including any alarm at a school or financial institution during business hours.’ This essentially reflects the RCMP national policy that has been in place since at least 2017. The force states that false alarms have been identified as consuming a significant quantity of police service resources so these protocols were adopted.
