NSW Police Alarm Response Policy

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The NSW Police Force has recently written to all alarm monitoring centres to advise them of important new guidelines when requesting police attendance to alarms

(see accompanying Schedule.)

This initiative is designed to help focus available police resources on attending genuine/potentially serious incidents. NSW Police Force alarm response guidelines can be broadly summarised as follows:

  1. NSW Police Force policy is, in the main, to respond to all reported ‘holdup’ alarms deploying warning activation devices.
  2. A reported ‘hold-up’ alarm must: (A) relate to a Schedule 1.1 customer and (B) must have installed a purpose manufactured security activation device that can only be triggered by two deliberate independent actions (in order to avoid accidental activation).
  3. Any monitoring centre that reports ‘hold-up’ alarms to NSW Police Force and fails to comply with the above two specific requirements will be in breach, and will risk prosecution by NSW Police under Section 474.18 of Criminal Code Act 1995.
  4. NSW Police Force will respond to Schedule 1.2 & 1.3 reported duress alarms that the monitoring centre believes are genuine.

    However:
  5. All other alarms (e.g., all Schedule 2) must be verified before calling police, typically by a phone call to the premises or emergency contacts, remotely monitored video verification, or by customer or mobile patrol visual verification.

    Otherwise:
  6. Police response to all other reported alarms other than Schedule 1.1 alarms will be to prioritise and attend as and where possible based on workload at the time, and not deploy warning activation devices.
  7. Police will also not respond to any reported alarm (including a ‘hold-up’ alarm) unless the name of the nearest cross street is provided.


    While NSW Police Force is aware and mindful of legal and operational complexities resulting from monitoring centre/bureau relationships, they will not accept these as justification for ongoing non-compliance.

    ASIAL strongly recommends that members advise their commercial customers to install compliant hold-up activation devices as soon as possible if they believe they fall within the Schedule 1.1 hold-up alarm response category.

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