County leaders say there have already ben 14,000 false alarms this year, and each of those calls cost vital manpower and money.
The windier the weather, the more false alarms that Horry County police have to respond to. Usually, it's due to faulty alarm systems at homes and businesses.
Now the county is ready to crack down on those false alarm offenders.
So far this year, police have responded to more than 14,000 alarm calls. Of those, only about 130 were actual break-ins. All the rest were false alarms. County officials are ready to make people fix their faulty alarm systems or pay a fine.
Here's the problem. The wind rattles a door open slightly at a home or business. That triggers an overly-sensitive alarm system. Police respond to check it out and discover it's not a break-in, it's a false alarm.
And that, says Horry County Public Safety Director Paul Whitten, is a waste of a police officer's time. "It takes an officer out of sector. It takes him out of service so he can't respond to other crimes that might be occurring."
The county already has an ordinance to fine people who have repeat false alarms at the same location. But to enforce the law, the county would have to hire more staff to send out letters and collect the fines.
But Whitten told the county's Public Safety Committee that Horry County could outsource that job to a for-profit vendor to take care of the paperwork and share the proceeds of the fines with the county. It could add up to $100,000 in revenue for the county in the first year, but Whitten says making money from fines isn't the point. "I hope it goes down significantly because that means that our officers aren't responding. Our firefighters aren't responding to false calls and I think everybody understands that's the goal."
Whitten says some homeowners and businesses send out 50 or more false alarms per year and right now, they have no incentive to do anything about it. But a $150 fine after the third false alarm might get their attention.
Whitten says communities that have used this system have seen a 50 to 60 percent drop in false alarms in just the first year.
The proposal will come up before the Horry County Council in January.
