IPC moves closer to establishing new regulations for alarm systems

Published 12:00 am Thursday, April 26, 2018

The Iberia Parish Council’s Public Health and Safety Committee are one step closer to establishing regulations for alarms in businesses after Wednesday’s meeting. 

The council began the process of figuring out what to do with alarms after Councilman Warren Gachassin brought up the problem. Gachassin said the Granger building in his district had an alarm going off for two weeks, with the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office being unable to find contact information for the owner to turn it off. 

“I went through the real estate company, which took me a week, and finally got to get through to the agent who owns it in Chicago,” Gachassin said. 

Gachassin proposed a new ordinance, preferably only for businesses, that would have local residents supply contact information to some government body for alarms. 

Gachassin added that the IPSO has been requesting some type of regulation for alarms for nearly a decade due to the high number of alarm calls they get that result in being unable to find an owner. 

Legal counsel Andy Shealy said he found two alternatives after research. The first is called enhanced call verification, which requires the alarm company call a designated person or persons before notifying law enforcement. 

The second is called verified response, where the alarm company has to send an eyewitness to confirm that a crime has taken place after an alarm goes off, and then law enforcement is notified. 

“The alarm company must go through those processes before turning it over to law enforcement,” Shealy said. 

Councilwoman Natalie Broussard made the point that most of the problems happening stem from alarm systems that are not monitored, and wouldn’t have an alarm company in the first place. 

“If I have an alarm on my home without a monitoring system, it’s just going to go off for two weeks,” Broussard said. “If we start if off addressing buildings that don’t have monitoring, it might solve a lot of problems.”

“If you have something that’s not monitored, then you need to leave a contact number to reach you,” she added.

Gachassin added that the IPSO still requested some kind of regulation regardless of the monitoring. 

The motion passed with Shealy saying he would do more research and reach a solution that would hopefully be efficient and solve the problem. 

In other business, the IPC voted to: 

• Execute a cooperative endeavor agreement between Iberia Parish Government and the Iberia Parish Sheriff relative to emergency commitment transports.

• Authorize  the Iberia Parish President to execute a non-emergency mutual aid cooperative endeavor agreement between Iberia Parish Government And the Twin Parish Port Commission.

• Congratulate Saasha Small on her recent American Idol appearance.