HPD seeks updates to alarm program

The Honolulu Police Department wants permission from the City Council to slap an interest charge on businesses and homeowners with security alarms who fail to pay their fees or assessments on time.

Bill 66 also would allow the police chief to hire a private vendor to manage the 10-year-old security alarm registration program, a move designed to free up officers now assigned to the Alarm Tracking and Billing Unit, which is attached to HPD’s Records and Identification Division.

A law in place since 2002 requires any building owner with a security system to register it for $15 and renew it annually for $5. The program was created in large part to encourage alarm owners to be more accountable for their systems and cut down on false alarms, which waste officers’ time.

Maj. Thomas Nitta, who heads the Records and Identification Division, said in recent years the city has lost out on about $108,000 annually in unpaid service fees, charges and fines.

The bill passed the first of three required votes Wednesday and advances to the Council’s Safety, Economic Development and Government Affairs Committee for more discussion Tuesday.

Nitta said outsourcing the administration of the program would be more cost-effective, especially since the department would like to use a more modern data collection system that can more easily track alarm calls and the number of false alarms to which police respond.

"There are companies who are out here that can take everything over for us," Nitta said. "And all we would do, rather than have this personnel, we would have just a person to be a liaison with a company once we have an agreement with it."

The city already turns a small profit with the program.

About 43,980 alarm systems are registered with HPD, Nitta said. The city in 2011 collected $371,000 in fees and spent $197,335 to administer the program, Nitta said. The main expenses were four employees, two of them sworn officers, and $47,835 paid in rent for a Beretania Street office, he said.

HPD wants the authority to impose a monthly interest charge on alarm owners who fail to pay their service fees or fines within a 30-day billing period. The bill calls for delinquent alarm owners to be assessed 1 percent interest per month on their outstanding charges.

While police do not actively seek out unregistered alarms, it behooves alarm owners to get registered. Failure to register results in a $100 fine for the first false alarm. Subsequent false alarms in a 12-month period carry a $300 fine per occurrence.

If registered, an alarm owner gets three "free" false alarms before being fined $50 for the fourth and subsequent calls within a 12-month period.