Police Registration

A lot of questions surrounding Waterloo Regional Police registration this year. Trust me. We get it.

It. Sucks.

Waterloo Regional decided years ago that any home with an alarm system was to be registered as having an alarm system in order to receive prioritized response and one free false alarm response per year. As the Region grew and the population boomed, it became less possible to provide the prioritized response so it was dropped, and no false alarm has been free for years.

The registration became a way for people to pay less for any false alarms. At this moment, a response to a false alarm by Waterloo Regional Police will cost a non-registered alarm system end user $200. A registered alarm system will cut that fee in half.

I think at this point most people understand that our Police Department is becoming overwhelmed. There are so many Homes and Businesses in this Region registered with the Police through our alarm service that those unverified call outs can’t all be given priority.

Unverified means that our monitoring service placed the call, not a resident or key holder. We always recommend that one of the key holders call the police directly in case of needed response. That’s not because we don’t want to or won’t, it’s because a residents call out will be responded to much faster than our call out.

You are considered verified the moment you ask for response.

Now. The Registration we do once a year for the Police covers any call out placed based on your alarm system being set off that came from your alarm signals. That means;

If you call the police. If we call the police. If someone authorized to be on premise calls the police. Any circumstance where an authorized resident or employee of the property requests police response based on the alarm siren or alert device. Basically.

The Registration is not the difference between getting a response and not getting a response. They’re coming out if they get called. They can’t just not respond.

All of our yearly registrations for the Police go out once a year, somewhere between January and February. Understand that our cut off date to remain registered is March 31 of each year. Registrations received beyond that will still be honored, but it takes at least two weeks for the police to re-register the account.

We’d like to see a better system. I believe they would to. Until that happens, though, it is what it is.

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