Dallas mayoral candidate and former police chief David Kunkle opposes required police response to business burglar alarms, but won’t take the issue on as a politician, fearing a tough-on-crime backlash, says Scott Henson in his Grits for Breakfast blog. While Kunkle was chief, he cited the 97 percent false burglary alarm rate and said that false alarm dispatches are the single greatest waste of U.S. law enforcement resources.
Henson says “this is an instance where tuff-on-crime politics interferes with good public policy and common sense. The small minority being subsidized by police responses to alarms are extremely vocal and well-organized by alarm companies.” As chief, Kunkle said that the 86 percent of Dallas citizens and businesses without burglar alarms were subsidizing alarm responses for the 14 per cent who have them.