[Adopted 10-4-77 as Ord. No. 45-77, amended 12-15-81 by Ord. No. 61-81; amended in its entirety 4-4-95 by Ord.
No. 10-95]
This Article shall be known as "The Burglary and Robbery Alarm
Ordinance."
A.
The purpose of this Article is to encourage security alarm users
and alarm businesses (sales, installation, customer service and/or
monitoring) to assume increased responsibility for maintaining the
mechanical reliability and the proper use of the alarm systems to
prevent unnecessary police emergency response to false alarms and
thereby to protect the emergency response capability of the city from
misuse.
B.
This Article governs burglary and robbery alarm systems, requires
permits, establishes fees, provides for allocation of revenues and
deficits, provides for fines for excessive false alarms, provides
for punishment of violations and establishes a system of administration.
C.
Revenue generated in excess of costs to administer the Article shall
be allocated for the use of promoting crime prevention education and
training through the Orange Crime Watch Program.
In this Article:
A person designated by the Director and/or Chief of Police
to administer, control and review alarm applications, permits and
false alarm notifications.
The business by an individual, partnership, corporation,
or other entity of selling, leasing, maintaining, servicing, repairing,
altering, replacing, moving, or installing any alarm system or causing
to be sold, leased, maintained, serviced, repaired, altered, replaced,
moved, or installed any alarm system in or on any building, structure
or facility.
A notification intended to summon the police, which is designed
either to be initiated purposely by a person or by an alarm system
that responds to a stimulus characteristic of unauthorized intrusion.
At the discretion of the Alarm Administrator, multiple false alarm
notifications in a twelve (12) hour period of time may be counted
as only one (1) F.A.N.
A single premises or location served by an alarm system or
systems.
Any assembly of equipment, mechanical or electrical, arranged
to signal the occurrence of an illegal entry or other activity requiring
urgent attention and to which police are expected to respond. Alarm
System does not include:
The person, firm, partnership, association, corporation,
company or organization of any kind in control of any building, structure
or facility wherein an alarm system is maintained.
A device which is interconnected to a telephone line and
is programmed to select a predetermined telephone number and transmit
by voice message or code signal an emergency message indicating a
need for emergency response.
An alarm system signaling an entry or attempted entry into
the area protected by the system.
An alarm notification to the police department, when the
responding officer finds no evidence of a criminal offense or attempted
criminal offense. Excluded from this definition are:
An alarm system that emits a signal at an alarm site that
is audible or visible from the exterior of a structure.
The person designated in the application as required in Section
49-3C who is responsible for responding to alarms and giving access
to the site and who is responsible for the proper maintenance and
operation of the alarm system and payment of fees.
An individual, corporation, partnership, association, organization
or similar entity.
An alarm system signaling a robbery or attempted robbery.
A feature of an alarm system which will cause an audible
alarm to stop emitting sound.
A.
Every alarm user shall obtain an alarm user's permit for each
system from the Alarm Administrator's office within thirty (30)
days of activation of the alarm system. Applications for a burglar
and/or robbery alarm user's permit and a twenty-five dollar ($25.)
fee shall be filed with the Alarm Administrator's office. Each
permit shall bear the signature of the Director of Police and be for
a one year (1) period. The permit shall be physically upon the premises
using the alarm system and shall be available for inspection by the
Orange Police Department.
B.
A person commits an offense if he operates or caused to be operated
an alarm system without a valid permit issued by the Director of Police.
A separate permit shall be required for each alarm system.
C.
Upon receipt of a completed application form and a non-refundable
permit fee of twenty-five dollars ($25.) for a new permit and fifteen
dollars ($15.) for a permit renewal, the Director shall issue an alarm
permit to an applicant unless the applicant has:
D.
A twenty-five ($25.) charge will be charged in addition to the fee provided in Section 49-9C to a user who fails to obtain a permit within thirty (30) days after activation, or is more than thirty (30) days delinquent in renewing a permit.
E.
If a residential alarm user is over the age of sixty-two (62) and/or
is a handicapped person and is the primary resident of the residence
and no business is conducted in the residence, a user's permit
may be obtained from the Alarm Administrator's office without
the payment of a fee.
F.
An alarm permit cannot be transferred to another person. A permit
holder shall inform the Director of Police of any change that alters
any information listed on the permit application within five (5) business
days. No fee will be assessed for such change.
G.
Any false statement of a material matter made by an applicant for
the purpose of obtaining an alarm permit shall be sufficient cause
for refusal to issue a permit.
A.
A permit holder or person in control of the alarm system shall:
(1)
Maintain the premises and the alarm system in a manner that will
minimize or eliminate false alarm notifications;
(2)
Respond or cause his representative to appear at the systems location
within an eight (8) hour period of time when notified by the city
to deactivate a malfunctioning alarm system, to provide access to
the premises, or to provide security for the premises; and
(3)
Not manually activate an alarm for any reason other than an occurrence
of an event that the alarm system was intended to report.
B.
A person in control of a local alarm shall adjust the mechanism or
cause the mechanism to be adjusted so that an alarm signal will sound
for no longer than ten (10) minutes after being activated.
A permit holder or person in control or an alarm site whose
alarm system transmit automatic alarm notifications directly to the
communications center of the Orange Police Department shall:
A.
Transmit the alarm in the form and with the content specified by
the Director of Police;
B.
Insure that any recorded messages are intelligible; and
C.
If transmitted over telephone lines, insure that only the special
trunklines or other communication facilities designed by the Director
of Police are used.
A person in control of an alarm system shall maintain at each
alarm site a complete set of written operating instructions for each
alarm system. Special codes, combinations or passwords should not
be included in these instructions.
If there is reason to believe that an alarm system is not being
used or maintained in a manner that insures proper operation and suppresses
false alarms, the Director may require a conference with an alarm
permit holder and the individual or association responsible for maintenance
of the alarm system to review the circumstances of each false alarm.
A.
The holder of an alarm permit or the person in control of an alarm
system shall be subjected to warnings, fines and suspension or loss
of permit depending on the number of false alarm notifications emitted
from an alarm system within a twelve (12) month period based upon
the following schedule:
|
Number of False Alarm Notifications
|
Action Taken
|
|---|---|
|
1 thru 4
|
Warning letter 1 - 4
|
|
5 thru 14
|
$25 fine each
|
|
15 thru 25
|
$35 fine each
|
|
26 and up
|
$50 fine each
|
B.
Any person who operates a newly installed system will not be subject
to False Alarm Notifications (F.A.N.) during the thirty (30) days
following the system completion provided a permit application is received
by the Director of Police. The completion date shall be certified
by a person currently licensed by the State of New Jersey where the
system is professionally installed, or the date of the purchase receipt
for self-installed systems.
C.
Any person operating a nonpermitted alarm system will be subjected to a citation and assessment of a fifty dollar ($50.) fee for each F.A.N., without benefit of the notifications provided in Section 49-9A above. Subsequent submittal of an alarm permit application may allow waiver of subsequent fee assessments, but each F.A.N., previously received shall be counted in the accumulating notification total.
D.
Alarm activations, caused by actual criminal offense or with evidence
of a criminal attempt, shall not be counted, nor F.A.N. accumulated.
E.
The Alarm Administrator will notify the alarm user and the alarm
business by regular mail of the fine. If the fine has not been received
in the administrator's office within twenty (20) days of the
day notice of the fine was mailed by the Administrator, the Administrator
will send the notice of the fine with a late fee of twenty-five dollars
($25.). If payment is not received within ten (10) days of the day
the notice of late fee was mailed, the Administrator will initiate
the enforcement of penalties.
On the fourth false alarm the alarm user or his alarm company
shall submit to the Alarm Administrator a letter specifying what corrective
action has been taken to prevent false alarms.
An alarm user which is a governmental political unit shall be
subject to this ordinance; but a permit shall be issued without payment
of a fee. Governmental political units shall be subject to the regular
alarm user's excessive false alarm fine structure.
A.
An alarm user who wants to appeal validity of a false alarm determination
by the Alarm Administrator may appeal to the Director of Police for
a hearing. The appeal must be in writing and must be requested within
ten (10) days of the alarm user having received notice of the denial
or revocation from the Administrator.
B.
The hearing shall be before the Director of Police. The Administrator
and the alarm user shall have the right to present written or oral
evidence subject to the right of cross-examination. If the Director
determines that the false alarms have occurred in a permit year the
Director shall issue a written finding upholding the validity of the
Administrator's findings.
A person whose alarm permit has been revoked may be issued a
new permit if the person:
A.
All information submitted in compliance with this Article shall be
held in strictest confidence and shall be deemed a public record exempt
from disclosure pursuant to state statute; and any violation of confidentiality
shall be deemed a violation of this Article. The Administrator shall
be charged with the sole responsibility for the maintenance of all
records of any kind whatsoever under this Article.
B.
Subject to the requirement of confidentiality, the Administrator
shall develop and maintain statistics having the purpose of assisting
alarm system evaluation for use by members of the public.
A.
All fees and fines collected pursuant to this Article shall be special
fund revenue of the City of Orange Township, however, the city shall
maintain records sufficient to identify the sources and amount of
that revenue.
B.
The City of Orange Township shall maintain records in accordance
with sound accounting principles sufficient to determine on a fiscal
year basis the direct costs of administering this Article, including
salaries and wages, travel, office supplies, postage, printing, facilities,
office and computer equipment and other properly chargeable costs.
C.
No later than July 31st of each year, the city shall render an account
to the Orange Police Community Service Bureau which shall establish
the revenue necessary to cover administrative cost and funding of
the Orange Crime Watch Program.
Any person, firm or corporation found guilty in the Municipal
Court of the City of Orange for violation of the terms of this Article
shall be subject to a fine of not more than five hundred dollars ($500.)
or imprisonment for a period not exceeding ninety (90) days, or both.
