City Council Supports Stiffer Fines for False Alarms to Police : Security: Proposal calls for an $80 penalty for each unnecessary summons after second call within a year.

Hoping to reduce or at least underwrite thousands of costly false-alarm calls to police, the Los Angeles City Council moved Wednesday to impose stiffer fines on residents and business owners who summon help needlessly.

Over the objections of the security alarm industry, the proposal sent to the city attorney’s office for review calls for alarm system owners to be fined $80 for each false alarm after the second call within a 12-month period. Police currently impose the fine after the fourth call.

“Two (false alarms) should be enough,” Councilwoman Rita Walters said. “It’ll be like the Auto Club: If you call them too often, they tell you to buy a new car.”

Industry representatives were irate about the possibility of stricter fines, which they said disgruntled customers may force them to absorb.

“It’s too drastic . . . and there’s no rationale for the council to do it, except to make more money than they really need,” said Vince Nigro, president of the Los Angeles Burglar and Fire Alarm Assn.

According to police, 95% of the 161,000 alarm calls made last year were false, making up nearly 20% of all calls for police service and costing the city an estimated $2.8 million in lost police time.

Council members acknowledged Wednesday that the proposed ordinance, expected to be enacted this fall, will not eliminate false alarms, which are generally triggered by human error, faulty equipment or bad weather. But the new law may reduce human error and put indirect pressure on the alarm companies to improve the technology or hasten repairs, council members said. State law prohibits the city from imposing the fines directly on the alarm companies, even though they are responsible for false alarms caused by faulty equipment.

“It doesn’t solve the false-alarm problem, but it’s a major step in the right direction,” Councilwoman Laura Chick said.

The proposal, co-authored by council members Marvin Braude, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Chick, also would make it a misdemeanor--punishable by a maximum fine of $1,000 and one year in jail--to fail to register a residential or commercial burglar alarm with police, which costs $31 annually. Currently, only about one-third of the 300,000 systems in Los Angeles are now registered.

Unregistered alarm-system owners would be fined after the first false alarm, a slightly harsher fine than that proposed for registered owners.

Ending months of debate, the council also rejected a controversial earlier proposal by Braude that would have withheld any police response until an alarm company verified that the call was genuine. The proposal had originally been supported by police officials, but Chief Willie L. Williams testified before the council against it Wednesday, saying it would jeopardize public safety.

Instead, the council supported a compromise that would require police to respond unless a telephone call to the alarm-system owner determined that the call was false.

The security alarm industry had supported the compromise, saying the cost of adding security guards or surveillance cameras to verify that a call was genuine would make owning an alarm system too expensive for many residents and businesses.