Amarillo Police Department Dispatch's New Policy
Based upon our data, we found that in the last few years, 99% of the alarm calls we respond to do not result in any activity being found. Therefore we classify them as false alarms. In 2023, false alarms comprised more than 8000 responses, which is more than 10% of our total call volume. Our 2024 data shows the same trend. This is a significant drain on police services, which is a taxpayer funded resource. These calls reduce our response time to actual emergencies, and significantly reduce our response time to other calls where a non-urgent investigation is required. Additionally, the number of police officers at APD has dropped over the last year, causing us to make other internal adjustments to our response model and our investigations.
In order to be more effective, we have developed the following protocol, effective August 1st, 2024:
The Amarillo Emergency Communication Center (AECC) will not dispatch a call to respond to intrusion, motion, door, or other property type alarms between 0600 to 2200 unless the caller provides verified information of an unauthorized person at the location.
- During severe weather we will not respond to alarms regardless of the time of day without verification of an unauthorized person at the location.
- Severe thunderstorm warning, flood/flash flood warning, or tornado warning in Potter or Randall County
- Red flag warning or high wind warnings in Potter or Randall County.
- Any other unusual event for a duration determined by the AECC Supervisor on duty or the Watch Commander.
- APD will continue to respond to panic/distress alarms, using existing protocols.
- APD will respond when the caller is seeing an intrusion on a video system (Commercial, Ring, Nest, etc.)
There will be no change to the response on fire alarms.
This applies to residential and commercial alarms. Review and adjustment will occur for the next few months, and further changes are likely.