Security
Seattle stopped answering alarms two years ago. Here is what that means south of Seattle.
On 1 October 2024 Seattle Police stopped responding to burglar alarms that arrive without evidence of a crime. Two years on, the rule still stands, Tacoma has its own verification steps, and Washington has the fewest officers per resident in the country. Here is what each rule asks for, and what an alarm needs now to get someone to come.
Since 1 October 2024 Seattle Police respond to burglar alarms only with evidence of a crime in progress, such as audio, video, a panic alarm or an eyewitness. Tacoma requires the monitoring company to verify first, and Pierce County dispatches after two trips and two calls. An alarm now needs evidence, or a person watching live, to get a response.
By Ivan Rivas, Owner and Sales Engineer · 2026-10-01 · Updated 2026-10-01
What Seattle changed, and why
Before 1 October 2024, a motion detector tripping in a Seattle shop at 2 a.m. meant a call from the alarm company, and usually an officer. Since then, the alarm company has to bring evidence that a crime is in progress. Seattle names audio, video, a panic alarm or an eyewitness. A sensor or motion trip on its own gets no response1.
The reason is in the city's own numbers. In 2023 the Seattle 911 Center took about 13,000 burglary alarm calls from monitoring companies. Less than 4% were confirmed to involve a crime that led to an arrest or a report. Most were sensor trips by owners or employees, and many came from old or failing equipment2.
Robbery, panic and duress alarms still get a response. The change is aimed at the burglar alarm that goes off with nobody there to say why.
Two years on
The rule still stands. Seattle's alarm page was updated in May 2025 and describes the same policy1. We found no other Washington police agency that has copied it outright. That is a search result, not a promise, and these rules change.
What did change is the pressure behind it. Washington ranks last of the 50 states and DC for police officers per resident: 1.37 per 1,000 in preliminary 2025 data from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs3. When officers are that scarce, every department has to decide which calls come first. An alarm with nothing behind it is an easy one to put last.
What Tacoma asks for
Tacoma did not copy Seattle, but it does not take an alarm at face value either. Before asking for police, the monitoring company must verify the alarm in one of four ways4:
- Someone at the premises confirms by phone that a crime may be in progress.
- Live video or audio shows a crime in progress.
- Two zones trip, and the operator makes two confirmation calls.
- On older systems, the same two calls plus two or more signals within ten minutes.
Photos are not one of the four. Live video is.
Tacoma also bills false alarms to the monitoring company, which may pass them on. As of September 2026 the first or second in 12 months costs $115, rising to $315 from the seventh. After more than four in 12 months, the city can stop police response to that address for up to a year, except for hold-up, robbery and panic alarms.
Pierce County and the rest
In unincorporated Pierce County, deputies are dispatched on two separate alarm trips plus two attempted calls to the user or an alternate contact, and the calls do not have to reach anyone5. That is a lower bar, but a system that trips twice for a real reason meets it more often than one that trips at the cat.
Auburn goes furthest. Before calling police, the monitoring company must confirm the alarm with a witness, audio, live video or two detectors tripping, and photos are not on the list6. Federal Way and Renton require every alarm to be registered and charge for repeat false alarms. Kent has no registration rule we could find, but it bans outdoor burglar sirens on business buildings. Each city's rules, with links to the code, are on the verified alarm monitoring page.
What an alarm needs now
Every rule above asks the same question in a different way: is a person sure something is happening? There are three honest ways to answer it.
Photos with the alarm. The Ajax MotionCam detectors we install send a short series of photos with the alarm, the first within about nine seconds7. The operator at Becklar, a UL-listed central station, sees what set it off before calling anyone. Photos tell a person from a balloon, and they cut false dispatches. They are not on Seattle's or Tacoma's list, so we do not sell them as a guaranteed key to a response.
Two detectors, not one. An alarm can be set so that two detectors must trip before it counts as confirmed. That matches Tacoma's two-zone path and Pierce County's two trips, and it filters the single sensor glitch that made up so much of Seattle's 13,000 calls.
A person watching live video. Outside the building, live guards watch the cameras on the yard, the lot or the fence line. Rivas Technology Group installs this with Deep Sentinel. AI on a hub at the site flags a person, a guard looks at the live video, talks to them through the camera's speaker, and calls police with a description if they stay. Live video is on both Seattle's and Tacoma's lists, though the dispatch decision still belongs to the agency.
Most sites use more than one: photos inside, where the stock and the office are, and guards outside, where people arrive. How the two layers fit is on the verified alarm monitoring page, and the guards are on the remote video monitoring page.
What to do this week
Ask your alarm company three questions. What does my alarm send when it trips: a signal, photos or video? Does my central station follow my city's verification rule? How many false alarms has my address had in the last 12 months?
If the answers are "a signal", "not sure" and "a few", your alarm is the kind every department is learning to put last. That is a fixable problem, and it usually does not mean starting over.
