An alarm nobody can see
is an alarm nobody is coming to.

The problem verification solves

An intrusion alarm makes a decision with almost no information. A detector saw movement, so the panel sent a signal, so the monitoring centre called somebody. Nobody in that chain knows whether a person is in the building or a balloon drifted past a PIR. The same question decided differently on a job site is alarm or cameras for a construction site.

That is why false alarm rates are what they are, and it is why police departments have spent two decades adding conditions to alarm response. The end of that road arrived in Seattle on 1 October 2024. SPD now responds to alarm-company calls only when there is evidence of a crime in progress, and a sensor or motion activation on its own does not qualify1.

Read that again if you own a building in Seattle. Your alarm going off is not, by itself, a reason for anyone to come.

What changes with verification

The operator stops guessing. The alarm arrives with evidence, or a guard is already watching live video, so a person looks at the actual event before deciding what to do with it.

That cuts both ways, and the second way is worth more than people expect. A verified alarm gets reported as a person in the building. An unverified one that turns out to be a tarp in the wind gets cancelled at the desk instead of becoming a false dispatch, a municipal fine, and one more reason for a department to deprioritise your address.

Inside: photos from the Ajax alarm

We put MotionCam detectors where a picture settles the question: the stock room, the office, the back hallway. A door contact on its own sends no picture. A MotionCam is a motion detector with a small camera in it. When it trips, it sends a short series of photos with the alarm, the first within about nine seconds2. The operator at Becklar, a UL-listed central station, sees what set it off. So do you, in the Ajax app.

Photos are not video. They show a person or an empty room, which is usually enough to tell a break-in from a balloon, but they do not show the seconds before the trigger. Seattle's dispatch rule names audio, video, a panic alarm and an eyewitness as evidence, and photos are not on that list. Where that matters, the outside layer adds live video.

Outside: live guards on the cameras

Outside the building, the evidence is live video. Rivas Technology Group installs remote video monitoring with Deep Sentinel. AI on a hub at the site flags a person on a monitored camera, and a live guard looks at the video while the person is still there.

The guard talks to them through the camera's speaker and can sound a siren. If they stay, the guard calls the police with a description of what they are watching. That is a person watching a crime in progress, the kind of evidence Seattle and Tacoma name, though the dispatch decision still belongs to the agency.

Any network camera that supports ONVIF can be monitored. New installs use the Ajax Superior TurretCam HLVF and BulletCam HLVF, which have a speaker built in for talk-down3. How the guards work is on the remote video monitoring page.

How the two layers fit

The alarm and the guards are layers, not rivals. The alarm decides something is wrong inside; the guards stop it outside before it gets that far.

Where your city stands

Washington does not have one rule, and this is the part most vendors skate over.

Seattle: since 1 October 2024, supporting evidence of an in-progress crime is required for dispatch. Sensor-only alarms do not qualify1.

Pierce County: deputies are dispatched on two separate alarm trips plus two attempted calls to the user or an alternate contact, and successful contact is not required4.

Tacoma: before asking for police, the monitoring company must verify the alarm in one of four ways. Someone at the premises confirms a possible crime by phone. Live video or audio shows a crime. Two zones trip and the operator completes Enhanced Call Confirmation, which means two call attempts. On older systems, the same calls plus two or more signals within ten minutes. Photos are not one of the four; live video is5.

Tacoma bills false alarms to the monitoring company, which may pass them on. As of September 2026 each one costs $115 for the first or second in 12 months, $215 for the third or fourth, $265 for the fifth or sixth and $315 after that. After more than four in 12 months, the city can stop police response for up to a year, except for hold-up, robbery and panic alarms5.

Auburn: every alarm needs a city permit, $24 a year as of October 2026, and the installer registers it before the system is switched on. Before calling police, the monitoring company must make two verification calls and confirm the alarm. The city accepts a witness, audio, live video, or two detectors tripping, and photos are not on its list6. More than three false alarms in a permit year can suspend police response (ACC 9.30.160).

Federal Way: each alarm must be registered with the police department for $25, and police may not respond to one that is not (FWRC 12.50.020). The first two false burglar alarms in a registration year are free, then $50, rising by $50 each time7. After the sixth, police may need the chief's approval to respond8.

Renton: alarms must be registered within 30 days of switching on, for a one-time $25 (RMC 6-3-4). The first false alarm in a year is free, the second costs $100 and each one after that $2509. The code asks alarm companies to call the site or the user before requesting police10.

Kent: we found no alarm registration or verification rule in the city code. Kent does ban outdoor audible burglar alarms on commercial, business and industrial buildings. It limits a home's outdoor siren to five minutes and asks for written notice to police when one is fitted11.

Other cities: these rules are set city by city and they change. Ask us and we will check your city with you before you buy anything.

Which cameras get a guard

Not all of them, and we will say so before you ask.

Guards belong on restricted areas: the yard after hours, the storage compound, the gate lane, the roof, the fence line nobody should be at on a Sunday. Those places have a simple rule behind them, which is that nobody has a reason to be there. That makes the guard's job fast and every event worth acting on.

A camera on a public entrance is the opposite. It sees legitimate people all day, so watching it produces events that mean nothing, costs you a monthly fee, and trains everyone in the chain to stop caring. The rest of your cameras keep recording exactly as they always did.

In practice most sites put guards on a handful of cameras out of a much larger count. That is the design question we settle at the site walk, and it is usually the difference between a monthly bill that makes sense and one that does not.

What it costs

Photo verification is part of the monthly alarm monitoring, with no per-camera fee. Live guards cost $150 a month for the first camera and $75 for each additional camera, as of October 2026, on a one-year term billed monthly or yearly. Six monitored cameras come to $525 a month. For a home it is $110 for the first camera and $55 for each additional.

What it is not

Photo verification is not a guard service. Nobody watches inside continuously; the photos arrive when a detector trips. The guards watch only the cameras and hours you choose.

Neither is a guarantee of police priority. Some jurisdictions classify verified alarms as higher priority, and some will not dispatch without that evidence at all, but the decision belongs to the agency. Any vendor promising you a police response time is promising something they do not control.

And neither substitutes for cameras and detectors pointed at the right things. A detector with no camera covering it sends no picture, which is a design question we settle at the site walk.

Where we work

From 415 Railroad Ave S, Kent, WA 98032: Kent, Renton, Tukwila, Federal Way, Auburn, Covington, Maple Valley, Tacoma, Puyallup, Sumner, Bonney Lake, Tehaleh, University Place and Gig Harbor. The Olympic Peninsula and sites farther afield are by appointment and quote.