The Seattle Police Department will become one of the first major police departments in the country to begin full enforcement of a law adopted in 2004 designed to reduce the volume of calls they receive from alarm monitoring companies. The new policy goes into effect January 1, 2009, enforcing the law that has been on the books since 2004, mandating alarm monitoring companies to place two verification calls to customers before contacting police.
This two-call verification procedure is called Enhanced Call Verification or ECV. While ECV has been adopted in many jurisdictions across the country, it often is not enforced by local police departments. Seattle’s plan to enforce the requirement is a major step towards reducing false alarms.