Glitch delays collection of $2.4 million for false burglar alarms, permits in Dallas

By TANYA EISERER / The Dallas Morning News
teiserer@dallasnews.com Rebecca Lopez of WFAA-TV contributed to this report.

A glitch related to a new Dallas billing system that went on line last November has put the city at least $2.4 million behind on collecting money for alarm permit renewals and false alarms.

The Police Department has been sending its officers to all burglar alarm calls since late March because the problems have made it impossible to determine immediately whether an address has a permit. The city estimates that police may have responded to nearly 12,800 burglary alarm calls where there was no permit for the alarm.

Renewal notices for alarm permits also haven't been sent out in seven months because information in the new system was often missing or inaccurate. The system was also issuing incorrect bills.

The city's communications and information systems department has been trying to fix the problem and expects to have it resolved by Aug. 31, officials said. At that time, officials expect to fix the backlog.

"We expect when the programming is done, all the renewal statements that haven't already gone out will go out and then we'll collect the revenue at that point," said first assistant city manager Ryan Evans, who oversees the police and fire departments.

The problems began in November when the city went live with a new system that consolidated billing for all departments.

Police estimate that they may have used about 19,000 patrol officer work hours responding to calls where there was no permit for the alarm.

"Because we can't verify if they have a permit, we're going to err on the side of caution," said Lt. Andrew Harvey, a police spokesman. "It hasn't really had a significant impact on our response times at all. Officers are doing a good job of handling those additional calls right now."

Rebecca Lopez of WFAA-TV contributed to this report.