The San Jose Police Department has decided that they aren't going to respond to burglar alarms anymore unless someone can confirm that an actual crime is taking place, or has taken place. There are too damn many alarms, you see, and 98% of them are false alarms.

The cops say they spent over $600,000 this year responding to false alarms, just because an alarm monitoring company informed them that an alarm was going off. Starting January 1, they are going to ignore all such alarms until they get confirmation that a suspect is or was present. They say this will reduce response times for higher priority calls, and they note that less than 1% of alarm calls last year even resulted in a police report.

They will still respond to all bank alarms, and alarms going off at firearms dealers. That's nice.