Back before 911 in early 80's and local police depts dispatched there own officers one prominent community in the South Hills of Pittsburgh Bethel Park maintained their own Digital Communicator receiver to receive and dispatch alarms.
It was a high end Silent Knight Receiver and a alarm company AAA Alarm ( No relation to AAA Road Service )installed and maintained it for them Unfortunately AAA alarm did not have a very good reputation and was known for very poor installations.
I had a customer Larry Fulton who owned 3 Foodland Super Markets which had their alarms monitored at the Bethel Park Police Station.
System worked extremely well and police where always dispatched any time any of the alarms went off.
But then one day the now long gone South Park Food Land was broken into and meat and cigarettes stolen and Police where never dispatched.
After checking the system over I found out that the Acron Digital Communicator set for 3/1 format inside the Moose Panel had been tampered with .
At first it was thought and employee in the store messed with it but no one was ever charged and since it was a small burglary .
A few months after this happened the owner of AAA sold his company to Holmes Protection in Pittsburgh whose parent company was based in NYC.
I get a call from Larry one day to tell me Bethel Park was not getting alarm system when he checked it which he started doing weekly after the first incident.
I went to the store and again found wiring to communicator was tampered with but this time a service tech from Holmes had been in the store working in panel with out mine or Larry's permission.
Needless to say Holmes Protection got a registered letter from me about what was going on and all the stuff that was going on at Pittsburgh office including when I worked there.
I corrected the wiring and tested it to Bethel Park PD he said he did not get a signal . I tried it again and no signal . I put my telephone butt set on phone line heard communicator calling so I knew it was talking to receiver . I asked dispatcher did any other alarms come in and he said yes Presbyterian church came in twice. I asked him what was the account number he said #789 I said wait a minute thats South Park Food Land Alarm account number. Apparently some one switched out the log book with account numbers. Bethel Park PD launched an immediate investigation I got a call from a Sgt. who got my information and after it was found some one was fooling around with log book either by accident or deliberate they took immediate actions to prevent it from happening again .I do not believe an officer was involved but a holmes employee
We never had another issue after I found out the log book account numbers had been switched around which explained why alarms where not being received and why fire dept or police where being sent to non exsistant alarms.
When Allegheny 911 center was formed many depts no longer received alarms at their stations any more and its now handled by 3rd party monitoring centers and panels have communicators built into their boards preventing miswiring issues.
Holmes protection in Pittsburgh after Holmes Corporate came into town and saw how bad the operation had become sold the branch to Westec which is now Vector who cleaned house and straighten out the former holmes branch.
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