Alarm calls are classified as Priority One, meaning they require an immediate response with lights and a siren. But police believe false alarms can needlessly place officers and pedestrians at risk as they try to maneuver through Cambridge's crowded streets.
In March of last year, HUPD responded to 71 alarm calls. This March, after the policy change, HUPD responded to 172 alarms. And that number is climbing.
In the first two weeks of April, police responded to 162 alarms.
The University has 268 alarms, all of which are monitored out of HUPD's Garden Street headquarters by a system called CONTINUUM, which went online in August.
Since he started overseeing the alarm systems in 1996, Charlie Mung, security systems coordinator for the University, the number of alarms installed on campus has increased dramatically.
"Basically, people are becoming more security conscious," he says.
But police say it is frustrating that those alarms so often are false.
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