And a final word: If you have an indoor pet and the salesman tells you
that a motion detector can be adjusted to ignore it, throw him out of
your house. If the pet in question is a cat rather than a dog, make
sure he bounces.

To Catch a Thief
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/opinion/28kristof.html

(end quote)

I worked for a home alarm system company for a couple of years. Apart
from specialty "panic buttons" for an extra charge, the standard
response was get an alarm, phone the house asking for a code word, and
only dispatch cops when the code word wasn't provided. This to cut down
on user-caused false alarms of all types, from forgetting the window is
on the system to the classic "what does this button do?"

By this method, the company was able to cut false dispatches of cops
down to 90 to 95 percent. And darn proud of it. Rightly so; small local
alarm companies, as opposed to the national chains, were at more like
99% false alarms.

That's what alarm license fees are for, to cover all those false
dispatches and to provide a means to punish users who generate
especially large numbers of false alarms. So I don't think the specific
idea of no-fee-for-silent-alarms is going to fly. I agree with the
general principle of trying to respond to crime intelligently, but that
example is seriously flawed.

And a final word: If you have an indoor pet and the salesman tells you
that a motion detector can be adjusted to ignore it, throw him out of
your house. If the pet in question is a cat rather than a dog, make
sure he bounces.