Although there is agreement among police administrators that alarm systems provide an enhanced level of security to homes and businesses, there is also agreement about a high percentage of false alarms that waste police resources at a time when service delivery is becoming more costly. Analysis of this problem in the New Castle County Police Department found that the present system allows any person to connect any automatic burglar alarm equipment, via telephone lines, directly to the emergency numbers. In many cases, the activation of the equipment results in a recorded message being repeated to the dispatcher: 'send help.' Currently, the department considers such messages priority dispatches. The study found that 96.6 percent of such dispatches are false alarms, needlessly diverting police from other responsibilities. The department should adopt an alarm response policy which would continue to handle alarms as priority calls but with guidelines for officer responses to minimize high-speed driving and for officers to wait no longer than 15 minutes for an owner or alarm company representative to respond. Additional recommendations focus on reducing the number of false alarms due to owner error and improper installation, reducing response time through the 911 center computer, and encouraging the use of reliable alarm equipment. Study data, footnotes, and 85 bibliographic entries are provided.