Burglar alarms are the single most effective deterring and detecting measure for burglary. On net, alarms provide benefits to communities, but 94–99 percent of police responses to alarms are to false activations. Solving the false alarm problem could free up the resources equivalent to 35,000 U.S police officers. Response to false alarms is a private good while response to an actual crime is a public good. The paper analyzes a Public-Private-Partnership policy called Verified Response (VR) where the initial response is usually provided by private security under a competitive setting, and police respond only if a crime is verified. A case study of Salt Lake City, Utah is conducted using synthetic control methods to evaluate this program. The introduction of this policy is associated with an 87 percent annual reduction in police alarm response calls, a 26 percent reduction in burglaries, and faster response to all police calls. The paper relies on Public Choice theory to explain why this solution is not adopted in the majority of cities.

防盗警报器是防止盗窃最有效的单一措施。从网络上看，警报可以为社区带来好处，但是94％到99％的警察对警报的回应都是对错误的激活。解决虚假警报问题可以释放相当于35,000名美国警察的资源。对错误警报的回应是一种私人物品，而对实际犯罪的回应则是一种公共物品。本文分析了一种称为“验证响应（VR）”的公共-私人-伙伴关系政策，该策略通常由竞争环境中的私人保安提供初始响应，而警察只有在犯罪被证实后才会做出响应。使用综合控制方法对犹他州盐湖城进行了案例研究，以评估该程序。这项政策的实施与每年将警号响应电话减少87％有关，盗窃案减少了26％，并且更快地响应了所有警号。本文依靠公共选择理论来解释为什么大多数城市不采用这种解决方案。