COPS to open fifth central station

WILLIAMSTOWN, N.J.—COPS Monitoring is enhancing its “hometown” strategy by expanding from four central stations to five, with a new facility scheduled to open in Dallas in the first quarter of 2012.

David Smith, director of marketing and communications for COPS, which is headquartered here, said the Dallas station will share live alarm traffic with the company's four other networked stations in New Jersey, Florida, Tennessee and Arizona, strengthening redundancy in all regions.

“Our philosophy and tagline is 'your hometown central station,'” Smith told Security Systems News. “Dealers like regional monitoring. By being in that region and having employees in that region, you learn more about the area, and that makes it easier for us to connect with our dealers.”

Smith said site work has already begun for the 8,000-square-foot Dallas station, which will be UL-listed and will operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. He could not specify how many people the station will employ.

The Dallas site will complement COPS facilities here in Williamstown, and in Boca Raton, Fla., Scottsdale, Ariz., and Nashville, Tenn. The company opened its 4,100-square-foot Nashville station earlier this year despite the downturn that continues to hobble the U.S. economy.

“We're always enthusiastic to open new central stations to serve our alarm dealers, especially in a time when everything around us seems to be downsizing,” COPS President and COO Jim McMullen said in a statement announcing the Dallas station.

The company's emphasis on redundancy through networking proved its worth in August during Hurricane Irene, Smith said.

“We've found that by networking our central stations together, we're able to overcome local situations better,” he said. “When (Irene) went up the East Coast and actually hit our New Jersey headquarters, it only added about a second to our response time because we were able to overstaff all our other central stations. The more we do that, the more that we diversify our staff, the more stable and dependable our fast response times become.”