COPS sees quick response times during hurricane

COPS Monitoring recently announced that it was able to achieve a 12.4 second average response time during Hurricane Matthew—quicker than the company's 13.9 second average for priority response in the past 12 months. COPS gave credit to its team for the achievement.

“Achieving a 13.9 second response time is difficult enough. When a situation like severe weather causes alarm traffic to increase 20 to 30 percent, it's not uncommon for many central stations to have response times that are much higher; sometimes minutes, rather than seconds,” David Smith, COPS' VP of marketing & business development, told Security Systems News via email. “So, the fact that we were able to reduce an already fast response time by more than 10 percent for five straight days despite a significant increase in alarm traffic is truly a remarkable feat.”

 “The 12.4 second response time was for all priority alarms nationwide; including the alarms in the areas that were affected,” Smith continued. “Luckily, the eye of the storm stayed off the coast and we only experienced a lot of rain and wind from the outer storm bands.”

COPS had a disaster preparedness plan in place, including having its Boca Raton, Fla., monitoring center built to stand up to a hurricane. “The extensive planning is what gave us the flexibility to allow us to reduce our staff in Florida so they could focus on their own homes and families. Because all the hard work had already been done, planning for Hurricane Matthew involved over-staffing our other central stations to compensate.  We have a great team at COPS and there is never a shortage of volunteers - including from our Florida central station.”

In the announcement, Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS Monitoring, said that the company was planning to reduce the staff in the Boca Raton monitoring center to “just a few essential technical support members. … However, after ensuring their families were safe, several dispatchers committed to working through the storm to help protect our dealers and their subscribers,” McMullen said in a prepared statement.