From the “if you have a car alarm, maybe you should think of having it calibrated” department:
Yo! Venice! reader A.S writes in.:
I just wanted to let you guys in on some stuff that is going down at the 1800 block of Pacific Ave. There is a car that the alarm has gone off every fifteen minutes since 7:00 AM 11/13/2010. I live a block away and have been annoyed since yesterday. The police can’t do anything because it hasn’t gone off for 20 minute period. It just turns off after 10-15 minutes. So I went out to leave a note this afternoon and this is what I found.
Some neighbors outside said that the person who owns the car lives in Marina Del Rey, since the police ran the plates, but can’t tow it yet. So if this is your car, you might want to come get your car. Two tires have been slashed and a bucket of paint was dumped on top of the car.
Info on the effectiveness of car alarms and also the Law in Los Angeles regarding car alarms after “the jump”:
Car alarms don’t really appear to do much as far as a deterrent. Peep this article to see for yourself.
“Car alarms are a terrible urban blight with obvious social costs – noise pollution, increased stress, wasted police manpower dealing with broken alarms – and it’s not clear there are any benefits in return,” says Lawrence Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. “No study has demonstrated that they reduce auto theft.”
Here is the law on car alarms in Los Angeles:
From the LAPD:
The law regarding loud vehicle theft alarm systems is contained in the California Vehicle Code, Section 22651.5 and in the Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 114.06. Section 22651.5 in part states that a police officer may, upon complaint, remove a vehicle if the vehicle theft alarm system has been activated for 20 minutes upon the officer’s arrival, and the alarm has not silenced within that time. Section 114.06 states in part that it shall be unlawful for any person to install, operate, or use any vehicle theft alarm system that emits or causes the emission of an audible sound, which is not, or does not become automatically and completely silenced within five minutes. The local patrol division would be the ones to handle this type of request for service.
