MARIETTA - Marietta Police Chief Dan Flynn says the city's alarm ordinance adopted a few years ago has paid off by freeing up his 138 officers to fight crime.

The problem was that 99 percent of all alarms going off in the city were false alarms. And about 10 percent of all calls for police service were alarm calls, he said.

Whenever an alarm goes off, safety protocols dictate two officers respond. And because most false alarms are from schools, churches and businesses, which are typically closed at night and on weekends, a single alarm call can tie up two officers for about an hour.

At the request of the police department, the City Council adopted an alarm ordinance in July 2007 that contained progressive fines for violators to cut down on the false alarms.

In a report compiled for the council this month, Flynn said alarm calls in Marietta fell from 9,287 in 2006 to 8,667 in 2007, and from 4,994 in 2008 to 3,254 in 2009.

Councilman Van Pearlberg called that a terrific response to the ordinance.

"The citizens of Marietta should be applauded and complimented for their observance of the ordinance which permits the police department to be more efficient and effective in enforcing laws and protecting the public," Pearlberg said.

Total calls for police service have also dropped from 93,054 in 2006 to 69,229 in 2009. Flynn cautioned against linking the alarm ordinance directly to crime reduction, since crime is impacted by multiple factors from population changes to the economy. But freeing officers from dealing with false alarms has certainly helped crime reduction, he said.

Besides diverting officers from tackling crime, false alarms contribute to the problem of police complacency. When 99 percent of alarms are false ones, an officer may let his or her guard down, he said.

As city alarm calls and total calls for police service continued to drop from 2007 through 2009, Marietta police officers have been trained and instructed to use their additional patrol time for proactive crime prevention.

"With a new departmental emphasis on the use of field interview cards and photos of individuals engaged in articulated suspicious behaviors, there has been a gradual shift from officers being incident-driven, i.e., primarily responding to calls for service, to being analysis-drive, i.e., conducting proactive crime prevention activities in areas with higher crime trends," Flynn writes in his report.

There is no fine for the first two false alarms that occur in a calendar year. The third time it happens, there is no fine if the violator takes a short course from the police department on alarm usage and maintenance. A $50 fine is issued for the fourth and fifth violations, and those fines progress up to $500. A waiver can be obtained if the alarm was caused by severe weather or power outage, City Manager Bill Bruton said.

Revenue from alarm fines dropped from $223,050 in 2008 to $94,800 in 2009.