Feb. 24--The sound of the burglar alarm signaled another fine for Insight Human Services in downtown Winston-Salem.

Insight, a substance-abuse center, had 12 false burglar alarms and one false fire alarm in 2006 -- the most false alarms in the city that year. They cost Insight about $2,300.

The fines were the result of Winston-Salem's false-alarm ordinance. Since 2003, the city has charged homeowners and businesses for false alarms that send police officers rushing across town only to find people who had forgot their alarm code, or that an alarm was triggered by a thunderstorm.

"If there are ways to make sure police know when they are responding that it's a real emergency, if that penalty system helps, then it's a good thing," said Bert Wood, the CEO of Insight.

The city does not charge for the first three false alarms a year at a home or business. After that, it charges $50 to $500 for each false alarm. The city has raised nearly $1 million since the ordinance took effect.

The fines have helped drive down false police alarms from almost 17,000 in the last six months of 2002 to about 10,300 all of last year, despite a growing population and growth in the alarm business.

Still, about 89 percent of the burglar alarms and about 17 percent of the fire alarms that went off in Winston-Salem last year were deemed false.

False alarms consume valuable time for Winston-Salem police officers, Cpl. Mike McDonald said.

He said that before the false-alarm ordinance was passed, he might go out to the same house six times in one night because of a faulty alarm. Police often stopped responding to those chronic violators, he said.

"Once people started taking responsibility for their alarm systems," McDonald said, "that was a world of change."

Wood said that the price of a false alarm has prompted him to change the way he manages Insight. He reduced the number of employees who have keys to the buildings and retrained his staff about how to work the alarm system.

He said he also put in a system that warns employees if an alarm is going off in another part of the building, so they have time to turn it off before the police are called.

The changes have paid off. Insight Human Services did not make the city's top 10 list for false alarms in 2007. Wood said that the building had about six false alarms last year.

Only one of the top 10 offenders from 2006 was on the city's top 10 list in 2007.