Keypad Duress

[Tastech]

Opening another can of Worms

Working in a control room we get a lot of accidental duress alarms Tassie Police are required that once notified of a duress alarm they must attend

When clients ring 70 - 80 % didnt even know they had a duress button
there are of course the idiots that look at the keypad cant help them selves and push the blue police button to see what happens
But most people are not advised re there fire , medical or Police buttons or the fact that makimng yoiur code 1 less or 1 up will send a duress or the ever trusty NESS Pro LD where a 5 ,6 7 or 9 something like that after your code sends a duress signal

I normally deprogram the Pro LD from sending the pin code duress, And we disable pin code duress on Tecoms unless the client requires it, and at schools if the keypad is accessible by the children k/p duress is normally disabled throwing this out to the forum

Which brings me to my suggestion that keypad duress should not be active on alarm panels unless the clients has requested and has been instructed in its use

[intelliGEORGE]

I agree with you there Tastech. I offer my customers the choice, a lot of them end up with a duress code, and also program code retry tamper as well.

[balun]

some states have measures in place to stop these false alarms, request for assistance = no police, approved duress device = duress alarm which = police attendance. huge difference to police resources.

[keef82]

There is a vast different between a "duress" "panic" and "holdup"
control rooms should be calling for a "duress / panic" but holdup's should be police only.

When i say call, i mean only call premise number.
Not the k/h list.

[Tastech]

In Tassie Premises are not called on Duress or Holdup and the Tas Police would love not to atend Alarms or only attend confirmed alarms but the pollies dont want to push it through so Mr plod has to plod along to any Alarm if you cant raise A/Hrs , any Duress Alarm they cant refuse and aswell holdup alarms

One thing Tas Police has communicated to us is that two large mainlland control rooms have been calling and reporting most alarms as duress this has now been kicked in the head after police got wind of it they even sent a delegation to the multinational telling thwm how it is

[aaronpwa]

In our cms, any keypad event is a "request for assistance" the WA police will not attend.

The WA police will only attend to a "holdup" fixed button, on a dedicated zone.

[downunderdan]

Pay attention to Keef's post above. These terms are often confused by lay-people (similarly to "panel" and "keypad") but professionals should know and understand the difference.

Panic = "Help, I'm scared or under attack".
Holdup = Similar but usually installed in a commercial teller-window type situation.
Either can be loud or silent depending on the application. They are usually a button or some type of electromechanical trigger (e.g. billtrap, kick-bar, pull cord). There is often also a keypad panic button e.g a button with a police symbol on it, or the simultaneous pressing of two keys. Ditto fire and medical. This is not a "duress button".

Duress = A discrete/secret action which reports to a monitoring station e.g. I am disarming the system (or opening the safe) under duress e.g. because there's a gun pointed at my head. This is almost always silent and goes hand-in-hand with time delay safes.

Many alarm panels by default will send a duress signal (or 'keypad duress') further to a slight variation in the PIN entered. For example if your PIN is 1234, some panels might send duress if you increment/decrement the last digit e.g. 1233 or 1235 or add a digit e.g. 12359, depending on the manufacturer.

I am very skeptical towards duress as anything more than a major source of false alarms caused by fat-fingers. In a genuine duress situation, the activation of your and sudden onset of Brown Underpants Syndrome is such that you'll likely struggle just to remember your normal PIN and have the dexterity to enter it correctly, let alone the ability to calculate and enter a modified PIN. Unless you have trained and trained and trained. Which of course people haven't, because this is Australia and there's generally no reason they would.

Accordingly I'm glad that some of you guys deprogram it but I wish that duress functions would be turned off by default in panel designs. If someone is in a situation where they need to have it, it should only be by clear instruction and agreement (beyond them saying "yes, that sounds like a good idea").