" yet another way for big brother to glean the $$ off you. btw that's after one false alarm "

" Why are the guns not in a safe at night? lazzy- If you going to sell guns you might want to have them kept in safe place after hours. This is not the 1st time guns have been ripped of from a gun store after hours. "

" If the Security Company would have called the police directly, they would have shown up at the scene. BUT because the store did not want to call the cops for a possible false alarm, the store has the security call the manager. Changing the cities policy to cut down on false alarms would not have prevented this! It will increase the number of real alarms that do not get called into the police. Am I the only one that sees this?!? "

" I'd say the security company has a problem if it takes them 12 minutes to report an alarm. Maybe someone was on a break? I'm guessing the Scheel's manager wished he/she had chanced the $25 fine and called the police right away. "

" when we got our system installed they told us that we (in lincoln) would get one freebie the second would be $25 the third $50 and the fourth and on $100. i thought this sounded completely reasonable. i can't believe how lax the real ordinance really is. this definately needs to change. "

" how is making it more expensive for a business in the case of a false alarm going to make it so that the police a notified first? this seems like it is a step in the wrong direction and the exact reason for why the manager was notified first and then called police after checking it out... mabye cassidy and grandma lincoln are related. "

" It is funny that Chief Cassidy is using this break in as the one that got away. The reason the manager did not call the police is that he did not want to use his free responses. Now after they could crunch the numbers the police are saying the could have saved the people of Lincoln all the gun trouble. i know other managers in Lincoln that have not called the police and went to investigate before calling police because they were on the verge of fines. The true question is how many of the recent break-ins could have been stopped but were not because managers and owners were concerned with fines. The next step is charging residents for calls the Police do not think are crimes and the fire department not responding until the fires are big enough. Respond to alarms just like any other 911 calls and there would not be a problem..... "

" Why would the Police Department and/or the City Council tie a successful burglarly of a business with a history of few false alarms to a discussion about too many false alarms in Lincoln? It doesn't make any sense. On one hand, there's hand-wringing over the theft, and subsequent release into the criminal community of 80 handguns, on the other, LPD is complaining that there are too many false alarms? "

" Perhaps fear of a false alarm is what kept the Scheel's manager from calling police immediately instead of driving down to the store to see what was wrong. I can see where businesses, especially smaller ones, would not want to incur fines for false alarms so would opt not to call police until it is too late. On the other hand, why have alarms at all if you're not going to act quickly enough to prevent burglaries or catch them in the act? "

" I have question (maybe I should ask Scheels directly)... Why didn't the guns in the display cases have trigger locks or have the firing pins removed? I know hindsight is 20/20, but if there were laws about that we wouldn't be in this situation. "

" How about this...you have guns in a store where an alarm goes off equals an automatic visit (no false alarm opportunies). A burgalirized gas station, dry cleaner, or pizza place is a bit different than store that is burglarized which contains firearms...just a thought. "

" Just think, $10 for every false alarm, Lincoln could have had $47,280. "

" seems everyone has the "perfect" solution, maybe someone should take all those ideas and build the first and only criminal proof building... then expand to a criminal free city and then a criminal free world. Ah utopia here we come. Problem is doesn't matter what you do to prevent it if someone wants what you have bad enough they are going to be able to get it... sad but true. "

" Why are the alarms FALSE?.. that's the root of the problem. Take care of the reasons that an alarm goes off accidentally. Maybe the alarm company should pay the fines?! It's easy to complain about our tax dollars wasting away for cops to show up to false alarms, but would we be ok with paying a fine for when police are called to check on a possible burglar at someone's house where nobody is arrested, for example?. Those officers are also 'tied up' for a long time when they could be protecting the rest of us. How many of us would call the cops knowing we'd have to pay a fine if they didn't find anything? How many false alarms trigger the fire department to a scene? Are there fines for that also? All this story does is encourage those who want to break in and steal stuff... knowing that business owners are hesitant to call the cops. "

" Are you all kidding? Here you are talking about how stores dont want to pay fines for the false alarms, so they go check it out themselves. Read the story...Sheels all of last year had only 4 false alarms. If after the first it cost them $100, the second it was $100, and the third false alarm was $250 that only adds up to $450. I wonder what they lost in the actual robbery? Its time to start charging for false alarms on businesses, if they don't want to get charged, stop setting false alarms. This will also be a good source of revenue for the police force. But you all are idiots and compare this to people calling the police and getting charged for it, could you point out in the article where it even compares the two? I blame this on the security company, and there response time. "

" We are a small business in Lincoln and would indeed cancel our security system if this was put into place. I certainly understand it from the Police department's perspective. False alarms cost money. On the other hand, I don't want to bother the police and get charged for 2 false alarms a year. Currently we have the security company call me and I in turn drive to the business to see if anything suspicious is going on. Not very secure. I would be interested in Journal writers doing some in-depth reporting on this. Find out how many businesses in Lincoln versus Omaha have a policy of calling an employee before calling the police. It might be telling. "

" This seems like the wrong direction to me. Everybody was coming done hard on the manager of Scheels for not having the police called immediattely (even Chief Cassady himself was on the comments of the article) but now they are going to make it so more people don't want the police notified right away. What kind of backwards logic is this? "

" NEW LAW!!! If you are a gun dealer in the state of NE, & you have an alarm go off, police WILL be dispatched (took them 3 minutes to get there, took the crooks 8 minutes to get done) Fire alarm, same law, bullets flying over & hitting traffic / homes by Southpointe... I can already hear the lawsuits revving up. "

" the sole reason that these businesses do not call police is the fear of the fines. If there were no fines, there might be more false alarms.....but, the police will also have a chance to catch the burglars in action. I wonder how many other burglaries have gone belatedly reported, or not reported at all. "

" I thought I was missing something when Casady was complaining about false alarms while being dumbfounded about why Scheel's checked out the alarm themselves. Now he (and the city council) are looking into stricter fines? Talk about unbelievable. One word...DUH! "

" What a bunch of morons! Instead of worrying about the possible false alarms, the Council should be addressing the fact that when an alarm goes off at a place of business that sells guns or other weapons, the first call should go to the police department, period. Let's see, one late night visit to Scheel's for what may have been a false alarm or weeks of our police force trying to locate 80+ missing guns. Yea, I'd say we've got a problem with the system. "

" Seems to me that if everyone involved would take responsibility for their own actions (or inactions) we wouldn't have a 'false alarm' problem. Security companies need to up their response time. Business need to up their security. LPD need to do their job - regardless of how many false alarms there have been. Furthermore, I'm guessing that all of the false alarms this year don't add up to having 80 loaded guns on the streets of Lincoln, in the hands of trouble!! Let's get our priorities straight. "

" Add another Alarm just for the area where the Guns are displayed. As soon as that alarm sounds, Police are called. "

" What exactly is the point of an alarm system anymore? an alarm goes off and in a real situation the people breaking in have enough time to take naps before the company does anything, the company you have the security system through charges you a fee every month, now every time you have a false alarm, they want to raise the penalties for someone that had nothing to do with the actual false alarm. how can they fine someone that has really done nothing? if the police handed you a ticket for drug trafficing when you just had a prescription filled at the pharmacy, how would that make you feel? Maybe what these companies should do is get rid of the nonsense security systems that cause them so much money and just hire a night security officer. might be alot more efficient. "

" Regarding the Gun Safe idea.. Scheels has a large number of guns & would require a huge safe. (Around 1/2 to 3/4 the size of their display area depending on how tight they pack them?) It would also take a lot of time to put them in the safe each night and put them back on the display each morning. I certainly wouldn't be willing to foot the bill for the safe or the labor. Regarding false alarms. I suppose we can hope for improvements in the systems and tech to help eliminate False Alarms. "

" ta, apparently you've never been to Scheels, or you'd know they have over 100 handguns in glass display cases...no simple task to put into a safe every night. Its why Scheels has alarms, and gates that block access to the second floor where the firearms are stored. The problem was not the storage of the firearms...its how the alarm notice was ignored for 20 minutes by Scheels' manager. "

" Sheel's should have guns well secured within the store. Bars, safes, whatever it takes. Sheel's responsibility here is huge. The police should have been called simultaneously with the manager of the store. The manager should have had the sense to tell the police to go immediately, regardless of past false alarms and those minimal fines. My own personal security system on my home has gone off 3 times in 2 years when I was not at home and I've always had the police meet me there. That's just common sense. Yesterday's situation with people being hunted down on foot in a neighborhood near 27th & A should be a real wake-up call to a lot of us. If my alarm had gone off yesterday afternoon, you bet I'd have had my security company call police immediately. Who cares about a little fine? "

" As a previous dispatcher I know that when an alarm is activated it is sent to the alarm company (1-2mins), the alarm company contacts the police dept.(1-2), the dispatcher then contacts the business owner (1min)and notifies them that there has been an alarm activated, it can take up to 45mins for the owner to get there, by then the police are already there (3-4mins). By then they were already gone anyway! This isn't always the case, but the police should always be notified even if they wait for the store manager to get there, they atleast need to be notified right away and put on stand-by. I understand that the store doesn't want to be fined, and the police don't want to fine them, but this a huge problem. And as far as one of the comments about getting rid of the false alarms by fixing the problem, well mother nature can't be fixed, if there is a big lightning storm and there is a sensitive alarm it will go off! So rather than sending out the police, the managers try and take care of it themselves, but they also know that burglars can strike during lightning storms too and they have to be suspicious of every alarm that goes off! So give the store manager an break! There was another comment about locking all of the guns up at night, do you know how many guns they have in that store? It would take all day to lock them all up and then it would take them all day the next day to get them all out! To everyone that is complaining, c'mon everyone is doing what they feel is the best course of action and until you are in their shoes, don't judge! The police department can only do so much and the business owners in Lincoln can only do so much, the fact is there is always going to be criminals and there is is always going to be crime. Instead of complaining about it, lets work together and try and gets the 50 some guns that are still out there off the streets. I am sure that none of you would like it if people sat around all day and complained about you and the way that you do your job, so stop complaining about the police department and support them in making Lincoln a safer city!!! "

" Slow down, there, bloggers. I haven't asked for any change in the ordinance at all, and I'm not complaining about false alarms. I'm pretty happy with the declining numbers of false alarms as is. As I have repeatedly said, Scheel's was at NO RISK of exceeding the four free false alarms, and I'm sure if they could have do-overs, they would have notified us at the same time as the manager. If the City Council decides they'd like to change the ordinance, I'll give them my best advice, but nothing's seriously broken here--this was just a tactical mistake by the alarm company and Scheel's. "

" I thought the mall in which Scheels is located had it's own security personal there or do they leave at a certain time? "

" I have a security system in my home and I have had a false alarm. I is not that hard to do when your 6 year old dosent think about the alarm being on and opens the door. "

" Why didn't the store have the guns locked up? Why didn't the security company call sooner? Questions that need to be answered. I worked at a bank and the security comapny would call me when the alarm went off. I would meet the police officers at the bank and walk through the bank with the officers. This was anytime the alarm went off. "

" God forbid we tie up 2 police cruisers. Like they are so busy with there everyday duties. Such as traffic violations and whatever it else is they do for Lincoln. "

" A charge for fasle alarm? What else were the police in the southeast quadrant doing at 2:00 in the morning. Really Tom - how much money would be spent if the alarm company let LPD know and a car is sent out to invesitgate? My understanding is that there are already officers in all quadrants of the city at all times. If a marked car investigates and sees a broken out front door they can proceed to apprehend. It amazes me that LPD always points to expense instead of just doing the job they are hired to do. Is there that much crime in sourh lincoln at 2:00 am that they dont have the time to investigate an alarm at a store that handles that many weapons? "

" Sorry this plan makes no sense at all. "

" You will not reduce the number of false alarms. The one and only thing this will do is to create more people bypassing the system and doing the exact same thing that the scheels manager did and that was to get called at home. As usual Mr. cassidy is way way off base on this one. "

" First of all, how the Lincoln City Council got from a Burglary involving guns to false alarms is beyond me. But as a Security Company in Lincoln, I would like to respond to the false alarm side of things. Let me start by making it clear that the Security Company and the Central Monitoring Center are two separate entities. The Security Company handles the Sales, Installation and Service of the Alarm/Security System. The Central Monitoring Center is responsible for receiving alarm notification and notifying the appropriate personnel. It is the responsibility of the Security Company to correctly install the system. This is the first point of eliminating factors that may cause false alarms, i.e., correct sensitivity settings. The Security Company should also be responsible for training the users on how to arm and disarm the system. I suspect that not all Security Companies provide this service as the installer is just that – an installer. In a business setting, this training may be limited by the Business to only one or two people, even though multiple employees need to arm/disarm the system. This is the second point of eliminating factors that may cause false alarms. The Business needs to be responsible to ensure that all employees know how to use the system – or call the Security Company for additional training. The Central Monitoring Center should be a National U.L. Listed Monitoring Center to ensure that you are getting professionally trained people who handle alarm notifications 24/7. Some so-called Monitoring Centers are really just a college kid sitting at a computer and often it is just an Answering Center that takes after hour calls for Doctors and the like. It is the normal policy for a U.L. Listed Central Monitoring Center to first call the Premise. Any trained user would know that if they accidentally set off the alarm all they need to do is pick up the phone and give the Monitoring Center the “Code”. False Alarm eliminated. If no one answers at the Premise, the Monitoring Center dispatches the Local Authorities. This is then followed with a phone call to the list of Business Personnel that the Business has provided. Generally, the business provides 3 names/numbers to be contacted. It is up to the Business to decide who gets called 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on. The Business also has the right to override this policy and not have the Local Authorities called by the Monitoring Center. Because of the False Alarm charges already in place, some businesses elect to have a management person called first. No one should make the presumption that an alarm is a false alarm. The Local Authorities should be dispatched on every alarm notification and the business should be notified so they can meet the Authorities at the premise. Everyone has to do their part. As far as the Local Authorities, it is their job to respond to any call, whether it be a false alarm or the 4th Domestic Dispute call, only to find the woman ‘isn’t hurt too bad’. Charging the businesses or the Security Company for false alarms is ridiculous. "

" This just shows the laziness of people in this town. And whoever said that it would take too much time to pack up the guns every night...those robbers proved it takes 8 minutes to get in and out with 80 guns. That's packing up and moving 10 guns a minute...give employees an hour before opening to set back up and an hour after closing to pack them back up. Sure it's a nuisance, but so is having fifty some guns still out on the street. "

" When did the police force get tasked with “protection”? I thought their job was to enforce laws and ordinances. Just curios… Yes I believe high hazard areas should have direct alarm notification with 911. "

" Hey ta, How come you are blaming the victims here. Put the blame on the people who actually did the crime. "

" If the business is so concerned about false alarms and the minor moneys that is spent, to have things checked out, and a professional do there job, and cant afford the time or money to have their security company keep them up to speed on how to use the system, or let them do monthly testing, then the business does deserve to be fined. If your going to have a Security System in place, and active learn how to use it, keep it priority, or call the right person that does. Managers aren't the police, so having them be first on a contact list is a little out there. I don't see how a store that size, and of its capasity, and value should a manager have any say so on who should be contacted first. Personally he needs to be fired, and corperate needs to take a look at who would of alloud that to happen. Whats he going to do pull up in his jammies, get scared, then call the athourtys. And if you get hit with a false alarm so what, call somebody that knows how to use it, work out the bugs, and move on. And change your contact list. Or better yet business owners spend a little money, by a surveillance system, (Not @ Sams Club), and start catching these people, and stuff them away. "

" "Laziness" as you put it isn't quite the word I would use to describe a businesses unwillingness to flush MONEY down a toilet. Grabbing a handful of guns and running is a far cry from moving a hundred or more guns twice a day while keeping track of them all, physically and on paper (And who knows what all is required legally and policy wise for the in-store movement of the guns) Over a years time.. that much labor would add up. This isn't even counting the cost of the safe itself and the Loss of room for sellable merchandise to Install said safe.... (Remember, Scheels' gun area takes up more floor space than many houses in this town) Perhaps the whole Display area could be converted to a Safe? Boy, I'd hate to get the bill on THAT little project. (Or am I just being lazy) "

" Hmmm...let's see, the robbers, who probably had nothing more than duffle bags into which they haphazardly threw the guns into took 8 minutes to get in and out. They had no regard for damage done to the guns, their only concern was quantity, not quality. Scheels employees, on the other hand, would have to be much more careful with how they handled the guns...and they would have a LOT more guns than 80 to put away every night. It would take hours...not a single hour, to put away every gun every night and set them out again the next morning. Furthermore, the more the guns are handled, the more opportunity there is for damage to the guns. Again, this has nothing to do with how Scheels keeps their guns...they shouldn't have to lock them up like Fort Knox every night...the security company should, instead, not wait 12 minutes before contacting the store manager. And the police should stop charging for false alarms. How many "false" alarms are attempted break-ins that are never reported? "

" my opion is the guns should be in a double lock or safe after hours if u have a drug u take and its a narcotic it has to be double locked when u work in places so what is the difference they both can harm u "

" Not everyone is doing their job here. If I am a business owner and my alarm system goes off to the extent I am paying fines for too many false alarms, I will darn well make sure and find a better security business. Or, I will make sure the security business gets the bill for every false alarm. Isn't that the security companies job? Providing safe and effective security? If one company has substantially more alarms then anyone else, then they should pay the fine. "

" They can get windows and doors with the alarm built into the glass. If the glass breaks, call the police, if the alarm goes off, but not the one in the glass, call the manager. Simple solution. "

" I'm just glad the thieves were gone by the time the manager arrived. Things could've gone horribly wrong really fast. "

" how bout tommy boy focuses of finding 50 more handguns instead of city ordnances that can be modified at a later time... i think the guns have a little bit more of a importance in the current state of lincoln... "