24/7 Alarm Response
in Sioux Falls
When your monitored alarm trips at 2 AM, you have three traditional options: drive there yourself, dispatch a manager from home, or call police and accept the false-alarm fee. Red Obsidian Security provides a fourth option — verified human response, documented arrival, on-site assessment, and an incident report — typically faster, cheaper, and lower-liability than the alternatives. Available every hour of every day across Sioux Falls and the surrounding region.
Why Verified Response
Beats the Alternatives
When the alarm trips, the choice is rarely just "alarm response or nothing." Most owners default to one of these patterns. Each has cost.
Drive Yourself
- Wakes the owner, manager, or property contact
- Liability if the response involves an actual intruder
- Slower than a positioned officer for most calls
- No documented arrival timestamp
- No incident report for insurance
Call Police
- False-alarm fees apply in most jurisdictions
- Repeat false alarms can escalate fee scale rapidly
- Police prioritize life-safety over property checks
- Best reserved for verified emergencies
- Limited follow-up documentation
Red Obsidian Response
- Verified human on-site, typically within 30 minutes
- Documented arrival, route, and condition assessment
- Police summoned if (and only if) the situation warrants
- Incident report by email same-day
- Flat-fee per call — no surprise charges
From Alarm Trip
to Closed Report
A complete alarm response cycle takes 45 to 90 minutes from dispatch to closed report. Here is the sequence.
Alarm Trips
Monitoring company receives the signal. Their dispatcher follows the contact list. If we are on the list as the responder, our 24/7 line is called and the dispatcher provides account number, event type, and access details.
Officer Dispatched
Officer is paged and en-route. Account information, access codes, and any standing instructions are transmitted to the officer’s phone. Drive time begins. Owner is notified that response is en-route if standing dispatch authorization is in place.
On-Site Assessment
Officer arrives, secures perimeter, checks for visible forced entry or vandalism, walks exterior, verifies door and window status, looks for anomalies like open gates or unfamiliar vehicles. If forced entry is found, police are contacted and officer holds at safe distance.
Owner Contact & Report
Owner is contacted with status. If false alarm, all-clear is documented. If actual incident, owner is briefed, police handoff is documented, and any property-securing actions are taken at owner direction. Incident report emailed within hours.
Properties We
Respond For
Commercial Buildings
Office buildings, retail locations, business parks. Most calls are after-hours intrusion alarms triggered by maintenance staff, weather events, or false sensor reads. We document and close.
Residential Properties
Homeowners who travel for work, second homeowners, rural and edge-of-city lots where police response runs long. Same response standard as commercial; same flat-fee pricing.
Multifamily & Apartments
Property managers running monitored alarms on common-area amenities (pool gates, fitness rooms, leasing offices) get verified response without paging the manager at 2 AM.
Storage & Self-Storage
Climate-controlled and outdoor self-storage facilities with monitored gate alarms or unit sensors. Documented after-hours response is what insurance carriers want to see.
Construction Sites
Active construction sites with monitored trailer alarms or perimeter sensors. Response times tighten when our patrol is already covering the site on a recurring basis.
Industrial & Distribution
Warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and distribution centers with after-hours intrusion alarms or yard-sensor activations. Documented response and police-coordination on actual incidents.
Standard On Every
Alarm Response Call
- 24/7 live phone. Real human, every hour. No call trees, no voicemail, no “leave a message after the tone.”
- Marked patrol vehicle. Branded, lit, visible. The vehicle in the lot is part of the deterrence.
- Uniformed officer. Standard uniform, badge, ID. Anyone watching from a window knows who is on the property.
- GPS-tagged arrival. Time-stamped, location-verified arrival logged. The dispatch clock is auditable.
- Documented condition assessment. Doors, windows, gates, perimeter, anomalies — logged in writing and (where appropriate) photographed.
- Police coordination. When the situation warrants, law enforcement is summoned and a documented handoff is provided.
- Incident report. Same-day email with arrival time, departure time, condition, actions taken, and any photographs.
- Card payments. Stripe processing for all major cards. Net-terms ACH for established commercial accounts.
Alarm Response
Common Questions
How fast do you arrive on an alarm call? +
Most alarm response calls inside Sioux Falls receive an officer on-site within 30 minutes. Calls in the surrounding service area (Brandon, Harrisburg, Tea, Dell Rapids) typically run 30 to 60 minutes depending on distance. The dispatch clock starts when our 24/7 line answers, not when the alarm originally tripped at the monitoring company.
What does an officer actually do at the property? +
On arrival the officer secures the perimeter, checks for visible signs of forced entry or vandalism, walks the exterior of the building, verifies door and window status, and looks for anomalies like open gates, lights left on, vehicles where they should not be, or signs of someone still on the premises. If forced entry is found, law enforcement is contacted and the officer waits at a safe distance for arrival. If the alarm appears to be a false trigger, the officer documents the all-clear and contacts the owner.
Do you contact police? +
Yes, when warranted. If our officer arrives and finds evidence of forced entry, an active intruder, signs of vandalism in progress, or any other situation that requires law enforcement, we contact Sioux Falls Police or the appropriate county sheriff and remain on-site at a safe distance until they arrive. The officer then provides a documented handoff and supporting incident report. We do not call police on every alarm; we call them when the situation warrants it.
Do you provide armed alarm response? +
Standard alarm response is unarmed. Armed alarm response is available for properties with documented threat history or owner-directed armed coverage, but it is not the default. The deterrence effect of a uniformed officer arriving in a marked vehicle is what closes most calls; armed response is a tool for specific risk profiles, not a higher tier of the same service.
What does it cost? +
Alarm response is priced per call rather than per visit. The first call is a flat dispatch fee covering arrival, on-site assessment, owner contact, and incident report. If the situation requires extended on-site time (waiting for police, securing the property after a break-in, or coordinating with a service technician), additional time is billed at our standard hourly rate. Most calls close within the flat-fee window. False alarms are billed the same as legitimate alarms; we charge for the response, not for the outcome.
Do you integrate with monitoring companies? +
Yes. Most alarm response calls come through a monitoring company that has been instructed to dispatch us as their first responder for non-life-safety events. We coordinate with the monitoring company directly: account number, alarm event type, contact list, and access details. The owner does not need to be on a phone call to authorize each dispatch. For owners who prefer to self-dispatch, the 24/7 line is direct.
What about false alarms? +
False alarms are most of what alarm response handles. The value is having a verified human on-site to confirm the all-clear, document the condition, and avoid a false-alarm fee from police. After three or four false alarms in a quarter, we typically recommend a maintenance check on the alarm system. Documented patterns are emailed to the owner monthly so the underlying cause can be addressed.
Can you do alarm response for residential properties? +
Yes. Residential alarm response is available, particularly for homeowners who travel for work, second homeowners, and homeowners on rural or edge-of-city lots where police response times can run long. Residential alarm response is priced the same as commercial.
More From
Red Obsidian
Two AM Alarms
Are Not Your Job.
Verified human response, documented arrival, on-site assessment, owner contact, incident report. Flat-fee per call. No false-alarm fees. No 2 AM phone calls to the manager. Set up standing dispatch with your monitoring company today.