BATON ROUGE — Over the last few days, residents across Baton Rouge received letters in the mail from Baton Rouge Police's Alarm Enforcement Division asking them to renew their alarm system permits.

Despite residents' concerns that the letters were spam, BRPD Public Information Officer Saundra Watts said the letters were legitimate correspondence produced by a third-party contractor in Texas.

The letters tell recipients to register their alarm systems with the city and to pay the required $25 fee. This registration needs to be renewed annually.

The registration drive is part of the department's effort to reduce false alarms from security systems.

“We get dispatched over four hundred calls for an alarm service within a week's time. So what that does is that allows us to contact that key holder to let them know we received a false alarm at your residence,” Watts said.

Residents who incur more than three false alarms in a year will be issued a fine. A false alarm happens when the alarm is triggered and units are deployed to a home when there is no real threat.

“After that third false alarm, or that fourth alarm there is a $25 fee. Each subsequent after that false alarm increases by $25 and the max is $200 for a false alarm,” Watts said.

Watts said anyone still unsure about the validity of the letters can call the Alarm Enforcement Division at 225-389-3805.