Home Security Systems in Long Beach, CA
Installation, 24/7 UL-listed monitoring, and a city that writes to you after every single false alarm.
Anaheim office, about half an hour east
UL-listed monitoring, every day
Serving Southern California
Licensed by the State of California
Long Beach is the biggest city we cover by a wide margin: around 450,000 people across fifty square miles, from the canals at Naples and the streets behind Belmont Shore in the south east up to North Long Beach at the top of the city. Fewer than half of households own the home they live in, and the alarm permit is administered by the city’s finance department rather than by the police. Both of those change how the rules land on you.
The permit comes before the system, not after
Long Beach is unusually strict about the order these things happen in.
Chapter 5.12 of the Long Beach Municipal Code requires an alarm permit for any system that signals the Long Beach Police Department, directly or indirectly. That much is ordinary. What is not ordinary is the sentence that follows it: “There shall be no installation of any alarm system or any service or repair work thereon performed until all permits required under this Chapter have been obtained” (5.12.030A).
Read that twice, because it covers service and repair, not just the original install. It is the strictest sequencing we have found anywhere in the set. If you have come from Anaheim or Santa Ana, where the permit is required before the system is switched on, this is a step earlier again. Back in Orange County, Orange asks for no permit at all, just a registration form and three names. Fullerton gives two rather than one, counted inside a permit year that starts on your application date.
Residential permits run three years. Commercial permits renew annually. Both are issued by the Business License Division of the Department of Financial Management rather than by the police, so the permit and the false alarm billing sit on the finance side of the city while the response sits with the police.
The permit belongs to a person, not to the address
In a city where most households rent, that is the detail that catches people.
Alarm permits in Long Beach are non-transferable (5.12.100). They do not run with the building. Buy a house with a system already fitted and the previous owner’s permit does not come with the keys; you apply in your own name. The code frames the duty around whoever has the premises under their control, which is the tenant as often as the owner.
This matters more here than anywhere else on the site. Around four in ten Long Beach households own the home they live in. Duplexes, fourplexes and converted single family homes are ordinary here, and so is the conversation about who applies, who pays a service charge, and what happens at the end of a tenancy. Settle it before the system goes in rather than after the first letter arrives.
One free alarm, then a charge that climbs
Counted on a rolling twelve months measured backwards from each alarm.
The code sets a service charge “for the second and any subsequent false alarms in any twelve (12) month period”, and is explicit about how the window works: “The twelve (12) month period is measured from the date of a false alarm to the preceding twelve (12) months” (5.12.120A). The window moves with you rather than resetting on a fixed date.
A false alarm is defined as a signal the police responded to “where an emergency situation did not exist” (5.12.020F). The charges themselves are set by resolution of the City Council and published on the city’s alarm page. They rise steeply: by the sixth alarm in a twelve month period the charge is several times what the second one costs. That escalation, rather than any single figure, is the reason tuning matters here.
No charge
A single false alarm in a rolling twelve month period carries no service charge. You will still be written to about it.
A service charge
Every false alarm from the second onwards in that twelve month window is charged, on a published scale that increases with each one.
Suspension
Violating the chapter is grounds for suspension and revocation of the permit, appealable to the City Council, with the suspension stayed while the appeal is decided.
Long Beach sits at the strict end on allowance, alongside Anaheim and Santa Ana, but its code is unusual in requiring the city to write to you after every single activation.
How that compares with the cities we cover in Orange County
Across the county line the allowances vary more than you would expect. Irvine is the most generous at three, counted across a consecutive 365 days. Garden Grove gives two on a rolling year and issues residential permits that last three. Yorba Linda gives two on the calendar year and issues no permit whatsoever. Anaheim and Santa Ana both stop at one, and Huntington Beach counts against your registration year through a contractor rather than in house.
You can see the rest of our coverage on our service areas page, and our guide to alarm permits covers the wider region. Placentia is the outlier on term: a twenty four month permit, and a service contract required to operate the system at all. Brea runs the same chapter as Placentia but on a permit that expires every June 30. Costa Mesa is the outlier of the set: no alarm permit at all, and thirty days exempt from new. Tustin allows three on the burglary side but charges panic alarms from the very first one. Buena Park allows three, and requires your alarm to sound for thirty seconds before it transmits a silent signal. Every city we cover is compared side by side here.
Three provisions that work in your favour
The chapter is long, and some of the best parts of it are the least advertised.
You are told where you stand, every time
After each false alarm the city must notify you in writing of the date and time the police responded, and the number of false alarms on record against that system in the previous twelve months. You are never guessing at your own count.
Ten days to put your side in writing
From the date of that notice you have ten days to present written evidence that it was not a false alarm or that there was a justifiable reason for it. If the Chief of Police agrees, it is not counted against you. Miss the ten days and the order stands.
Earthquakes and floods are never counted
The code states plainly that no false alarms shall be counted against the permittee that were the result of fire, earthquake, flood, acts of God or other natural disasters. On the coast, in earthquake country, that is worth knowing before you need it.
What a Long Beach property changes about the setup
From beach flats and canal homes to the wide streets of the east side.
One free alarm a year is a thin allowance, and Long Beach housing puts more ways to trip a system in front of you than a tract street does. Four things carry most of the difference.
Shared walls and shared entrances
Duplexes, fourplexes and converted houses mean a neighbour’s door is sometimes your sensor’s door. Zoning has to follow the way the building is actually divided rather than the way it was originally built.
Alley garages and back access
A great deal of Long Beach parking sits off an alley, behind the house, out of sight of the street. That is the door most worth covering and the one most often left off a standard package.
Seventeen historic districts
Long Beach has seventeen designated historic districts, and any exterior change to a property in one needs a Certificate of Appropriateness before work starts, even where no building permit is required. Exterior equipment is handled on the minor track and reviewed by staff rather than the Cultural Heritage Commission, but it still has to be approved first. Worth checking your address before anything is fixed to the outside of the house.
People with keys who are not you
Tenants, cleaners, property managers and short-let guests all need their own codes rather than a shared one, so that a departure means revoking one code instead of rekeying the household.
What we install for Long Beach homes
Six systems, fitted and monitored across the city
Our deepest base in any one city
What our Long Beach book looks like across more than a decade.
Long Beach is the largest group of monitored homes we have anywhere, spread across five ZIP codes that run from the water at Belmont Shore up through the middle of the city.
The tenure is the part worth reporting. The oldest has been on our books since October 2013, most started between 2014 and 2017, and the large majority have now been with us for eight years or more. That is not a claim we can make about anywhere else on this site.
They are all on equipment we own and monitor rather than customer owned hardware, and all billed monthly. They run on a mix of cellular and interactive service, which is a fair picture of what a long book actually looks like: not one product sold in a single campaign, but successive generations of it, all still supported.
Service and response in Long Beach
Our office is in Anaheim, about half an hour east of the city.
Epic Alarm installs and services security systems across Southern California from our office in Anaheim, and our monitoring runs 24 hours a day, every day of the year, through a UL-listed centre we own and operate. We are licensed by the State of California, ACO #7125. Closer to the water, exterior contacts, cameras and their fixings age faster than they do inland, which is worth knowing when you decide what goes outside and how often it gets looked at.
Long Beach runs its own police department, and the work is split between two parts of the city. Alarm permits go through the Business License Division on 562-570-6211, false alarm billing and disputes through Financial Management on 562-570-7600, option 5, and the police non-emergency line is 562-435-6711. The eastern half of the city, which borders the Orange County line and covers roughly 170,000 residents, is served by the department’s East Division.
Common questions about alarms in Long Beach
The permit, the rolling window, the ten day right of reply and who applies in a rental.
Do I need an alarm permit in Long Beach?
Yes. Chapter 5.12 of the Long Beach Municipal Code requires a permit for any alarm system that signals the Long Beach Police Department, directly or indirectly. Residential permits run three years and commercial permits renew annually. They are issued by the Business License Division rather than by the police.
Can the system be installed before the permit comes through?
No, and this is where Long Beach differs from everywhere else we cover. The code says there shall be no installation of any alarm system, and no service or repair work on one, until the permits required under the chapter have been obtained. The permit comes first.
I rent my home. Whose name goes on the permit?
The duty falls on whoever has the premises under their control, which in a tenancy is usually the tenant rather than the landlord. Because permits are non-transferable, this is worth agreeing in writing before the system goes in, particularly in a city where around four in ten households own their home.
How many false alarms before it starts costing me?
A service charge applies from the second false alarm in any twelve month period. The first one in that window carries no charge. The scale of charges is set by resolution of the City Council and published on the city’s alarm page, and it rises with each subsequent alarm.
How is the twelve month window actually counted?
Backwards from each alarm. The code measures the period from the date of a false alarm to the preceding twelve months, so it rolls rather than resetting on a fixed date. An alarm drops out of your count twelve months after it happened, not on 1 January.
What does the city do after each false alarm?
It writes to you. After every false alarm you must be notified in writing of the date and time the police responded, how many false alarms are on record against that system in the previous twelve months, and any service charge being imposed. You are never left to work out your own position.
Can I dispute a charge, and how long do I have?
Ten days from the date of that notice. Within that window you can present written evidence that the response was not in fact a false alarm, or that there was a justifiable reason for the activation. If the Chief of Police or a designee agrees, it is not counted against you. If you do not respond within the ten days, the order becomes final.
What if the alarm went off in an earthquake?
It is not counted. The code states that no false alarms shall be counted against the permittee where they were the result of fire, earthquake, flood, acts of God or other natural disasters.
I am buying a house that already has a system. Does the permit come with it?
No. Alarm permits in Long Beach are non-transferable, so they do not pass with the property. A new owner applies in their own name. It is worth doing that as part of the move rather than discovering it through a letter.
Are the rules the same as in Orange County?
No, and Long Beach is in Los Angeles County rather than Orange County, so none of the county-level assumptions carry across. It is stricter than most on allowance, alongside Anaheim and Santa Ana, but its code is unusual in requiring a written notice after every activation and giving you a dated right of reply.
Get a free quote for your Long Beach home
We will walk the property, including the alley side and whoever else holds a key, and get the permit sorted before anything goes on the wall.