Every year, more than a thousand home security systems go off in the ultrawealthy Bay Area suburb of Atherton.
Almost all of them are false alarms.
At a City Council meeting this spring, Atherton Police Chief Steven McCulley said his department spends about $70,000 a year responding to residential alarms, sending pairs of officers out to the palatial homes of California’s wealthiest town. An estimated 99% of the time, he said, nothing is amiss when they get there…