Excessive alarm use is illegal in New York City. The Goodman- Grannis law, which was passed in 1992, requires all car alarms to shut off automatically within three minutes. If they don't, the owner can be subjected to some fairly steep fines. The new law also gives the police the right to disconnect the offending alarm and, in extreme cases, to tow the car away. Granted, your complaint is unlikely to be handled within minutes.
Experience shows that the police department considers complaints about excessive noise low priority.
That doesn t mean, however, that no one will ever investigate your complaint. Eventually they will. The key is to know that the police have the right to take action against the owner of the offending alarm and you should insist that they do so. Your privacy is important to us. For information about how we use information we collect, please see our Privacy Policy .