COPS Monitoring, a third-party alarm monitoring company, now is “patrolling” the western half of the United States and handling signals with the opening of its new station, COPS West, in Scottsdale, Ariz.

COPS West covers nearly 5,000 feet of space and will be redundant with the original COPS Monitoring central station in Williamstown, N.J. The two facilities have separate staff and equipment, but share proprietary software.

Scottsdale was chosen for its telecommunications infrastructure, proximity to air transportation and available labor pool. The first wave of employees has been hired and trained; additional personnel will be added over the next few months.

Maria Malice is vice president of western operations. Craig Sacks and Ron Kleinschmidt are the COPS West account managers.

“The primary reason for building a second site is that we wanted a true backup that will service all of our alarm customers,” says Jim McMullen, president of COPS. “In addition, we wanted to provide our western dealers with a central station that has all the benefits that COPS Monitoring offers, right in their own backyard."