Home Security in Denver: Burglary Rates, Permit Rules, and Costs

Burglary and property crime in Denver

The Denver Police Department reports to the FBI through NIBRS. Summing the monthly counts in the FBI's Crime Data Explorer, DPD reported 5,111 burglaries in 2024, flat against 5,116 in 2023. Total property crime (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, arson) fell sharply, from 41,158 offenses in 2023 to 34,521 in 2024, with the drop concentrated outside the burglary category.

Against the population the FBI lists for the agency, 2024 burglary works out to roughly 710 per 100,000 residents, about three times the national figure of roughly 232 in the same data. Total property crime runs roughly 4,800 per 100,000 versus roughly 1,770 nationally. Two things to keep in mind: NIBRS burglary includes commercial break-ins as well as residential, and these are the counts DPD submitted to the FBI, which later submissions can revise. The overall property crime trend is moving the right way, but burglary specifically has not budged, which is the number that matters most for a home security decision.

Denver requires an alarm permit, and false alarms cost you response priority

Denver's rules are published by the city's Business Licensing office, and the headline is unambiguous: it is unlawful to have a security alarm system in the City and County of Denver without a permit, and the city's FAQ states these systems are to be monitored by a licensed alarm company. You apply through Denver's Online Permitting and Licensing Center, and applications are processed the day they are received. The city's policy is one account per customer, in the customer's name, even when an alarm company handles the paperwork. The FAQ does not state the permit fee on the page, so check the application portal for the current amount.

The false alarm structure is unusual and worth understanding precisely. A false intrusion alarm carries no monetary fine. A false panic or hold-up alarm, the kind that signals imminent danger to life, costs $50 per occurrence. The real penalty for repeated false intrusion alarms is response status: if five false alarms happen within a permit year, the permit is placed into general response, meaning the alarm will not be broadcast for dispatch, and a police officer in the area could respond only if available. There is also a dispatch gate on the front end: if your alarm company provides an invalid or missing permit number when calling, police can deny dispatch entirely.

So in Denver the permit is not bureaucratic decoration. An unpermitted or fee-lapsed system can silently lose the police response you are paying a monitoring company to summon.

What home security costs in Denver

Equipment and monitoring are priced nationally, with the city permit as local overhead. As of August 2026, SimpliSafe's published plans run from 33 cents a day for self monitoring with camera recordings (about $10 a month) to 76 cents a day for Standard professional monitoring (about $23 a month), $1.10 a day for Core (about $33 a month), and $1.66 to $2.66 a day for the Pro tiers. Other national providers ladder similarly. Home security cost per month breaks down the full annual cost stack, and cheapest professional monitoring ranks the budget monitored plans by published pricing.

Given that Denver ties police dispatch to a valid permit and a licensed monitoring company, the monitored path here is more all-or-nothing than in cities with looser rules; is professional monitoring worth it helps you decide whether to commit. If the answer is yes, our short questionnaire at /quote fetches real quotes from professional monitoring providers for your address, and it is fair to ask each provider to confirm they are licensed in Denver and will file your permit correctly.

A sensible setup for a Denver home

At roughly three times the national burglary rate, prevention basics come first: deadbolts and reinforced strike plates, ground-floor window locks, garage door discipline, and lighting. Detached garages deserve their own sensors in Denver's alley-heavy neighborhoods. Then detection: entry sensors on ground-floor openings, a motion sensor, and a siren, with pet-friendly motion sensors if you have dogs, since pets are a classic false alarm source and false alarms are exactly what erodes your response status here.

Visible deterrence helps at the margin; do security signs deter burglars covers the actual evidence. If you would rather avoid the permit-and-monitoring apparatus entirely, a self-monitored setup notifies you instead of a dispatch center; best self-monitored systems with no monthly fee covers those, with the caveat that you become the response plan, and it is worth confirming with Denver's licensing office how the permit ordinance applies to a system with no monitoring company involved.