Home security in Toronto: break-in data, police alarm rules and installers

Quick answer: Toronto Police Service open data shows 3,507 break and enters at houses and apartments in 2025, 6.4% fewer than in 2024, out of 6,114 break-ins of all kinds. Toronto Police only attend a burglar alarm once the monitoring station has verified it, charge $130 for each false alarm (billed to the monitoring station), and suspend police response for a year after four false alarms in 365 days.

Break and enter in Toronto: the official figures

The Toronto Police Service publishes every reported break and enter on its Public Safety Data Portal (the Break and Enter Open Data set, currently published to 30 June 2026). Counting by the year the offence happened:

Year	Houses	Apartments	All break and enters
2023	2,113	1,798	7,647
2024	2,124	1,622	6,852
2025	1,845	1,662	6,114
January to June 2026	822	789	2,921

So home break-ins fell from 3,746 in 2024 to 3,507 in 2025, a drop of 6.4%, while break-ins of all kinds fell 10.8%. Houses and apartments together still make up well over half of all Toronto break-ins; the rest are mostly commercial premises. These are counts, not rates, and recent months can rise slightly as late reports are added. The same portal has a neighbourhood map if you want to see your own area.

Because so many Torontonians live in apartments and condos, the main entry points are the unit door, balcony doors on lower floors and ground-floor windows. Our apartment security guide covers those, and renters should read security for renters before drilling anything.

How Toronto Police respond to alarms

Toronto has no household alarm permit. Instead, the rules sit in the Toronto Police Service Alarm Response Policy, which your monitoring station has to follow:

Rule	What it means for you
Verified response (since 10 September 2018)	A burglar alarm must be verified before police are asked to attend: by audio, video, several zones going off, or someone at the scene. Panic, hold-up and duress alarms do not need verification.
False alarm fee	$130 for each false alarm a police unit has accepted, invoiced to the monitoring station, which may pass it on under your contract.
Caution notice	Issued to the monitoring station after two false alarms in 365 days.
Suspension	After four false alarms in 365 days, police response to your system is suspended for 365 days. You can still call 9-1-1 yourself.
Automatic diallers	Police do not respond to alarms passed on by an automatic dialling device or pre-recorded message.

Toronto Police say they receive over 23,000 alarm events a year and 97% turn out to be false, which is why unverified burglar alarms no longer get a police car. In practice this means a basic door-and-motion alarm needs either cameras, audio, several zones or a person on site before police will come. Ask any installer how their monitoring station verifies alarms and what it charges if it passes on the $130 fee. Our guides to building a response chain and fixing repeat false alarms help.

Doorbell cameras and privacy

The federal private-sector privacy law, PIPEDA, does not apply to an individual who collects personal information for personal or domestic purposes only (section 4(2)(b)), so a camera that protects your own home is not regulated the way a shop camera is. That changes if the camera is used for a business, or run by a landlord, condominium corporation or property manager in shared areas. In Ontario, businesses are covered by PIPEDA itself. The Office of the Privacy Commissioner’s guidelines for overt video surveillance by organisations are a useful yardstick anyway: record only what you need, keep cameras off neighbours’ windows and yards, put up a notice, and delete footage you do not need. Practical steps: use privacy zones, switch off audio on cameras that face the street or a shared hallway, and keep a note of who can view the recordings. Our guides cover privacy zones, cameras in rented homes and police requests for doorbell footage in Canada.

In a condo, the lobby, corridors and parking garage are common elements, so check the corporation’s rules before fitting a doorbell camera on a unit door.

Typical alarm and camera prices

We have not found an official Toronto price survey, so start with the national ranges in our Canada home security costs guide. HomeStars’ cost guide (updated August 2026) puts an installed security alarm system at $260 to $900, a fully integrated alarm and camera system at $1,300 to $2,650, and a 4-camera bundle at $780 to $2,080, with camera installation labour at $130 to $400 per camera. Add any police permit fee, allow for false-alarm charges, and compare at least two written quotes for the same equipment list and the same monitoring plan. For the full cost over several years, see our five-year cost guide.

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How to choose an alarm installer in Toronto

Ontario licensing. The Private Security and Investigative Services Act, 2005 licenses security guards, private investigators and the agencies that sell their services. The province’s licensing pages do not list a separate licence for alarm or camera installers, so a PSISA licence number is not proof that someone can install your system. It does matter for response: a guard sent to your home when the alarm goes off should hold a security guard licence, which you can check on the province’s licence status search.
Verification. Ask which of the Toronto Police verification methods the monitoring station uses, and whether your equipment supports it.
Fees passed on. Ask whether the $130 false alarm fee is passed on to you, and whether the company adds anything to it.
Contract terms. Minimum term, automatic renewal, price rises, equipment ownership and early termination fees. Try our monitoring contract comparison tool.
Signalling. Ask whether the panel reports over cellular, internet or both, and what happens in a power cut. See alarm communication failures.

Alarm and camera installers in Toronto

These independent businesses appear in public business listings for the Toronto area and describe themselves as installing alarms, cameras or both. We left out telecom and national brands, dealer branches and lead-generation sites. We have not checked their work, prices, licences or insurance, and none of them has paid to appear. If a company offers guard response, check the guard licence on Ontario’s licence status search.