Police in Fremont, California recorded 461 commercial burglaries in 2025, down from 591 in 2024, according to the Fremont Police Department’s 2025 Annual Report. Under the city’s verified alarm response policy, an alarm activation not verified by sound, video, a panic button or an eyewitness receives a lower-priority “be on the lookout” response.
By Jacob Ross, Security Specialist · Guardian Integrated Security · CA PPO #121089 · Last updated July 31, 2026
Every figure below comes from the Fremont Police Department’s own published record — its 2025 Annual Report, its alarm permit program page, and the Fremont Municipal Code — with the source linked at the point of use. Nothing on this page is drawn from another city’s data, and nothing is estimated. Where a number is calculated rather than stated by the source, it is labeled and its inputs are shown.
Commercial Burglary in Fremont
The Fremont Police Department charts burglary in three separate categories: residential, commercial and auto. The commercial series is the one that describes businesses, and it fell for the second consecutive year in 2025.
- Fremont recorded 461 commercial burglaries in 2025 (Fremont Police Department, 2025 Annual Report, page 16).
- The 2024 count was 591.
- The 2023 count was 576.
- The 2022 count was 697, the highest of the five years charted.
- The 2021 count was 507.
- Calculated from those published counts, the change from 2024 to 2025 is −22.0% — 130 fewer offenses, or (461 − 591) ÷ 591.
- Calculated on the same basis, the change from 2023 to 2025 is −20.0% — 115 fewer offenses, or (461 − 576) ÷ 576.
2025 is the lowest commercial-burglary count of the five years the department charts. Both percentage comparisons above are drawn inside the 2023-to-2025 window on purpose: the department moved to the National Incident-Based Reporting System in May 2022, which falls inside the earlier part of the series, so no comparison on this page spans that change. The method section sets this out in full.
How Commercial Burglary Compares With Fremont’s Other Burglary Categories
- Residential burglaries in Fremont totaled 205 in 2025, also the lowest of the five charted years.
- Auto burglaries totaled 650 in 2025, down from 1,034 in 2024 and from a five-year high of 1,485 in 2022.
- Across the three categories the department charts, commercial burglary accounted for 35.0% of the 2025 total — calculated as 461 ÷ (205 + 461 + 650), or 461 of 1,316.
All three categories fell to their five-year low in 2025. Commercial burglary is the middle category by volume in every year charted, sitting above residential and below auto burglary throughout. It is also the category that describes premises which are, by design, empty for most of the hours in which they can be entered.
Fremont’s Verified Alarm Response Policy
This is the part of the Fremont picture that most directly affects how a business alarm is treated, and it is set by city ordinance rather than by an alarm company.
- Fremont’s alarm rules are codified as the Fremont false alarm ordinance, Chapter 9.10 of the Fremont Municipal Code, adopted by Ordinance 2277 in 1998 and amended by Ordinance 2386 in 2000.
- The City Council’s finding when it adopted the ordinance in 1998, still carried in the current published code, is that “the majority of alarms to which the police department responds are false alarms,” and that responding to them wastes city resources (FMC § 9.10.020(c)(1)).
- The Fremont Police Department states that verification “may come in the form of sound, video, a manually activated panic button, or an eyewitness account that indicates a crime is occurring” — four named forms of verification.
On what happens otherwise, the department’s own wording is this: “All non-verified alarms reported to the Fremont Police Department receive a lower priority response, referred to as a BOL (Be On the Lookout). If officers are in the area and available to respond, they will do so at their discretion.”
Stated precisely, because the distinction matters: that is a lower-priority, discretionary response, not a blanket refusal to respond. An unverified alarm in Fremont is not ignored — it is queued behind verified calls and answered if officers are free.
What Happens After Repeated False Alarms in Fremont
The ordinance sets an escalating ladder, and the end of that ladder is police nonresponse. The thresholds are specific.
- A permit holder is billed a service charge for every response beyond three in any 120-day period that required nothing but deactivating the alarm (FMC § 9.10.180(a)).
- A business without a permit is billed for every response beyond one (FMC § 9.10.180(b)).
- The chief of police may suspend a permit after four false alarms in a 180-day period, or five in a 12-month period (FMC § 9.10.120(a)).
- If a suspended alarm user does not identify and correct the problem within 30 days, the ordinance states that “all police responses” are “immediately terminated” (FMC § 9.10.120(c)).
- More than two suspensions in a year is grounds for revoking the permit outright, with police department nonresponse to that alarm (FMC § 9.10.120(d)).
- Where officers find no evidence of intrusion, the ordinance creates a presumption that the alarm was false, and the permit holder has 10 days to submit evidence to have the record amended (FMC § 9.10.120(b)).
The rebuttal window is the practical detail. Ten days after the fact, the thing most likely to show that an entry was actually attempted is a recording of it.
Alarm Permits and Obligations for Fremont Businesses
- The Fremont Police Department states that all businesses and residences with a monitored or audible alarm are required by city ordinance to hold a permit under Chapter 9.10.
- A new permit costs $40 and is valid for two years.
- Renewal costs $20 for a further two years.
- Permits are attached to the location per occupancy and are not transferable — a business that moves must apply again, per the department’s permit page.
- Once an alarm sounds and the department gives notice, the responsible party must reach the premises within 35 minutes and provide access; failing to do so may result in a citation (FMC § 9.10.110(c)).
- An audible alarm that can be heard outside the building must cut off within 15 minutes of activation, and a system without a working cut-off is designated a nuisance subject to abatement (FMC § 9.10.100(b)).
Cameras and Detection Technology in Fremont
- Nearly 900 private video surveillance systems in Fremont are registered with the police department (2025 Annual Report, page 28).
- The department operates 58 license plate readers and capture cameras.
- It also runs 56 pan-tilt-zoom color cameras.
- Four mobile camera trailers carry four color cameras each, 16 cameras in total.
- The department logged 1,089 drone deployments in 2025, across a fleet of 13 unmanned aerial systems.
Fremont police advise businesses directly to “utilize security systems such as alarms and video surveillance,” and to register those cameras with the department, on the department’s own commercial burglary prevention guidance.
Fremont Police Workload in 2025
These are citywide totals across every call type and every offense category. They are not commercial figures, and they are given here only as context for how the department’s capacity is spent.
- Fremont generated 102,395 calls for service in 2025, of which 32,327 were dispatched.
- That is 31.6% of calls for service dispatched — calculated as 32,327 ÷ 102,395.
- The dispatch center answers an average of more than 685 calls a day, serving both Fremont and Union City.
- The department documented 14,024 original police reports, citywide and across all report types.
- It made 2,084 arrests over the same period.
- Fremont secured a $2,454,000 Organized Retail Theft Prevention grant from the Board of State and Community Corrections for FY 2025/2026; the department notes that its listed grant figures are rounded to the nearest thousand.
How These Figures Were Compiled
Method matters on a page meant to be cited, so here is exactly what was done and what was deliberately not done.
All crime counts come from the Fremont Police Department’s 2025 Annual Report, published with a chief’s message dated 5 May 2026 and covering calendar year 2025. The figures presented as charts in that report were read twice by two independent methods — text-layer extraction with column mapping, and a visual read of the rendered page — and both readings agree.
The department attaches its own disclaimer to those figures, reproduced here in full because it qualifies every count above: “Crime Statistics in this report are derived from internal Fremont Police Department systems and may differ from data reported to external agencies due to differing reporting standards, timelines, or methodologies. Data is subject to change and is based on reports that have been initiated. Some reports may be reclassified at a later time, and data is submitted on an ongoing basis.”
Year-over-year comparisons on this page are confined to 2023-to-2025 and 2024-to-2025. Fremont Police adopted the National Incident-Based Reporting System in May 2022, as the department states in its 2024 Annual Report, so any comparison reaching back to 2021 or early 2022 would straddle that transition. The 2021 and 2022 counts are reproduced as the department publishes them and are not used as a comparison base.
The 2024 Annual Report’s NIBRS-submitted counts are never combined with the 2025 report’s series. The two are built on different rules — NIBRS classifies vehicle burglary as larceny, among other differences — and the totals do not reconcile. Joining them would manufacture a change that reflects classification rather than crime.
“Commercial burglary” here is the Fremont Police Department’s own chart category. It has not been redefined, and it does not absorb shoplifting, larceny, robbery or vehicle burglary. Where citywide totals appear on this page, the sentence stating them says so.
Several things are absent on purpose. Fremont publishes no dollar-loss valuation for burglary, so this page carries no loss figures. It publishes no clearance or arrest rate by offense type, so none is computed — dividing the citywide arrest count by an offense count would produce a rate that does not exist in the source. It publishes no time-of-day or premise-type breakdown for Fremont, so none is shown; those breakdowns exist for some other California cities and have not been carried across. No statewide or national comparison is made, because the state and federal sources that would support one could not be retrieved. No per-capita or per-business rate is given, because no verified denominator was obtainable. And no claim is made anywhere that cameras or monitoring reduce these counts by any particular amount, because no primary source retrieved for this page supports such a figure.
What This Means for a Business That Sits Empty Overnight
Two facts on this page sit together. Fremont recorded 461 commercial burglaries in 2025, and Fremont’s own ordinance gives an alarm that nobody has verified a lower-priority, discretionary response. The city has told alarm users, in writing, what closes that gap: sound, video, a manually activated panic button, or an eyewitness account that a crime is occurring.
Two of those four — sound and video — can be delivered remotely on a site with nobody present. Guardian Integrated Security’s live video monitoring is built for that moment: AI flags activity on camera to a live agent in under a second, the agent sees what is actually happening, and can issue a two-way audio warning, dispatch Guardian’s own patrol units, and alert Fremont police with an eyewitness account rather than an unverified signal. Where a site also needs a person present, security guard services and security patrol services cover the staffed side, and Guardian’s Fremont service page sets out local coverage.
Guardian Integrated Security has protected 2,700+ California businesses for 20+ years. BBB A+ rated. California PPO #121089. To have a Fremont property assessed, request a quote or call 800-400-3167.
Cite This Page
If you use these figures, please cite the page:
APA — Ross, J. (2026). Fremont commercial burglary statistics: 2025 police data. Guardian Integrated Security. https://www.guardianintegratedsecurity.com/fremont-commercial-burglary-statistics/
MLA — Ross, Jacob. “Fremont Commercial Burglary Statistics: 2025 Police Data.” Guardian Integrated Security, 2026, https://www.guardianintegratedsecurity.com/fremont-commercial-burglary-statistics/.
Chicago — Ross, Jacob. “Fremont Commercial Burglary Statistics: 2025 Police Data.” Guardian Integrated Security. Accessed [date]. https://www.guardianintegratedsecurity.com/fremont-commercial-burglary-statistics/.
These statistics may be used with attribution and a link to this page. Journalists and researchers who want the underlying pages of the Fremont Police annual report can follow the source links below straight to the department’s own documents.
Sources
- Fremont Police Department, 2025 Annual Report (chief’s message dated 5 May 2026; data for calendar year 2025). Grants page 13; records page 14; crime charts page 16; dispatch page 17; special deployments page 27; equipment and community cameras page 28. PDF · Annual Report & Yearly Summaries index. Accessed 31 July 2026.
- Fremont Police Department, Alarm Permit program page — verified response policy, permit requirement, fees. fremontpolice.gov. Accessed 31 July 2026.
- Fremont Municipal Code, Chapter 9.10, “False Alarms” (Ord. 2277, 10 February 1998; amended by Ord. 2386, 27 June 2000) — the ordinance the Fremont Police Department links as the city’s alarm ordinance. codepublishing.com. Accessed 31 July 2026.
- Fremont Police Department, Business Crime Prevention — the department’s own commercial burglary guidance. fremontpolice.gov. Accessed 31 July 2026.
- Fremont Police Department, Fremont Crime Map and Statistics. fremontpolice.gov. Accessed 31 July 2026.
- Fremont Police Department, 2024 Annual Report — cited only for the department’s statement that it has used NIBRS since May 2022 (page 14). PDF. Accessed 31 July 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many commercial burglaries happen in Fremont, California?
Fremont police recorded 461 commercial burglaries in 2025, the lowest count in the five years charted in the department’s 2025 Annual Report. The comparable counts were 591 in 2024, 576 in 2023, 697 in 2022 and 507 in 2021. For context in the same chart, Fremont recorded 205 residential burglaries and 650 auto burglaries in 2025. These are offenses reported to and recorded by the Fremont Police Department from its internal systems, and the department notes that reports may be reclassified later.
Is commercial burglary rising or falling in Fremont?
Falling. Commercial burglaries in Fremont dropped from 591 in 2024 to 461 in 2025, a decrease of 22.0%, and from 576 in 2023 to 461 in 2025, a decrease of 20.0%. Both percentages are calculated from counts published in the Fremont Police Department’s 2025 Annual Report. Comparisons are limited to 2023 onward because the department moved to the National Incident-Based Reporting System in May 2022, and a comparison reaching back past that date would straddle a change in how offenses are recorded.
Do Fremont police respond to unverified burglar alarms?
At a lower priority, and at the officers’ discretion. The Fremont Police Department states that all non-verified alarms reported to it receive a lower priority response, referred to as a BOL or “Be On the Lookout,” and that officers will respond if they are in the area and available. Verification, in the department’s own words, may come in the form of sound, video, a manually activated panic button, or an eyewitness account indicating a crime is occurring. The policy sits under Chapter 9.10 of the Fremont Municipal Code.
Does a business in Fremont need an alarm permit?
Yes, if the alarm is monitored or audible. The Fremont Police Department states that all businesses and residences with a verified-response-type alarm must obtain a permit under Chapter 9.10 of the Fremont Municipal Code. A new permit costs $40 and lasts two years; renewal is $20 for a further two years, and permits are not transferable between locations. Without a permit, the ordinance bills a service charge for every police response beyond the first that required nothing but deactivating the alarm, compared with three responses in any 120-day period for permit holders.
