How do you "sell" security

[CTEXSEC1]

when it isn't profitable?

Our campus budget gurus are looking to cut our already anemic department even more. We have already been reduced to one officer/shift. With a largely student force, this is a big problem.

This especially become evident over the summer when they only run one guard per shift. We are located in an area with a large number of wild, sometimes dangerous, varmints, so it is preferable to have at least two guards on at a time. We have had incidents compounded in the past due to a lack of bodies to respond.

How does one convince them of the need? Is it even possible? Do I have better odds of winning the lottery?

[Sytx]

At a company in the past we actually had a guard treed by coyote's. One of the weirdest radio call's I ever got.

Humor aside, the main concern for them (but they won't admit it) is money. If the crime goes up they will do it for liability but the odds are sadly it's better to get a side job during the summer.

If you work for campus security it is a plague... you don't have anything BUT campus so when it's slow you don't have anything else to rotate over to. You might see if the campus can swing you into another job if your looking for hours like lab assistant or stock person for some supply or bookstore place to do part time in addition to security till summer's over. As your already working there it should be a shoe in.

Best of luck

[SecTrainer]

Colleges are interested in one thing and one thing only - getting students.

Any college administrator should already know that campus safety is a VERY big deal for parents, especially, when choosing a college. However, yours seem to have lost sight of this fact (or the bean-counters aren't aware of it). Accordingly, show them this article, which is the TOP HIT on a relevant Google search (many others will see it), and have them read item #4 twice:

http://colleges.collegetoolkit.com/guides/college-selection/rescollselect.aspx

There's more available if you want it, but they all say basically the same thing: Campus security is a significant college selection factor, and more so given the events that have been well-publicized. College students have unique vulnerabilities and bad things can happen on any campus - big or small - anywhere.

[HotelSecurity]

Good luck with the loto.


In my case senior management wants to put us back to 24 hours a day. The hands on owner won't free up some beans to do it.

[TXGrunt]

Since one of my sites is a high dollar condo complex, trick i do is when they have the condo association meetings myself or another security rep will attend.

By taking this pro active approach we have gotten a few more contracts..

[Lawson]

Walk into the clients office and drop a pack of matches on his desk, then say, "It sure would be a shame if something were to burn down."

[CTEXSEC1]

Walk into the clients office and drop a pack of matches on his desk, then say, "It sure would be a shame if something were to burn down."

Not sure I want to threaten burning down my alma mater. I work campus security at the university that is in the process of giving me a diploma. We are in-house. That is the problem with trying to convince them to throw down money.

[CTEXSEC1]

At a company in the past we actually had a guard treed by coyote's. One of the weirdest radio call's I ever got.

Humor aside, the main concern for them (but they won't admit it) is money. If the crime goes up they will do it for liability but the odds are sadly it's better to get a side job during the summer.

If you work for campus security it is a plague... you don't have anything BUT campus so when it's slow you don't have anything else to rotate over to. You might see if the campus can swing you into another job if your looking for hours like lab assistant or stock person for some supply or bookstore place to do part time in addition to security till summer's over. As your already working there it should be a shoe in.

Best of luck

Since we use a largely student force, summers are not so bad as far as getting hours. Only a handful stay around. However, I am pretty set on the idea that we need at least two officers on per shift. We have a single entrance point that requires 24-hr control per administration. They have told us that if only one officer is on shift, the gate must left open while the officer goes on rounds, which takes about 1.5-2.5 hours, depending on the officer. So...roughly 2 hours with the campus totally open, allowing uncontrolled access. :eek: The goal is to get the admin folks to realize the need when the fall session starts up so we can avoid a potentially dangerous situation.

Also, I know I feel much better when there is someone on the other end of my radio that understands our P&P and can respond or at least give calm, coherent information to an emergency dispatcher if I get my ass in a bind.

Another benefit of having 2 officers is the accountability. I have sat in the dorm lobby for hours and never saw an officer come through. As it turns out, some officers will sit in the guard house and do nothing if not prompted to get out by another officer or the threat of a supervisory visit<insert shocked face here>. Since they recognize our vehicles, catching them in the act is tough. We are debating putting in a card scan/guard tour system to ensure that rounds get done, even though I HATE them.

We get to sit down with the budget folks in late July before the fiscal year starts, so I am trying to gather enough information that I can go in there fully-loaded.

I am contacting our local LE to see if I can get an area crime report for the past year. I am also in the process of hunting down outside funds to support our department sans budget money. Oh, and I am working on re-working our training regimen so the adminstration can see more competent, capable and professional officers walking around, even if they are students.

[N. A. Corbier]

Don't bother with the guard tour system. It only works at certain points.

For the price of a (good) guard tour system, give them radios or cell phones with GPS tracking. This way, if anything bad happens to them, you can locate the radio and hopefully they're near it. Randomly and frequently poll the GPS position of the radio.

Hell, you can do this on the cheap with any GPS unit and a Google Latitude Account. My phone is constantly telling Latitude where the hell I am. There are also hard enabled apps for most phones that will report GPS locations every X seconds.

Radios will do this too, but requires more money.

This way, they're not running around playing "GOTTA GET THE NEXT BUTTON. MUST BE BUTTON #4. MUST DO IT IN 31 SECONDS. GET OUT OF MY WAY, RAPIST, I MUST HIT THAT BUTTON ON TIME."

[CTEXSEC1]

Don't bother with the guard tour system. It only works at certain points.

For the price of a (good) guard tour system, give them radios or cell phones with GPS tracking. This way, if anything bad happens to them, you can locate the radio and hopefully they're near it. Randomly and frequently poll the GPS position of the radio.

Hell, you can do this on the cheap with any GPS unit and a Google Latitude Account. My phone is constantly telling Latitude where the hell I am. There are also hard enabled apps for most phones that will report GPS locations every X seconds.

Radios will do this too, but requires more money.

This way, they're not running around playing "GOTTA GET THE NEXT BUTTON. MUST BE BUTTON #4. MUST DO IT IN 31 SECONDS. GET OUT OF MY WAY, RAPIST, I MUST HIT THAT BUTTON ON TIME."

The system we had with my previous employer just required that we hit the buttons during our shift. It showed that we were at least in the buildings. We are also in the process of adding cameras. This should deter slackers as well as problems.

[Lawson]

When I was a supervisor, we took over a new site and they wanted me to pick the guard tour points. Personally I don't like the tour systems and believe if you can't trust the guard to do the job, then you should simply not employ the guard.

I put the points at obvious thoroughfare points. Such as door-jams, the front/rear entrances, and points where you would have to go anyway. Other employers Ive worked for put them in arbitrary unusual areas, such as in an office in the back in between a desk and a wall down by the floor. I personally cannot stand that method of placement.

[BPS]

I have used Google Latitude with suitable GPS capable phones and it works well at little to no additional cost.


The best of British.
http://www.britannia-protective.com

[SecTrainer]

I have used Google Latitude with suitable GPS capable phones and it works well at little to no additional cost.


The best of British.
http://www.britannia-protective.com

Isn't there some sort of a standard in Britain now regarding "lone workers" (not just security), and providing either location and/or "trouble alert" systems for them?

There have been a number of "employee location" systems developed in recent years. If officer safety (such as man-down alerting, etc.) is one of the features of the location/monitoring system instead of merely recording the fact that "Kilroy was here", I think the system would be more useful and would also be accepted much better by officers (wouldn't be viewed so much as "Big Brother" not trusting them to do their jobs).

[N. A. Corbier]

I've always said equipping someone with a GPS equipped radio or cell phone and tracking that works. Putting a tip-switch on it is even better. Someone should be monitoring the GPS telemetry to see if a unit just... stops moving.

If they stop moving for a period of time? (How long depends on the site. 5 minutes is a long time?) Call them. If they're suddenly sideways, then something is wrong, call them.

While things like latitude can track if you stop moving, they can't do tip switches, unfortunately. If you've got a phone with an accelerometer, it can listen for a "I am sideways" event, but that's a custom app somebody's got to write.

[CTEXSEC1]

I am curious about GPS tracking on such a small tract of land. Would it be useful on our +/- 250 acre campus? I have heard that it is not big enough to be able to produce significant locations for officers. Basically, they would not appear to move the whole shift, even doing rounds.

[SecTrainer]

I am curious about GPS tracking on such a small tract of land. Would it be useful on our +/- 250 acre campus? I have heard that it is not big enough to be able to produce significant locations for officers. Basically, they would not appear to move the whole shift, even doing rounds.

Your question relates to the accuracy (or, a better word would be precision) of GPS. If GPS was so "coarse" that it could not differentiate locations with a precision of less than 250 acres, it would not show any difference in location anywhere within that area.

However, GPS is far more precise than that. Even the "old" (original) GPS was accurate to less than 100 meters, and newer GPS systems (such as differential GPS or DGPS) are accurate down to within 3-5 meters. "Military" systems are accurate to within less than a meter.

Note that the "advertised" accuracy of a GPS system is always theoretical since there are some variables related to the specific characteristics of the location itself (among other imponderables) that will affect the system's accuracy in actual use. However, the general answer to your question is "No, the people who say GPS is not precise enough to provide meaningful position information within a 250-acre campus are NOT correct".

Perhaps more to the point, "location systems" that are used within a private facility or campus to track people and assets don't have to use satellite GPS technology anyway. They use their own network of fixed signal-processing nodes installed at various points around the facility/campus. These nodes query and differentiate/triangulate the signals coming from proprietary low-power transmitters that are carried/worn by employees or affixed to valuable assets. You could call it a "private GPS system" except for the "G", because it isn't "global" and it doesn't use the global (satellite-based) positioning signals.

[echo4serria]

I am curious about GPS tracking on such a small tract of land. Would it be useful on our +/- 250 acre campus? I have heard that it is not big enough to be able to produce significant locations for officers. Basically, they would not appear to move the whole shift, even doing rounds.

It all depends on the quality of the receiver. A quality GPSr with WAAS capability is accurate enough for aviation use to simulate a precision ILS approach path, and is typically within 1.5 meters for both horizontal and vertical position. A consumer-grade handheld should never have a ambiguity circle with a radius greater than 25 feet. However, accuracy will degrade significantly inside buildings and other structures.