Old certainties are changing. You only have to turn the news on to see that. They are changing for the security manager, too. Last issue we reported the Co-op man, Phil Wilsmer, who suggested that retail loss prevention people have to ‘adapt or die’, and become part of a larger risk department, doing safety and compliance audits besides. Cynics would say that the employer is getting three skills for one pay packet. Next issue you can read about museums. There the move is away from the stern stereotype of the ‘attendant’, the security guard who tells you not to lean too close to the art. Museums are changing – opening Friday nights, seeking a younger audience, holding corporate and other events, and the security staff have to change to fit, by doing more customer service. I reckon the argument is over-played – in these interactive and funky new-style museums, can we get any closer to the Elgin Marbles or the Van Gogh Sunflowers? – but you get the picture (pardon the pun). Security by itself, or old-style negative, talk-to-the-hand security, is no longer good enough. A challenge to the security manager and the contract guarding company alike.
And plenty of private security people are rising to that challenge, offering training beyond the SIA minimum, for example, for healthcare, museums, and emergency response generally. Some sectors have already ‘got it’, or parts have. Event stewarding, for instance. We take for granted how football matches (from page 44) have changed so much for the better, well within living memory. The trouble that West Ham has had at the 2012 Olympic Stadium, seized on by the mainstream media, might have its roots in fan anger that they have moved from their old ground. Perhaps there’s only so much change that people can take.
The Security TWENTY conference at Heathrow that closed the series for 2016 was the best-attended yet. It heard an apology for IT delays from the SIA (page 34), which I couldn’t help but think I had heard before; and Met Police Supt Roy Smith (page 36; pictured). Challenge is a word he uses, and while it’s a much over-used word, he has a powerful point. The police have been cut back so much, they will be asking harder questions of businesses that report crime. Such as: if you’re a clothes store and you have North Face jackets at the front, and thieves swipe them, why don’t you move them to the back? Next year one of the things I will try to show is how there’s a new landscape – which Roy Smith at another event called ‘cluttered’ – of business improvement districts and crime reduction partnerships. There’s so much to do, and so much you can do, against crime; if you know where and how. Get reading.
