Malcolm Dawson, the acting head of security at Leeds University was bursting to say that he was awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the Queen’s birthday honours – but had to wait several weeks until the list was officially announced in June. With his wife Beverley, he collects his BEM from the Lord Lieutenant of North Yorkshire, Barry Dodd, at County Hall, Northallerton on September 8; and is invited to a garden party at Buckingham Palace next spring.
After many notes of congratulations from others in the field of university security management, and other well-wishers, we visited his office on campus in the rainy Yorkshire city.
As Malcolm doesn’t know who nominated him for the BEM – although he has a sneaking feeling he knows who – he doesn’t know exactly what it’s for. But as he describes his work – having been security operations manager, he’s been acting head of security at Leeds since December, when head Alan Cain moved to Manchester Metropolitan – you can see why he was honoured. He speaks first of the security department’s work with local West Yorkshire Police. The uni and the force signed up to shared protocols and information sharing and specific targeting of crime. “We did and continue to do a joint operation with the police called Operation Optimal, which is using police in targeted, predictive patrols,where police think crime is going to occur.” As a result, the year before last, the university could point to a 54 per cent fall in crime in a three-mile radius. To any uni keen to present itself as safe to students – and to reassure parents – that matters. The uni’s security patrollers, whether with dogs or in vehicles, likewise take routes where crimes are predicted to be most likely to happen.
Malcolm was behind the uni having a Pahlo (police higher education liaison officer) whose office is across the corridor from Malcolm’s. Down the road from the security department is a police station, on the edge of the campus, so that coming or going its officers pass through the campus – a visible deterrent. What makes Malcolm’s honour, and others, so welcome is that, as ever, the security service is all about allowing students to take their safe campus for granted. Malcolm adds: “While I am obviously delighted in receiving the award, I have got a great team that work with and for me; it’s credit to them for our overall achievement.”
The official citation was for services to higher education and students. One service is looking after bereaved parents after student deaths, or students left in vegetative states, whether because of drug overdoses or road or other accidents. Malcolm accompanies those parents to the student’s room, which has to be emptied. “I have done that in a compassionate way; I have helped with accommodation, with meals for the parents, parking, so that they have nothing to worry about when they are coming here under such traumatic circumstances. I just try to make it as bearable and easy as possible for them; and by being that way I have been with them I have actually made some lasting friendships with families of deceased or seriously injured students.”
That reminded Professional Security of the closing words of Mike Thompson’s talk on police handling of the mass casualties and bereaved after 7-7: “We can never make it better for the family, but we can help by not making it worse.” Malcolm agreed it was similar for him. Professional Security asked if such tasks were better done by someone older, who might have student-age children. Malcolm pointed to his 40 years of experience – 15 in North Yorkshire Police, then 25 at Leeds. As a policeman on a rural beat he had to deal with farmer suicides. Is being compassionate and sensitive to the family of the dead, something you can be trained in? Malcolm said not: “It’s just something that comes with life, with dealing with it, and sadly the more times you deal with it, the more you get used to it.”
The Easter annual meeting of the association for university heads of security, AUCSO – Malcolm is the northern regional rep – showed, and those heads will tell you, how Security on a campus is about more than guarding – though that has to be done, if necessary, against protests for example. Security staff have a pastoral role, especially out of office hours when patrollers may well be the ones called to a suicide attempt; or someone distressed or incapable. Malcolm went on to speak of enforcing what he calls the university’s ‘very robust drug policy’, of zero-tolerance. If you’re caught with illegal drugs on uni property, including the halls of residence, by agreement with police a first case – say, a student found by security staff with a small amount of cannabis – comes to Malcolm. On the night, the security patroller takes the guilty student’s identity card. “And they are told to ring me the next morning to have an appointment with me; so the irony of it all is that during the night where they are in drink or drugs or in party mode, they are very boisterous, very non-compliant; when they have sobered up the next day and remember they have to come and see me, I see a different animal to what the lads dealt with the night before. And usually 99 per cent of them are very remorseful, and apologetic, and it won’t happen again.”
That first offence, then, sees Malcolm give ‘words of wisdom’, advice, and a warning that this first time they’ve been fortunate; given their remorse no further action will be taken. “However what I point out at that first meeting is that if they do come to my attention again, then they are seen by me and the police; and the police will then deal with them by way of fine and an adult caution.” Offend a third time, and they will go before the university academic officer, as a matter of academic discipline. The prospect then is of being kicked off their course. Naturally Leeds has that method for reasons; but, Professional Security asked, might some find that ‘soft’ on drugs? Malcolm answered: “We are here to assist students and help them have a fantastic experience while they are at university, and enjoy their time, and to achieve the appropriate rewards at the end of their three or five years here. What we are not here for is to criminalise every student that takes one puff of a small cannabis joint, because then that’s their career over before it starts … we try to be neither soft nor hard; we try to reach a happy medium.”
Like any university, Leeds is part of a wider youth culture; and (again as Professional Security has reported before) students in an era of loans not grants see themselves as buyers of a service, and are more demanding ‘customers’. The uni is part of a greater city and society; on the afternoon Professional Security was inside Malcolm’s ground floor office at 175 Woodhouse Lane, we could hear the traffic outside, the main A660, make that particular sound when cars drive on rainy roads. “There’s no two days ever the same. You can start off and come in with a daily routine that’s the norm; but you never know, like the police, what you are going to deal with. Some days you can deal with cycle crime; a student drugs overdose; with catching burglars; a bomb scare. There’s so many things.” Like other campus security heads, on Malcolm’s mind is the threat of terrorism, not only that a university might be a target like any crowded place, such as a shopping centre or a football stadium. As has been well documented, campuses are among places where the young and impressionable are radicalised. As Malcolm points out, looking for ‘signs of radicalisation’ sadly is not easy.
