A follow-up from the article on page 16 of the April print edition of Professional Security Magazine.
Kent Police Assistant Chief Constable Allyn Thomas told the annual Action Against Business Crime conference of research into what crimes actually suffered by businesses.
For years businesses have grumbled that police have at times given businesses a take it or leave it service, because business crime is not a key performance indicator for a force. Ironically, because the Home Office has largely ditched the performance culture for police, that gives forces scope to do work with businesses, forces now knowing they don’t have a target to meet. The buzz words now are reassurance and neighbourhood policing. Businesses argue that criminals hitting them are doing other crime. Prof Martin Innes Cardiff is doing police-backed research in several business parts of the capital – the London Bridge Business Improvement District (BID), Broadgate, Victoria, Lime Street and Paternoster. According to ACC Thomas, the work is about mapping corporate security institutional risks, such as threats against staff; the physical security of buildings, against for instance terror attacks. The temptation may be to simply get rid of a bad employee who can then walk down the road into another job. In retail terms, it may be that shrinkage is worse by staff than by customers. Innes has surveyed what the academic terms ‘situated fears’ – where and how do staff feel various fears. One suggestion is that people feel a fear of being insulted by youths while on public transport. This begs the question of what police will do. It’s suggested that companies have concerns about drug abuse in the workplace, or insider trading and staff fraud; but they don’t want to tell the police in case of an insensitive investigation that leads to reputational damage. If it’s so easy to take company info away on data sticks, that can do harm to a business, how to protect against it?
