The cash in transit sector is making progress against attacks on CIT – but some things are out of the hands of the security industry, Mark Rowe hears.
In the year to the start of October, industry-wide saw 679 attacks compared to 824 in the same period last year. Adam Miller, Risk Director at G4S, says: "That rather masks some less good news in that the cash in transit attacks which is where we move cash across the pavements to banks and retailers fell 33 per cent this year compared with last. But rather alarming is an increase in ATM attacks." That’s while CIT crews are replenishing cash machines – such attacks are up 19 per cent, reversing a previous downward trend." A couple of years ago, the reverse was true; CIT attacks across the pavement were the problem. Adam Miller – he’s been with the company since 2004, and took his current post last year; he was previously director of the company’s UK cash centres business – is taken up with technology (in vehicle design for instance), procedures and processes to tackle CIT crime. Some things individual, rival CIT firms, and the security industry can do. Some things take work with other stake-holders. Some things, as he explains, are a matter for society: you, me, the guy in front of you in the supermarket queue, everyone who uses cash. Yes, G4S is using the Spinnaker cash box with Smartwater forensic product marking. A CIT robbery court conviction in London has resulted with Smartwater evidence, and more cases are coming to court. Adam Miller describes the marking product as a ‘significant factor in deterring people from attacking us’. He praises police work, particularly in the Met area; overt and covert following of CIT vehicles under Operation Vanguard; briefing of crews by police officers in threat awareness at branches at 5am and 6am. <br><br>G4S, and Loomis (the new name for Securitas) are, Adam reports, each working on a new cash degradation technology for notes. Mainly used so far is dye, though Adam speaks of some concerns that it is not a complete deterrent. The CIT firms are looking at something more irreversible. He suggests a ‘glue-based degradation technology’ that G4S has demonstrated to the Bank of England, and hopes to trial in the field in early 2009. <br><br>Adam adds: "There’s only a certain amount we can protect with cash boxes as we cross the pavement; to address the full problem of ATM robberies we need a much wider engagement." With cashpoint developers, the banks and independents, for instance. He says: "One of the things that has eluded us as an industry for some time is to get the ATM manufacturers fully engaged in providing security solutions that work, end to end protection." Hence the stakeholders action plan, as unveiled last year, signed by the BSIA, police, Home Office and others, chaired (until the recent re-shuffle of ministers) by Vernon Coaker. "That’s been very useful in helping people focus on what they could and should do and then through the ministerial round-tables [next meeting in November], holding them accountable for making progress. What is clear is that some stakeholders have made more progress than others." <br><br>I raise one topic; double yellow lines, and red routes in London – parking restrictions that mean a CIT van cannot, without risking a fine, park as close to the bank or shop as it possibly could. This raises the question of what a council finds more important – parking income, or the health and safety of CIT couriers, providing an essential service? "Parking is a major issue for us and if we are not allowed as we are not currently in many major cities to park adjacent to the servicing point for a bank or supermarket, we are running significant risks." He gave a recent example of a courier in Bristol, attacked. He felt not able to park right outside a bank, because he had had three points put on his licence for a previous parking violation. "It’s absolutely clear that the further the courier has to travel, the more at risk he is. Many councils accept this and give dispensation for cash in transit couriers." <br><br>I ask about Adam’s job title. He deals with the security problems associated with company products – namely, the handling and movement of cash. It’s done through a risk assessment process, accepting that you cannot eliminate risk without making the product so expensive to the customer, or the CIT vehicle so heavy, it would not be commercially viable. Hence, the quest for an ‘acceptable risk profile’, and hence the work with police, government and others, because the risk profile changes. "We have had two couriers shot in the last three months. One member of the public shot, and one stabbed. These risks are real, they are quite worrying. All of us in the cash supply chain, including the cash users, have a responsibility for the health and safety of the people involved." <br><br>Last year, the British Bankers Association (BBA) did bring out best practice guidelines, which set out what a bank needs to do to reduce risk of CIT attack. But readers will have spotted: they are only guidelines. Adam Miller calls deployment patchy: "Some high street banks have done well," for example in providing a haven for couriers. As he says, while the staff and cash is safe inside the vehicle, you have couriers having to open the boxes in the public space of the banking hall. It can be simple for a bank to provide a haven – a manager’s office, or through the first door of a double-door ‘airlock’, or a cash transfer unit. Banks in hundreds of branches have acted; but many have not. "There is a real link between the banks that haven’t, and the banks that get more attacks. There isn’t many people in the industry, involved in use or movement of cash, who don’t know what best practice is. There is however a large number of people that are not deploying that best practice. I don’t kid myself that it is always cheaper, easy [to do best practice]; but there are some very strong arguments for doing it." <br><br>As featured in the October issue of Professional Security, the Post Office has Operation Grapevine, its control room (run by Professional Witnesses) that takes pieces of intelligence from sub-postmasters or cash crews, digests it, and sends it to those who need to know – such as the post offices in the area, or police. Under the umbrella of the BSIA cash in transit section is Safer Cash, which does something similar, whose analysts include a serving police officer. Adam Miller adds: "That has been fantastic for the industry because it gives crews the opportunity to report things that a 999 call simply wouldn’t deal with." To explain that; a CIT driver sees a pair in a parked car, watching, wearing gloves on a hot day. Maybe if you rang 999, that would not get a police response. Call the Safer Cash line, and in the main cities that piece of news would go to a police dedicated operation, and it’s that much more likely that they would respond, fast, leading perhaps to an arrest or more intelligence. This set-up has linked attacks from the likes of Manchester and Liverpool to Brighton and Scotland, that, Adam Miller adds, police otherwise would not have linked. He speaks of making more of this, because of what he calls the ‘real gap’ in policing nationally in terms of level two crime, that is, crime organised enough to cross police force boundaries. As, to be fair, with Grapevine, the model could work with other retailers and other movers of bulk cash, targets for violent and organised criminals. Because, in Adam Miller’s opinion, fewer and fewer crimes against CIT are by opportunists.
