Knives, even guns, and intruders hunting down drug debtors – these are the security realities in colleges, the IFSEC conference heard.
How to develop a partnership with parents and the community? How to strike a balance between secure premises and creating an open learning environment – not as easy as it sounds? These were among the school and college security questions posed by speaker David Callender.
After a police career, he became head of security at a major college (with 26,000 enrolled students). He never named it, because as he put it security had been ‘pathetic’. There had since been a change of regime. David gained a travel grant from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (www.wcmt.org.uk) with the aim of researching security at educational establishments in the United States. His motivation: in 26 years as a police officer he had been assaulted once; in 18 months at the college, he was assaulted 16 times: "You get far more danger in my opinion at the colleges because we are not equipped to deal with it."
His current employer, Sodexo, as a facilities management company is involved in hundreds of schools, although not providing security, but other services such as catering. David is now with Sodexo Prestige, which means he works on the security side at the Aintree Grand National and Royal Ascot. Earlier, he was at Sodexo Education. He began by showing how few studies there are, by the Department for Education (Dfes) or otherwise, of school and college security. Who is responsible for school security is not set down in legislation; a lot of schools, David said, have security dealt with by the health and safety officer. Or, security may be delegated to a contractor; maybe a facilities manager without a security background. He quoted an April 2008 statement from the Dfes that school security responsibility is shared, between the local education authority, the school governing body, and the head teacher. Number one concern is personal safety of staff, pupils and visitors.
Giving an insight into the problems, David said: "The college I used to work at did not have an awful lot of staff assaulted; we managed to protect them. Pupils were regularly being assaulted by incomers to enforce £50 drug debts. The control of visitors needs to be paramount in the security of premises. We didn’t have a lot of break ins at the college, because we had an effective [119-camera] CCTV system." The 119 were not enough, ‘but you have to work with the facilities that you have’. Also, it took two and a half hours to lock down every night, to secure the premises. Other concerns for schools: vandalism, arson and burglary; and car crime, such as stolen cars dumped on playing fields. As for powers of search, David spoke of security guards at some colleges told that only teachers will search. To David, that made no sense. At the London college David used to work at, hand-held search ‘wands’ were used, because the site was in a high crime area. The £30-each wands found their first knife after ten minutes – carried by a teacher. In 18 months, the searchers found six knives and two guns: "It’s bad," David said. This leads to fear of crime, but such facts, he suggested, are ‘kept quiet’.
In America, David thought he would be looking at technology; not so. Campus security was all about community participation, because most schools and colleges David went to are open venues, for instance welcoming old people into the canteen at lunch. An institution may set its own tone of security, stressing the need for openness, or that criminals on site will be arrested. Campus ‘peace’ officers may carry handguns and handcuffs; or merely a notebook and pencil.
Returning to the UK: how to balance security and openness. Fences and CCTV? What is the point of cameras if no-one is trained to monitor them? David asked. He argued for independent security consultants to be licensed by the SIA, because contractors such as Sodexo that provide services to schools would want to sell security, he suggested. He called for Britain to take up an American law, whereby universities and colleges have to declare what crime is on their site: "Yes, it is time-consuming, but it makes you accountable; it encourages colleges to work together to reduce crime on campus … it also allows parents to make informed choices." This would require security specialists to provide for the education sector. He suggested a security inspection role for Ofsted, which already inspects schools’ teaching.
About David Callender: Head of security at Sodexo Prestige, he joined the police in 1978, and served with the Dumfries and Galloway, and Surrey forces. He retired as an inspector in 2004. David has also worked as a trainer, having trained 300 wheel clampers and 1500 security offices and door staff – ‘some of them have received their badge from the SIA as well’, as he put it in a dig at Security Industry Authority delays.
Featured in the June issue of Professional Security was the opening of the canine search division of guarding contractor ICTS (UK). At IFSEC Mark Rowe bumped into John Franklin-Webb from Oxfordshire-based ICTS GIS, and over a (£1.79 each!) coffee in the NEC branch of JD Wetherspoon, asked about searching staff and pupils in schools and colleges, whether for weapons or drugs.
There is nothing to fear if you plan, John Franklin-Webb said. What policies and measures are already in place, about drug misuse? What relationship does the school have with the police? Is there a police school liaison officer? Then: "We always recommend an out of hours search, unknown to the pupils. Primarily just to establish any levels of drug misuse that might be going on, to identify any drug-related paraphernalia, because from the paraphernalia we can tell the types of drugs being used, which is useful because if we are finding cannabis-related paraphernalia and teachers are having to deal with pupils, pupils are going to respond if they are under the influence of cannabis in a certain way." Similarly, if there are signs of crack, pupils will react in a different way. Next: he recommends a presentation at assembly, to explain what is going on, other searches the school will do, and to remind pupils of the drugs policy – because it is one thing to have a policy, but it needs to be taught. Teachers, too, need to know where they stand, if they fall foul of the rules. The July 2007 issue featured new powers for teachers to search pupils for knives and offensive weapons, without consent. The Government advice made plain that there is scope for schools to bring in security contractors.
This is something you can do in any workplace? "Absolutely," John said, though different in an adult workplace where staff have contracts of employment, though teachers too have contracts. As reported in June’s Professional Security, ICTS GIS has a rolling contract with bus operator National Express to search coaches and bus interchanges. Another place for dog searches is sports venues: if you go to a Test match this summer, you will pass John’s dogs to enter the cricket ground. Whether in a school or any other workplace, you need to consider: what if you find something on someone? Is it now a HR matter, the guilty person to be supported, or reported to police? With some (smaller, particularly cannabis) drug finds, the police might not necessarily want to be involved. Whatever the workplace’s response, it has to be reasonable and legal.
Is it being fuddy-duddy to be surprised that a security company might have business in schools? John said: "It is very easy to bury your head in the sand, until there is an incident, whether a dealer is targeting a school or business premises." Then one scenario could be, if drug-takers do not pay for their drugs, might the dealer resort to violence in the employee’s workplace? Or if the workplace deals with credit card details, say, over the telephone, might the dealer demand that the debtor pass on card details, to wipe out that debt? And then there is performance in the workplace; as John put it: "If you are working in a safety-sensitive job, I am not sure if I would like to work alongside someone off their head on some substance or other." Which raises another security and HR issue; is there some hotline, whistle-blowing number or other way that staff can pass on concerns about wrong-doing colleagues?
A consultant shared with Professional Security some of the varied security and risk issues at a private school.
Whether on the school property or on trips, there is a duty of care. Has the school really done a risk assessment, or only ticked the boxes? If someone is injured on a trip, who is on duty? In other words, is there a plan to manage a crisis? Access control is required to keep out intruders. Staff and pupils may not be badged, but visitors are. At a boarding school, are dorms on the (most vulnerable) ground floor? More sensitive parts of a building, more attractive to the thief, might need more security, such as chemistry labs, that may house for instance weighing scales of use to a drug dealer. Such labs, and computer suites, may require more and better locks on doors. And what if an intruder alarm does go off. If it is the caretaker that responds, what if he encounters thieves carrying off scales, and is beaten up?
