From Martin Woollam of Carlisle Security:
The popularity and the expansion of the wider police economy is also a current trend, which shows no sign of diminishing. Last year we reported the instigation of a new breed of officer on Merseyside with the launch of Merseyrail’s Enforcement Officers.
Carlisle Security co created this phenomenon over twelve months ago and what a 12 months it has been. On Merseyside alone in excess of 4000 individuals have been successfully prosecuted for a variety of byelaw offences from feet on seats to smoking and loitering.
The officers offer a modern solution to a problem whose inception was noted in the Regulation of the Railways Act of 1889! Combine this with cutting edge video and audio technology and you can create a very modern, very successful high impact solution for dealing with anti social behaviour.
The success of the Carlisle / Merseyrail model has now lead to several awards most notably from ROSPA and to several Best Practice nominations for future awards.
The model has now also been adopted by National Express in their East Anglia, Metro and WAGN operations to reduce crime on its network.
Martin Woollam says: "The National Express model is particularly pleasing as it is centred around multi agency working with the British Transport Police, National Express Revenue Protection officers and Carlisle Enforcement Officers working together to solve problems of anti social behaviour and achieve their goal of "making travel safer" for their passengers."
Project Manager David Housden said: "We are delighted with the results of the Enforcement Officers so far and believe the project to be a great success. The joint working was built solid relationships between all stakeholders closely with the British Transport Police is proving ever more popular and successful.
Martin adds: "Carlisle Security is committed to providing clients with the highest quality rail based security in the country and to achieving the Railway Safety Accreditation status from the British Transport Police for our personnel. We view the BTP as a major stakeholder in the provision of our service and see the Accreditation as our next step to improving the services we provide. We are delighted to work alongside them in Merseyside, London, Leeds and Manchester and hope to meet the standards required to meet the award. Closer working between the Police and private security can only safely be achieved by clearly defined and monitored standards and stringent screening of candidates. That’s why we feel the RSAS scheme offers us the perfect vehicle to achieve this aim."
Therefore, if it’s including the community in its own safety by recruitment and training from within or excluding anti social behaviourists from their clients operations Carlisle Security believe they embody the best of both worlds.
