Shopping centres are large, complex, and busy public spaces, taking an ever more central role in our communities, and often at the heart of urban regeneration. Places for entertainment, leisure, and destination, their success depends not only on the environment, retailers, and facilities – crucial though they are – but also on more intangible qualities. A feeling of wellbeing, the perception of safety, and an approachable and informative persona, are all key differentiators. Mark Partridge, CEO IPC Security, writes.
Yet behind the public face of these centres, the full range of society’s threats, risks, and crime exists. Everything from the highly publicised jewellery raids and terror plots, to the more mundane shop-lifting, illegal parking, and street crime. Lost children, angry shoppers, and slips and trips are another facet of this increasingly litigious and controlled environment. As too is the novel trend for the front line staff – including security – to “entertain”. Requests for juggling security officers are real. Kilted patrols have happened in Scotland.
However, the primary role of security, in this context, is in managing and mitigating these many threats on the one hand, and in helping the owners, retailers, and centre managers in creating a safe, secure, and sensitive environment on the other. The blur between customer service and hard security is real, and it is to their credit that many security staff can move seamlessly between the two roles. But this adaptability comes at a price. Meticulous recruitment, rigorous employment screening, and extensive training are the expensive ingredients that make a good shopping centre security officer, wrapped around by a strong management team and infrastructure. Highly presentable, articulate, and knowledgeable, these officers are everything from primary first aiders, to major incident responders.
Private security companies do not operate in isolation from the police and intelligence services, and the government has created a set of guidelines for shopping centre security. NaCTSO’s Crowded Places guidelines, recognises their key role in the response to nine identified threats to critical national infrastructure, public safety, and amenity, from terrorism to pandemic. The US has gone much further than the UK has at present in integrating the role of private security into the overall policing and intelligence strategy. There is real scope for the UK to learn from these initiatives, and to better utilise the significant resources and capability that the private security industry can bring to community policing and targeted crime prevention. This “force multiplier effect” under police guidance, is tried and tested in the States, with private security now used to “triage” or prioritise police resources.
Voids in shopping centres and the high street, coupled with suppressed retail spend are testaments to the bite of the recession. The need to differentiate the shopping experience has never been greater for the mall owners and retailers, as is the need to do more for less, and be transparent about it. The play-out in the services sector – into which security falls – has been fierce. Intense price pressure, repeated re-bids or market testing, and a race to the bottom in many cases. It takes a brave, and wise, corporate purchaser to choose anything but the cheapest mildly compliant bid, with the expectation that the service will be re-competed frequently. Security teams are TUPE’d between the players on an annual basis, with little real expectation that meaningful change can occur with such a short tenure.
But there is another approach, with its own merits and risks. The replacement of people with technology certainly offers compelling headline security savings. And there is indeed a crucial place for smart surveillance, detection, monitoring, and CCTV systems. IP enabled devices and networks, cloud computing infrastructure, sophisticated video analytics and biometrics, are exciting developments. As the most camera’d up nation on Earth, these are natural developments bringing real benefits, particularly in looking for abnormal behaviour patterns and responding accordingly. It is this ability to respond to what is being detected that should ultimately determine if security manpower can indeed be reduced.
There is also a place for simple, yet effective security solutions. The “Retailers Against Crime” initiative started in Scotland in 2009, for example, provides a common radio between the police, the retailers and centre management, and the security team. The cost is modest, but the impact is dramatic. The ability to share common risks and information, in an effective way, is helping to focus resources where they are most needed, and stop crime.
Similarly, IPC’s pioneering use of canine patrols in malls across America, has had a measurable impact. The bad guys hate the dogs, (normally trained in drug detection), and the kids love them. The handlers hand out to the children the dogs’ name card, with its photo, breed, and age on one side, and the reasons for having the dog in the mall on the other.
Ultimately, it is the need to innovate and to add tangible value to all the stakeholders in this complex shopping centre environment that will determine which specialist security services providers will survive in the sector. There really is the ability to be different.
As an international security company, with over 30 years of market leadership in the shopping centre security sector, we feel well placed to rise to these challenges, and to bring our unique, tailored approach to each and every customer we serve.
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