Expert Witness Blog
In Security Solutions for Strip Shopping Centers, author and security expert witness Karim H. Vellani discusses risks and solutions for strip shopping center security:
Conclusion
A crime analysis case study was recently completed by the author’s firm and is pending publication in the American Society for Industrial Security’s (A.S.I.S.) Security Business Practices Reference, Volume 6. The results of the case study indicated that a sizable return on investment was realized within a year of implementing a crime analysis program. The first year’s savings, or cost avoidance, was $9.2 million, or 41% of the security budget. This savings reflected a number of changes to the security program, but primarily constitutes the deployment of security personnel during higher risk times. There is another category of cost avoidance that cannot yet be measured. That category is generated by reducing crime and avoiding security litigation.The necessity to develop and maintain a well-balanced security program is elementary and essential to the protection of customers and other assets. Crucial to such a program are the balanced applications of crime analysis, security selection & implementation, and monitoring. In addition, potential liability can be avoided if management responds appropriately to the property’s crime experience. Premise security cases are much less supportable if management conducts crime analysis, anticipates certain activity, and implements reasonable crime countermeasures.
Like most other tasks that security managers must do, there are two solutions. The first is to hire, train and supervise a person or team of people to pull the data from each police department where we have a store. The other option is to out-source this task. Outsourcing appears to be the most common alternative as it reduces costs substantially and brings third-party objectivity to the project. Also, the expertise to conduct crime analysis is somewhat limited given the high demand for it today.