Professional Security Management

A Strategic Guide

Charles Swanson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000080582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Finanzielles Risikomanagement

Historically, security managers have tended to be sourced from either the armed forces or law enforcement. But the increasing complexity of the organisations employing them, along with the technologies employed by them, is forcing an evolution and expansion of the role, and security managers must meet this challenge in order to succeed in their field and protect the assets of their employers. Risk management, crisis management, continuity management, strategic business operations, data security, IT, and business communications all fall under the purview of the security manager.

This book is a guide to meeting those challenges, providing the security manager with the essential skill set and knowledge base to meet the challenges faced in contemporary, international, or tech-oriented businesses. It covers the basics of strategy, risk, and technology from the perspective of the security manager, focussing only on the 'need to know'. The reader will benefit from an understanding of how risk management aligns its functional aims with the strategic goals and operations of the organisation.

This essential book supports professional vocational accreditation and qualifications, such as the Chartered Security Professional (CSyP) or Certified Protection Professional (CPP), and advises on pathways to higher education qualifications in the fields of security and risk management. It is ideal for any risk manager looking to further their training and development, as well as being complementary for risk and security management programs with a focus on practice.

1 Private security and the development of the security manager

Pause for thought

Take a couple of minutes to give some thought to the term ‘private security’. What do you believe it means?

Abrahamsen and Williams (2011) ask:

When you think of private security and international politics, what is the first image that springs to mind? The answers have been remarkably uniform, usually revolving around burly men in combat fatigues, wrap-around sunglasses and automatic weapons.

Notwithstanding this perception, for us to have a sound understanding of the evolution of the private security sector and the development of the security manager, we must first establish the origins of both entities.

Academics, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of policing and security generally agree that there is and has been for some time a symbiotic relationship between public policing and the private security industry, certainly in the United States and the United Kingdom. The first recognised law enforcement agencies consisted of what we now refer to as privately paid security officers. This is almost a ‘chicken and egg’ situation: what came first, the police officer/law enforcer or the security officer?

I intend to bite the bullet, take the bull by the horns, or whatever other metaphor I can use, by first of all studying the origins of private policing in the United Kingdom and the United States. I will then examine the perceived metamorphosis from public policing to private security before moving on to describe the evolution of the security manager.

Further, I will be arguing throughout the book that the security manager involved in business today has a lot of catching up to do, in terms of strategic business awareness, before they will be accepted by their organisation’s peers as professionals.

Whilst writing this book, I delivered a number of level four and five security management training courses in the United Kingdom. Included in the curriculum of all courses was a session devoted to the cost-benefit analysis (CBA), with an emphasis on return on investment (ROI), and whilst I appreciate the fact that this is an anecdotal snapshot, a huge percentage of those UK security managers participating in the training courses had little or no knowledge of either of the two very basic business concepts (CBA and ROI).

Policing and law enforcement

The United Kingdom

There is no intention for this chapter to capture the global history of policing, because although a number of other countries established policing systems in various formats, it is generally agreed that the evolution and development of police provision in the UK from about 1829, when the Metropolitan Police Service was commissioned, was influential in the progression of policing across the US. This is of particular importance as the focus for police evolution throughout this book, and ultimately the development of private security and the rise of the professional security manager will be focussed within the UK and the US.

The first part of this chapter will focus on how British police forces emerged, particularly the Metropolitan Police Service. Once again, for the purpose of this book, the focus will be on the police services of England and Wales, because Northern Ireland and Scotland formed individual police services with circumstances unique to those parts of the United Kingdom.

There are currently 43 police constabularies in England and Wales, with 42 of the 43 forces headed by a chief constable, the exception being the Metropolitan Police which is led by a commissioner of police. According to a House of Commons Briefing Paper (2018) in England and Wales on 31 March 2018, there were 125,651 police officers in England and Wales. This is around the same number as at September 2017. The two largest constabularies today are the Metropolitan Police service (31,088 police officers) and the West Midlands Police (6,581 police officers).

The British police officer, or ‘bobby’, has always been viewed as different, perhaps a special breed of law enforcement officer, when compared to police officers serving in other countries, significantly in terms of accessibility and defence. As far as recruitment and accessibility are concerned, there are four methods of entry:

1. 1 There is the standard entry route, in which an applicant will attend a number of assessment days, and if found suitable will serve a probationary period of two years.
2. 2 The applicant may be allowed to join the force if he or she holds the professional degree in policing, which will have been achieved before the application stage, then entering the service as a two-year probationer.
3. 3 There is the degree holder entry route, which means that the applicant will be in possession of a bachelor’s degree and will be required to serve a two-year probation period.
4. 4 Finally, there is the three-year degree apprenticeship, which means that the probationer will study for his or her degree whilst serving the initial stage of their service.

No British police officer, as a matter of course, other than specialist armed units, carries a weapon during his or her tour of duty.

During a duty shift, a British police officer will be armed with some form of baton, pepper spray and handcuffs, with the option of being trained to use a taser gun (which electrically disables the criminal for a short period) but will not carry a firearm. Interestingly, only law enforcement officers in countries such as the Republic of Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, and Norway equally do not routinely carry firearms on their person.

The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS)

Policing in London is dynamic, with two powerful (if varying in size) police forces: The Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police. Presently they operate with entirely separate and individual strategic aims and objectives.

The Metropolitan Police Service was founded in 1829 by Robert Peel under the Metropolitan Police Act 1829, and on 29 September of that year the first constables of the service appeared on the streets of London. In 1839 the Marine Police Force, which had been formed in 1798, was amalgamated into the Metropolitan Police. In 1837, it also incorporated with the Bow Street Horse Patrol that had been organised in 1805.

In 1999, the organisation was described as “institutionally racist” in the Macpherson Report. Just under 20 years later, police leaders said that this was no longer the case, but that the service would be “disproportionately white” for at least another 100 years.¹

The Metropolitan Police were directly answerable to the home secretary until the year 2000, when the Metropolitan Police Authority was created (MPA). The Metropolitan Police also had responsibility for the policing of the Royal Dockyards and other military establishments–Portsmouth, Chatham, Devonport, Pembroke, and Woolwich from 1860 until 1934, and Rosyth in Scotland from 1914 until 1926.

It is often argued that because of its ancestry and sheer size, the Metropolitan Police Service has been hugely influential in the development of policing in the United Kingdom, and has also spread that influence abroad, particularly in relation to the evolution of policing in the United States.

The US

The United States inherited England’s Anglo-Saxon common law and its system of social obligation, sheriffs, constables, watchmen, and stipendiary justice. As both societies became less rural and agrarian and more urban and industrialised, crime, riots, and other public disturbances became more common. Yet Americans, like the English, were wary of creating standing police forces. Among the first public police forces established in colonial North America were the watchmen, organised in Boston in 1631 and in New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1647. Although watchmen were paid a fee in both Boston and New York, most officers in colonial America did not receive a salary but were paid by private citizens, as were their English counterparts.

The first police department in the United States was established in New York City in 1844 (it was officially organised in 1845). Other cities soon followed suit: New Orleans and Cincinnati (Ohio) in 1852; Boston and Philadelphia in 1854; Chicago and Milwaukee (Wisconsin) in 1855; and Baltimore (Maryland) and Newark (New Jersey) in 1857. Those early departments all used the London Metropolitan Police as a model. Like the Metropolitan Police, American police were organised in a quasi-military command structure. Their main task was the prevention of crime and disorder, and they provided a wide array of other public services.

Picking up this theme, Spitzer (1979) argues that the development of policing in the United States closely followed the development of policing in England. In the early colonies policing took two forms. It was both informal and communal, which is referred to as the ‘Watch’, or private-for-profit policing, which is called the ‘Big Stick’.

In the United States today there are approximately half a million police officers, and like the UK there is no national police force; rather there are state troopers and local sheriffs.

There are essentially three types of law enforcement agencies in the US: local, state, and federal. Local law enforcement agencies include police and sheriff departments. State agencies include the state or highway patrol. Federal agencies include the FBI and the US Secret Service.

Of course, whilst policing has always been the subject of academic review, for this book it is the foundation for the analysis of the private security sector, intrinsically because both entities have altered their approach and strategic evaluation of policing and security. However, before we move on to look at the development of the private security sector, it is important to examine a particular time when, certainly in the UK and more than likely in other developed countries, when police levels were markedly reduced, with politicians arguing that because crime has changed from the opportunist burglar to the cybercriminal, this reduction was irrelevant.

The UK police post-2008/09

There are constant arguments about why the private security sector has emerged as a contender for the capture of many policing roles believed to be the domain of public law enforcement agencies. Perhaps of relevance is the fact that there are now approximately 232,000 private security officers in comparison to just over 125,000 police officers (reduced from approximately 143,000 police officers in 2010) in the UK, and there are 1.1 million security officers in the US, where 500,000 government law enforcement officers are employed. The Indian government employs 1.4 million police officers, whilst there are 7 million private security officers in existence. This is a trend throughout most industrial countries in the world.

But in terms of the United Kingdom, has this reduction in police numbers impacted crime figures?

The next great recession

Having shrunk by more than 6% between the first quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009, the UK economy took five years to get back to the size it was before the recession.

As the economy got smaller, lots of people lost their jobs and employers stopped hiring. By the end of 2011, almost 2.7 million people were looking for work. The quarterly unemployment rate reached 8.4%, the highest rate since 1995.² This of course meant that public services throughout the UK were going to be decimated, and police constabularies in England and Wales were to be unprotected from this perfect financial storm.

How did the recession in the UK impact police numbers, and did the subsequent reduction in police cover have any impact on UK crime figures? Let us take a look at that.

Total police officer strengths in England and Wales increased year-on-year between 2003, when there were 132,000 officers, and 2010, when there were just over 143,000. Since 2010, the number of police officers has fallen each year. On 31 March 2018 there were just 125,651 police officers operating within England and Wales. This was a reduction of 10,000 police officers compared to 2003, and a decrease of just over 17,500 police officers from 2010.

The dark figure of crime

Crime statistics, as announced by the Home Office, on an annual basis consist of offences, designated as crimes, that have been reported to and recorded by the police. There are occasions when a crime may be reported to the police, but it is not rec...