International Securities Association, USAcon't....
ICPC- Thank you for your time today in answering some of our questions on public-private partnerships in crime prevention. Can you begin by telling us a little bit about the Security Industry Association?
R.C.- The Security Industry Association (SIA) is a 35+ year old trade organization made up of over 600 members representing manufacturers, distributors, system integrators, and service providers. We work to develop and provide information on the ways to responsibly use, and apply security technologies; it is one of our primary objectives. It was not always this way, but in the last 10 years this is what our association has evolved into. Security is such a subjective area. It means something so different to so many people. For instance, what might be a dog or a fence to you and me, might be a very high-tech access control system to somebody else.
In specifying and assessing requirements for security technology, education is critically important. We train individuals on resource requirements, technical capabilities and on some of the potential pitfalls of security technologies application. We are also an ANSI accredited standard setting organization, and as such we develop standards on system interoperability and environmental performance testing.
Industry advocacy complements our focus on education/training. This includes activities which are designed to take those lessons learned from standards and training, and put them into policy and practice. We concentrate on ways to educate policymakers and legislators on how to talk about and legislate security-related issues.
Our work in public relations is targeted at reaching out to vertical markets- How do we market and communicate across different vertical sectors? Because again, as I mentioned earlier, security is a subjective area, so we try to understand what each vertical sector –such as hospitals, schools, healthcare, prisons, etc.—may need in terms of security–related resources and programming. Part of this outreach can be found in quarterly research and technical bulletins that identify the trends and data driving and affecting the security industry.
ICPC- Can you provide some examples of the types of organizations or associations that SIA works with?
R.C- We work very closely with the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). In January this year, we worked with them on the National Policy Summit on Building Private Security and Public Policing Partnerships. Groups such as ASIS International, National Association of Security Companies, COPS, and the International Securities Managers Association were all participants in this event. The purpose of the summit was to develop a national strategy to increase and improve partnerships between private-sector security and public-sector enforcement.
The summit provided an opportunity to sit down and understand what the issues were as far as public-private partnership development. We talked about leadership, homeland security, how to institutionalize the partnership formula and how communities can work together. The report following this summit is currently being vetted by the US Department of Justice. Getting a copy of that report in the near future should not be that difficult through the IACP and the other supporting summit organizations.
We also work with organizations such as the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC), Washington, D.C., where we are involved in a school oriented safety and security program ‘Be Safe and Sound’. This involves educating schools on the best ways to secure their facilities and help protect school children and school personnel across the country.
We have also collaborated with the Congress of National Black Churches (CNBC) and Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) in a program called SAINTS (Safety, Awareness and Independence Now Through Security). The SAINTS program initially worked closely with the CNBC to help churches or houses of worship that were affected by arson. At the time, churches were being burned down by hate crimes across the country. We helped to provide donated burglar and fire alarm equipment, and to enlist our partner organizations to donate installation security services or low cost monitoring. We worked on this for several years and were able to get several churches outfitted. Unfortunately, the problem was that we weren’t able to get as many as we wanted and we ran out of dealers that were willing to donate the monitoring. This program matured into our collaboration with Habitat for Humanity and we had a strong push there as well, but again for a limited time.
ICPC- For those unfamiliar with the use of CCTV in public safety, could you briefly describe this technology, and how it contributes to safety?
R.C.- Sure, that is an area dear to my heart. I spent a lot of time several years ago putting together annual reports on the use of CCTV, specifically on their advocacy in public- private partnerships (more information). CCTV refers to Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) systems. Many of the CCTV systems we recommend are open system architecture ones for public-private partnerships and public sector use and as such would be better defined as OCTV or Open Circuit Television. This is mainly because if OCTV is going to be used in a positive and productive scheme, it needs to be open to review- and criticism if that be the case. But this also refers to the policies written around their use which must also be very transparent and open.
CCTV is widely employed by the law enforcement community not only in their vehicles to record police stops, stop speeding, and aggressive driving, but by municipalities seeking to monitor traffic and prevent red light running. They are also used for large scale events so that law enforcement can have visual access to multiple venues; the systems then act as a force-multiplier so law enforcement can maximize their resources.
CCTV has been extremely successful in these applications and I think the primary reason is that in every instance no matter what the application, the governing body has understood that policies and procedures will derive these technologies. “Policy Drives Technology,” that’s our mantra and we stick by it whenever we are discussing any application of security technology.
We have been able to provide support to policy development at the local, state, and federal level for many years. We partnered with IACP several years ago, when we hosted a summit on the responsible use of CCTV, and we developed a consensus guideline (available here) on how to successfully implement CCTV in public safety programs, which was distributed across the country and is available for public consumption.
ICPC- Given some of the recent media reports and research on privacy issues surrounding the use and expansion of CCTV, what do you think are some of the privacy concerns expressed?
R.C.- Well they are very good concerns. One of the main concerns centers around image collection. What are you doing with that information or that data and who has access to it? Are you using technology that is so high powered that you can read what time it is on my watch from the top of a skyscraper? And if so, why? To me that is a very fair question, and again the way that is counterbalanced is by how the policy defines the use of that technology. If you put a camera on a roof and you allow someone to have 360 visibility in an urban setting, then you provide a context in which that situation can be abused. For example, someone can re-position the camera and start looking at people changing their clothes in an apartment building. If you physically limit the field of view of that system, have a strict policy on how that system is used, provide for proper screening and training of camera operators, you then begin to limit the ability to abuse that system. So in other words, if this technology is transparent and open to public review on a regular basis, then you lower the chance for it to be abused and raise the bar for accountability.
The primary focus of many advocacy groups, and rightly so, is what happens to the information and data? How do you ensure that those using the technology aren’t using it in an anti-democratic way? Since digital imaging is so prevalent now, and since it is easier to gather data electronically, how do you control that? In the law enforcement realm there are laws that govern the collection of evidence and surveillance, but in the public-private sector, the line is sometimes blurred and strict adherence to Title 18 of the U.S. Code is not always found.
ICPC- Many others working in crime prevention have argued that while municipalities across international borders have been quick to embrace the use of CCTV as a means to address some of the problems associated with crime, it cannot be said that the movement towards integrating crime prevention within the organizational culture of the municipality has happened at the same pace. Can you comment on this?
R.C.-Well, I think that is a good question. I think it is also a fair statement. Technology is usually ahead of practical application. Technology solutions often tend to be in advance of people’s ability to grasp the fruitful value of what the true benefits of the technology are because often times, the problems in which technology can most effectively be used to solve, haven’t been identified yet.
The history of CCTV is a good example of this. Today we see more of a focus on public-private partnership because it is understood that the resources of the public sector are finite-they are subject to cuts and economic factors can reduce and limit the efficacy of the public sector. Secondly, the private sector is already making practical application of technology and is quick to embrace technology when it comes out. When you have a good relationship between the public and private sector- both can benefit from the strengths of the other. The public sector usually has a measured approach to solve a problem on a long-term scale, and the private sector has the ability to be much more nimble with greater access to economic resources.
ICPC-What are some of the ways to build public-private partnerships within an integrated community safety plan?
R.C.-In every case, the best philosophy is to take a crawl, walk and run approach. If you start off sprinting out the gate when you’re not a sprinter and don’t know how to do it, you could pull a muscle or hurt yourself. If you take the approach where you build upon success- no matter how small that success might be- it is still a positive. You want to keep to the positives.
In terms of collaboration, it’s a very good idea to sit down and strategize. The first step is to start talking. “Let’s see, you have a whole series of perceptions of who I am, and I have a series of perceptions of who you are.” Providing your take on what some of the problems are in that context, you begin to identify where the common ground is, and where you might be able to obtain the most positive results from a joint partnership. Keep it digestible and small to begin with. People have full-time jobs on either side of this coin, and you have to be able to take a balanced approach. Everything succeeds in balance and you just have to have the patience and maturity to see it through.
There are many success stories; CCTV is just one. CCTV is being used in such a wide variety of applications across the country by public-private sector partnerships, as well as in the public sector and private sector alone. However, I have to say it is not just CCTV. Downtown business partnerships are a perfect example of this. These partnerships are about the ways we can develop a working relationship with law enforcement and local authorities to help maximize their resources for them to turn around and help secure others. There are so many great examples across the country of downtown business partnerships in cities such as Washington, DC, Tampa, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York. I think in a time of budget cuts and shortfalls you will find more local authorities turning to the private sector, asking for assistance, and getting it.
Mr. Chace was interviewed in July 2004 by Laura Capobianco, Research Analyst at ICPC. | 
