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Retail Security<br />
Pictured this page from top: Left, the walkway to the<br />
station. Below: A blue-waistcoated Lakeside mall patroller<br />
with policeman; a ‘See It Say It Sorted’ transport police<br />
poster at the nearby station; the police dog with a young<br />
admirer; and CCTV signage on the way to the car parks<br />
their shopping experience.” Lakeside<br />
and indeed Stansted have their retail<br />
and airport particularities, and Essex<br />
Police are leading on each and other<br />
forces are taking a look with a view<br />
to bringing in the Servator method in<br />
their areas; and Essex are working on<br />
bringing Servator to at least one other<br />
similarly high-profile place in the<br />
county. Intu security officers are being<br />
trained in Servator so that when police<br />
deploy, those officers know what the<br />
police are doing.<br />
Enthused<br />
A striking phrase of Insp Adams’ was<br />
‘business as usual’. To leave him for<br />
a minute, that is different from an<br />
operation in response to some spike<br />
in crime, or in the case of terrorism<br />
the brief raising of the threat level in<br />
the summer to ‘critical’. Yes, Servator<br />
did deploy at Lakeside during<br />
‘critical’, when police were working<br />
12 hour shifts and were stretched.<br />
But with any op the nagging doubt<br />
is; what happens when those police<br />
go to their next op? Does the crime<br />
- town centre disorder, or shop theft<br />
or whatever - merely drift back,<br />
until everything is as before (and<br />
prompts another operation)? Servator<br />
deployments are planned as much as<br />
18 months in advance. On a personal<br />
note, like others at places Professional<br />
Security has visited since 2013 that<br />
have taken up Servator – the City<br />
of London, Glasgow for the 2014<br />
Commonwealth Games, mainline<br />
(mainly London) railway stations,<br />
and earlier this year Sellafield nuclear<br />
plant in Cumbria – the police are<br />
plainly enthused about Servator,<br />
for its considered use of ‘assets’,<br />
including signage, its attention to<br />
detail and involving of others for<br />
the common good. That’s other<br />
police forces, and private security.<br />
For instance, Richard Spencer, the<br />
intu Lakeside security manager; and<br />
British Transport Police, because a<br />
railway station, Chafford Hundred,<br />
serves Lakeside with trains to east<br />
London and Southend. The ‘sorted’<br />
posters in BTP blue were on the single<br />
platform.<br />
Other crimes<br />
Servator is not only about countering<br />
terrorism. Not long before, police,<br />
security and CCTV worked together<br />
to find what police called ‘a high<br />
risk missing person’. On the<br />
Sunday deployment as at others that<br />
Professional Security has witnessed,<br />
other crimes cropped up. For example<br />
the use of Lakeside’s CCTV with<br />
automatic number plate recognition<br />
(ANPR) threw up someone driving<br />
without insurance, and someone with<br />
a cannabis joint. Insp Adams summed<br />
up Servator: “It’s a gig for everyone.”<br />
Even, he might have added, though<br />
they aren’t meant to enjoy it, the<br />
criminals. p<br />
What they say (2)<br />
Andy Downes, Royal<br />
Mail Delivery Director<br />
for Essex: “Royal Mail<br />
postmen and women<br />
collect and deliver mail<br />
six days a weeks and<br />
have almost unrivalled<br />
knowledge of the<br />
communities they serve.<br />
We are proud to work<br />
with Essex Police on<br />
Project Servator and look<br />
forward to continuing to<br />
play our part in creating a<br />
safer community.”<br />
SEPTEMBER 2017 PROFESSIONAL SECURITY 43
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