Tag: Security

Selwyn Township. Canada March 23 2018 A security firm will be hired to help address littering along the James A. Gifford Causeway in Selwyn Township.

On Wednesday, Peterborough County Council approved staff recommendations to tackle nuisance littering along the causeway, which spans Chemong Lake and links the communities of Bridgenorth and Ennismore.

The area is a hotspot for both local and visiting anglers. Concerns about littering were highlighted last August by area resident Brad Sinclair. Just two days after a thorough cleaning, Sinclair once again found litter scattered everywhere again.

We will have summer staff who will educate the users of where and where not to fish. We will increase and expand litter pick up throughout the season and will update signage along the causeway. Litter is an issue everywhere – we must all do our part!

Chris Bradley, the county’s Director of Public Works, says security will be occasionally hired during expected peak fishing times to ask anglers to move from the areas between the exterior guardrails.

“We are optimistic that the folks who come to the area to enjoy recreational activities will be able to do it in a bit of a safer environment than what we had before,” he said. “This should enable us to keep the area a little cleaner.”

Other recommendations include increasing the frequency of litter collection (three times a week from May to October); launching a new communication/awareness campaign and posting new and improved signage to direct anglers to areas that are safe and maintained by county staff.

The recommendations came as part of county staff consultations with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, Parks Canada and the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.

However, Bradley notes there will not be a no-trespassing bylaw for the causeway. In December, county staff met with lawyers, who highlighted the challenges of developing and enforcing a no-trespassing bylaw.

Lawyers indicated that municipal bylaw enforcement officers do not have the authority to compel people to identify themselves verbally or to provide identification. As a result, tickets can’t be issued to an unidentified person and a bylaw could not be enforced.

A staff report notes lawyers recommended that “no trespassing” signage can still be posted near the prohibited areas (exterior guardrails) and that a police officer can be contacted to charge an individual.

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Glenview IL March 21 2018 Glenbrook High Schools District 225 will expand security at Glenbrook North and Glenbrook South high schools beginning April 2.

In a 6-0 vote, the Board of Education approved Monday a proposal to hire unarmed, civilian security officers for after-school hours at both schools. Board member Marcelo Sztainberg was absent.

The proposal recommended hiring three security officers at both schools who would work from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, according to an administrative report.

On Saturdays, two security guards will work from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. and one guard will work from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. On Sundays and holidays, one security guard will work each shift, according to the report.

Over the summer, one security guard will work during the day and one guard will work evenings Monday through Sunday, according to the report.

The security guards will be hired through American Heritage Protective Services, Inc., the security company the district currently partners with to provide one security officer at each high school from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., said Brad Swanson, assistant superintendent of human resources. The guards who work the night shift will continue to do so under the new proposal, he said.

The cost to hire the additional guards through the end of the fiscal year is approximately $80,000, and the cost for the additional guards for an entire fiscal year is approximately $330,000, according to the report. Each guard will be paid $21.64 an hour, it said.

The administration decided to fill the gap in security after school when students are participating in athletics and other school programs, said Superintendent Michael Riggle.

“We do a lot in our schools,” Riggle said. “We want our schools to be used, but we also want them to be safe.”

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The Transportation Security Administration and Amtrak are testing new technology to detect concealed explosives, the TSA said Tuesday.

The equipment, known as “stand off explosive detection technology” can detect an explosive when an individual passes by the device, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said in a news release. An alarm would go off on the equipment operator’s laptop, triggered by an individual’s “naturally occurring emissions from the human body.”

The tests will be conducted at New York’s Pennsylvania Station in the Amtrak terminal.

Protecting so-called soft targets like railway stations has been a challenge for security officials, who are tasked with ensuring safety but need to balance that with ensuring the smooth movement of hundreds of thousands of travelers.

The TSA’s administrator, David Pekoske, said in November that airport-like security, in which passengers have to line up for personal and carry-on bag screening, was not necessary at rail stations.

“We don’t intend to roll out anything like what we have in the airports,” Pekoske said, adding that random passenger checks and police with canines among other measures are sufficient. “We are satisfied at his point.”

However, in December, a man was injured by a pipe bomb he had attached to his torso with Velcro in a blast that went off at a 42nd Street subway station in Manhattan.

The technology aims to help officials detect concealed suicide vests or other improvised explosives, the TSA said, which is better known for its passenger screening at U.S. airports.

“The use of these devices enables a rail or transit agency to help safeguard against terrorist threats in the mass transit environment,” the TSA said. “TSA is supplying two models of the equipment for the purposes of the pilot.”

The TSA last year started testing the equipment in the Los Angeles transit system.

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School district creates own police force

CENTER POINT TX March 12 2018 — He’s still getting used to being called “chief,” but it’s clear that Jimmy Poole is comfortable leading the newly created Center Point Independent School District Police Department.

“I like to talk to kiddos,” said Poole, 62, whose long law enforcement career includes two years as a school resource officer in Kerrville.

He also spent 25 years as a Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission officer and was a Kerr County deputy for five years, ending last November.

He encourages students to call him Officer Poole, saying: “I feel awkward with the title. I’ve never been a chief before.”

Despite Poole’s relaxed outward demeanor, he’s all too aware of the gravity surrounding his new job, especially in the wake of last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

“In law enforcement, you’re always defensive,” said Poole, whose time behind a badge began in 1977 as a Brazoria County deputy. “I am always in fear of my life and in fear of someone harming others.”

The Center Point rural district moved to establish its own police presence last year after the Kerr County sheriff’s deputy who’d been assigned here part time took a different job and no other deputy immediately wanted the position.

Local school trustees, who authorized district employees several years ago to bring guns on campus if they are kept locked in vehicles, considered arming teachers and/or having no security presence before spending just over $100,000 to establish the district’s Police Department.

“We had to buy everything, from a new Tahoe down to the reflective vest to wear while directing traffic,” Superintendent Cody Newcomb said.

Security problems are rare on the single campus that includes three schools serving 560 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade, but Newcomb noted that without Poole, it could take 20 minutes for help to arrive from Kerrville in an emergency.

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Richmond VA March 3 2018 The first heist happened in Colonial Heights, near Petersburg, according to court documents.

From there, the seven-person crew struck stores in North Chesterfield, Midlothian, Richmond and Mechanicsville before heading east toward Hampton Roads.

By the end of the day, they’d hit at least nine businesses.

Their target: pet supplies.

Joseph Heim Jr., 42, of Harrisburg, Pa., and Timothy B. Erb Jr., 24, of Wormleysburg, Pa., were indicted last week in connection with a shoplifting ring that targeted PetSmart locations across Virginia and North Carolina. They were arrested May 6, 2016, in Suffolk.

In all, the conspiracy netted at least $38,000 worth of pet supplies and possibly more than $100,000, according to court documents.

“This is very, very profitable,” said Robert Moraca, a vice president with the National Retail Federation. He referred to it as “organized retail crime,” and said it, along with shoplifting in general, is a growing problem. He said the industry now views it as more serious to their profits than internal theft, administrative errors and vendor fraud.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Randy Stoker declined to comment on the indictment, which charges the men with conspiracy and interstate transport of stolen property.

Federal court records do not list attorneys for Heim and Erb, who have been incarcerated for almost two years on state charges.

Heim entered into a plea agreement with state prosecutors and was sentenced last year to three years in state prison. Suffolk prosecutors on Wednesday dropped charges against Erb in light of the federal case.

According to the indictment, Heim and Erb were running a pet supply business that got its inventory by stealing from PetSmarts.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. March 2 2018 –  Still unable to use jamming technology to stop smuggled cellphones, South Carolina’s corrections officials are enlisting State Guardsmen to help them combat the devices they call the top security threat behind bars.

On Tuesday, Gov. Henry McMaster signed an executive order allowing South Carolina State Guardsmen to help patrol the perimeters of the state’s prisons, watching for people trying to smuggle in contraband including cellphones.

The program is starting at one of the state’s high-security prisons, with the goal of expanding to other facilities. Bryan Stirling, the state’s Corrections director, said the program will allow him to move his officers back inside the prison, keeping institutions safer.

The partnership is the latest anti-cellphone step taken by Stirling, who has long argued that being able to jam signals from the smuggled phones — used by inmates to plan crimes and acts of violence — would be the best way to keep his employees and the public safer. Each year, Stirling’s agency seizes thousands of cellphones, smuggled inside prison by visitors, errant employees, and even delivered by drone.

Wireless service providers have said that, while they support efforts to cut out inmates’ illegal calls, they worry signal-blocking technologies could thwart legal calls.

The Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the nation’s airwaves, has said it can’t permit jamming in state prisons, citing a decades-old law that prohibits interruption of the airwaves at state-level institutions. But the agency has been softening on the issue, thanks to persistent pleas from officials including Stirling and McMaster, as well as members of Congress including Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff.

Stirling recently met in Washington with his counterparts from other states, along with wireless industry and FCC officials, to discuss ways to potentially use technology like signal jamming to fight the phones.

While continuing to push for that ability, Stirling has implemented increased searches, scanners, and even used dogs specially trained to sniff out cellphones. Last month, he announced a partnership with Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, paying Lott’s deputies to patrol woods near a maximum-security prison in Columbia, arresting people for trying to smuggle in contraband.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Any trained school employee or citizen volunteer could join an armed security force in Alabama schools under a bill lawmakers are considering — one of several such measures being proposed in U.S. states after the Florida high school massacre.

Rep. Allen Farley, a Republican and former law enforcement officer, filed the bill on Thursday, and it has been referred to a committee for consideration. It replicates a local law in north Alabama’s Franklin County that was twice vetoed by the governor before becoming law in 2013. Rep. Johnny Mack Morrow, a Republican who sponsored the local law, said it was needed because rural schools couldn’t afford School Resource Officers (SROs) and the emergency response time could be 30 minutes.

“We wanted to give students out there in remote rural schools with no resource officer a fighting chance,” Morrow said at a news conference Tuesday.

It’s not clear whether the law is actually being implemented in that county, however. Morrow said he doesn’t know how many school employees or citizen volunteers are armed and the school district wouldn’t confirm numbers for security reasons.

Under the law, school principals can request a volunteer armed security force. They submit names of individuals who are vetted and trained by the sheriff’s department to become reserve deputy sheriffs.

Heath Grimes, superintendent of Russellville City Schools in Franklin County, said not all principals are familiar with the law and none in the city schools he oversees had requested a security force because they have school resource officers. He originally opposed the local law but now supports an individual school’s decision to arm a security force.

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Secaucus to arm security guards at town schools

Secaucus announced on Friday the town will assign police officers to patrol the district’s schools while it provides firearms training to the schools’ currently unarmed security guards.

The announcement came nine days after a school massacre in Parkland, Florida left 17 dead, and in the wake of security scares at schools in Nutley and Bayonne. The Florida killings led President Trump to suggest arming teachers to avoid future massacres.

Secaucus Mayor Michael Gonnelli told The Jersey Journal the town will pay between $500 and $900 a day for each officer assigned to patrol buildings. The 2,100-student district has four schools and a preschool.

The district’s 15 security guards are all retired police officers and will undergo psychological evaluations and other testing so they can possess firearms inside schools, Gonnelli said. He estimates the process will take about two or three weeks. While costly for the town, Gonnelli said town and school officials agreed having armed guards “had to happen.”

“In this day and age, we need to do something,” he said.

School officials did not return a request for comment. The town’s police department directed questions to the mayor’s office.

Secaucus’ school district reported seven instances of violence in the 2015-16 school year, up from four the year before, and zero incidents of weapons possession both years, according to a report submitted by the state Department of Education.

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Airport security screeners found nearly 4,000 guns in passengers’ carry-on bags last year, an average of nearly 11 guns a day.

The total marked a 16% increase from 2016, according the Transportation Security Administration’s Year in Review Report. The majority of those guns — 84% — were loaded at the time.

The amount of firearms discovered at airport checkpoints has consistently climbed in the last decade, the total more than quadrupling since 2007, according to the report.

Guns were discovered at 239 airports nationwide, with Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport taking the top spot for most firearms seized. A total of 245 guns were recovered at the Georgia airport, 222 of them loaded.

Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston round out the top three, with 211 and 142 guns seized at each location, respectively.

Federal law allows for passengers to transport unloaded guns in a locked, hard-sided container. It must be declared, and the gun cannot be packed in a carry-on.

In addition to firearms, the TSA in 2017 recovered “thousands upon thousands” of sharp items in carry-on bags as well as other hazardous items — including live grenades and large quantities of gun powder.

While properly packed ammunition is allowed in checked bags, gun powder is prohibited altogether.

Officers also recovered scores of “inert items,” including a replica suicide vest, a realistic looking land mine and dozens of fake grenades and explosive devices.

“When being viewed on the X-ray monitor, we don’t know if these are real or inert until TSA explosive experts are called to the scene,” the TSA said in a release. “Inert grenades can lead to closed terminals and checkpoints, which can often result in costly canceled or delayed flights.”

TSA agents urged travelers to double-check their belongings as many commuters claim they’ve only brought along the prohibited items by mistake.

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Super Bowl Security

On the wintry streets of downtown Minneapolis, ice crunches underfoot. The wind is whipping, and the temperature hovers in the teens. The weather will be one of the many topics under discussion inside the city’s convention center, where officials from every local, state, and federal organization involved with security at this year’s Super Bowl have gathered to put their planning and preparation to the test.

With the big game just around the corner, participants at this recent daylong exercise—the first time everyone has come together under one roof—will be asked to simulate their agency’s responses to a variety of scenarios, from an active shooter event to reuniting a missing child with a parent to keeping fans and first responders warm in the frigid Minnesota winter.

Nearly two years of planning has taken place, largely behind the scenes, to make sure that Super Bowl LII—and the 10 days of events leading up to the kickoff at U.S. Bank Stadium on February 4—is safe and secure. Nothing has been left to chance, not even the weather.

“An event like this is about planning, about preparation, and about partnerships,” said Rick Thornton, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Minneapolis Division. “Each organization brings its unique abilities to the table, but it requires tremendous teamwork and cooperation to pull everything together into a unified whole.”

The Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) is the lead agency for security at this year’s Super Bowl, and they are being supported by an impressive team that includes dozens of local police departments and public safety organizations, along with federal agencies including the FBI and multiple components of the Department of Homeland Security.

“I think we have done our best to think of just about every contingency, natural or manmade,” said MPD’s Scott Gerlicher, overall public safety coordinator for Super Bowl LII. “The Super Bowl is just a massive operation, and very complicated,” he explained, “especially in our area.”

Few northern cities play host to the Super Bowl, and dealing with the likely extreme February cold is a necessity for police officers and first responders who will have to brave the elements out of doors (warming huts will be located near the venues). Fans attending the game will be pre-screened at indoor locations, such as the Mall of America, so they won’t have to wait outside the stadium. Securing the stadium itself is challenging because, unlike in many cities, U.S. Bank Stadium is located in the heart of downtown Minneapolis, making the establishment of a secure perimeter difficult.

Today’s exercise, a security dry run, of sorts, is a simulated opportunity for the entire team to come together to work through these and other issues as if it is game day.

“We make sure everybody understands what their roles and responsibilities are,” Gerlicher said, “and talk through some scenarios to make sure that between now and when we go live with our full, 10-day operational period in late January, we can identify any gaps and deal with them.”

Gerlicher’s counterpart at the FBI is Joe Rivers, an assistant special agent in charge in the Minneapolis Division who for the past two years has led a dedicated team of agents and professional staff to make sure the Bureau’s piece of the Super Bowl security puzzle is complete—and fits seamlessly into MPD’s overall plan.

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