The Need to Understand Local Crime Conditions

 

To properly manage security risks at your facility, you need to know what they are. Yet it is amazing just how many managers responsible for security are totally ignorant of the types of crimes occurring in their community or even within their own facilities.

 

Property owners who are sued by an employee, tenant or guest for "negligent security" often find out too late just how important having knowledge of local crime conditions is. Often the first thing the plaintiff's attorney does is to obtain local crime data for the site where the alleged incident occurred in order to determine if the crime was "foreseeable", and if so, was "reasonable care" taken on the part of the property owner to prevent the crime from occurring.

 

It looks very bad to the jury when the property owner's representative on the witness stand is asked: "How many crimes of a similar type were committed in your neighborhood over the last  three years?" or "What did you do to determine the degree of potential crime at your property?" and the witness cannot properly answer. If you don't know the type and degree of crime at your site, how could you have possibly designed an effective security program to prevent it?

 

Aside from legal liability considerations, there are many practical reasons for accurately knowing local crime conditions. Most security budgets are tight and it makes sense to direct the money being spent to areas where it matters most. For example, if the threat of armed robbery is high at your site, money should probably be spent on preventing robberies before making security investments elsewhere.

 

Determining the Risks of Local Crime

 

There are many sources of data that can help the property owner to determine the risks of local crime. Most of these data sources are publicly available at little or no charge; a few require the payment of a fee. Because no source of data is perfect, it is generally necessary to gather information from multiple sources in order to gather a complete picture of the crime risks at your location.

 

There are six primary sources of local crime data: internal incident reports, crime data provided by neighboring facilities, police crime statistic reports, police calls-for-service reports, commercial crime forecast reports, and custom crime analyses prepared by security consultants.

 

Internal Incident Reports

 

Many organizations have an internal security incident reporting system that gathers data about crimes and other security incidents occurring at their facilities. Employees report crimes and security incidents to a central source such as the security department, and this data is compiled on a periodic basis to produce reports that summarize the rate of reported crime at the facility. If well managed, an internal incident reporting system can produce a highly accurate picture of the rate of crime at any given facility.

 

If your organization does not have a good security incident reporting system in place, it should establish one immediately. (See related article: Security Incident Reporting System )

 

Crime Data Provided by Neighboring Facilities

 

The type and frequency of crimes occurring at neighboring facilities are very significant when attempting to determine the risk of crime at your facility. While some of this type of information may be obtainable through public sources such as police reports, it is best to get it directly from your neighbors when possible. This can be a delicate situation, as people often don't want to share information about security problems with outsiders. These objections can usually be overcome when a mutually beneficial relationship with the neighbor has been established in advance.

 

We recommend that people who are responsible for security reach out to their counterparts at neighboring facilities. For example, if you operate a factory in an industrial park, you should contact the security and/or facility managers at each major business within a one-mile area surrounding your facility. Introduce yourself and explain that you want to establish an informal network for sharing information about security problems occurring within the neighborhood. Some businesses actually form a "crime watch" group and have regular meetings; others just get together for coffee occasionally to discuss areas of mutual concern.

 

Once your information sharing "network" has been established, you should proactively reach out to neighbors to get periodic updates on what types of security problems that they have been experiencing. You should consider this information to be an important indicator of the types of crimes that could occur at your facility, and make corresponding adjustments to your security program as needed.

 

Police Crime Statistics Reports

 

Police departments and other local law enforcement agencies maintain some type of crime reporting system and typically provide crime statistics reports on at least an annual basis. Although agencies are encouraged to use the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) established by the FBI, participation is voluntary. As a result, there is vast inconsistency in the type and quality of police crime statistics available as you go from city to city throughout the United States.

 

In general, each city or county will be divided up into multiple geographical areas, which may be called "zones", "sectors", or "precincts". Each of these areas may be further sub-divided into "beats" or "districts". These areas sometimes correspond with US Census Bureau Census Tracts.

 

Crimes are usually categorized by type and whether they are "violent" or "non-violent". Some police agencies provide detailed breakdowns of each type of crime, others summarize crimes in a more general way.

 

Periodically, the police agency may produce an updated Crime Statistics Report. This is usually done at least annually, but some better agencies also produce reports on a quarterly or even monthly basis. An example of a typical Crime Statistics Report is shown below.