Managing vandalism - Part I

This recent article about events near my home revisits just how hard it can be to prevent and manage vandalism. Although the article gives no details of the attack, we really don't need to know those to discuss the difficulties with managing the potential, or continuing, threat of vandalism at any House of Worship. To better cover this topic we'll look at if from a couple of different perspectives including environmental knowledge, specific preventive and mitigative efforts, and finally the response.

We'll start a little out of order with preventing and mitigating these attacks...

Designing a plan to manage vandalism revolves around a couple of key points that rely on specific behavioral assumptions. First there must be some degree of privacy for the attackers to feel comfortable; that is comfortable that they will not be discovered, observed or caught. If they attackers do not fear discovery or capture then the entire dynamic of the management efforts must be altered. Second, there is an assumption that someone will see the fruit of the vandal's efforts. This is the psychological part of the attack. The physical damage to the facility may be annoying and expensive, but it is the specific nature of any messages left behind that causes the greatest impact.

With this in mind the greatest way to avoid much the impact is to prevent the successful completion of the attack. There may even be ways to thwart the manifestation of the threat, but we'll discuss that later in the environmental knowledge piece. Preventing a vandalism requires an effort to increase the likelihood, as well as the perception, that a vandal will be discovered and caught. This may be done a number of different ways given an ideal location with ideal conditions and we all know that each location has its own quirks and needs. As such, discovery and apprehension requires successful surveillance efforts that may be either natural or electronic. That means changing traffic patterns to ensure there is a steady flow of people that can observe activity in a specific place. I know this sounds a little silly when dealing with late night crime - even the most well illuminated locations could still be attacked simply because no one is there to see the attack. Furthermore there is an underlying assumption that those providing the natural surveillance will act on their observations - in other words that they'll care about what they are seeing. These shortcomings can be countered using electronic surveillance technologies, particularly at night or during low traffic times, and these have really come a long way in the last decade with some that are ideally suited for dealing with vandalism.

Let me preface this bit by saying that I generally discourage the purchase of equipment as a "point solution" because the cost can become onerous for any one issue, but in this case the solution has many applications besides crime loss management. Remote video monitoring. It used to be that you installed an alarm system and when it activated the police were dispatched by a central alarm monitoring station - time passed the the attack was completed - making this not much of a preventive tool. Now consider this current technology solution. The attacker approaches a "restricted" area, that may be defined as the area immediately surrounding the building, which causes a camera to become active a central monitoring station. The watch officer at the station seeing the attackers and activates a two-way intercom and reads a script that has been coordinated with the property owners. It may be something like:

"Attention! You are trespassing on private land. Your activity is being recorded and observed by live personnel. The police have been notified and are responding. Please depart immediately."

It has an amazing effect and has been used successfully at locations around the country in a variety of applications. The benefits are immense because an organization reduces the likelihood of a false alarm, which are getting expensive, and also receives the immediate interaction with the attacker. Not to mention that these systems may be tied into pretty much any alarm sensor like fire, flood, or medical assistance. Now I must admit I'm a little partial to this technology because I wrote a short paper on it while finishing my degree and it was still considered an "emerging" technology, but with that said it has real applications for this scenario. Imagine the vandal, or vandals since there is a degree of vanity and group think involved, being confronted as they prepare to committ mayhem. They just be stopped; at least stopped long enough to think about what they are about to do and the potential consequences. Besides the monetary benefit of preventing any damage, there is a real spiritual value to guiding someone away from wrongdoing rather than simply punishing them, right? Changing a thought rather than forgiving an act.

Ok, so we have natural surveillance and electronic surveillance and each can be reached differenct ways - far too numerous to cover here effectively. However, we neglected the value and method of increasing natural surveillance earlier. Natural surveillance often has the primary benefit lower cost. Let's face it, people moving around normally is, well, free. It does unfortunately breakdown when traffic is reduced. So how then can traffic be increased? Maybe by using the facility as much as possible for community events, although let me caution briefly that this creates other potential loss opportunities; or possibly security patrols can be added. This could be from a formal security service or by dedicated congregation members that will take time to check on the facility. It may also be possible to use the camera systems mentioned above on a private website with access available to congregation members. Possibly a "patrol" schedule could be created with specific members agreeing to keep an eye it. Like I said, once we get creative there just isn't enough room here for the options.

There is, at least, one other bit of technology to assit in preventing vandalism and that's vandalism resistant paint. This tool works to prevent other paints from bonding to the material permenantly. One word of caution is that the cost for materials could be as much 10x that of ordinary paint.

Here's a short article in Religious Product News on technology trends in security.