 Introduce to you our host Susan Berger on behalf of the FAAIC. Go ahead Susan. Hi everyone. Happy New Year. Nice to see so many people here today. I just want to run through a few things. If you're not on the C2CC and Nouncilist, which only does two or three messages a month at the most, you can join it by going to this website. And we'd be happy to have you. That's the best way to keep informed about us. We're also on Facebook and we're also on Twitter. And if you have questions and you want an answer from a person, if you go to the discussion forum, there is a whole army of conservators who answer questions. So if you need assistance, by all means, you can find it there. And you can join the forum. You have to do that in order to post something. And when you do that, you can go to email options and then you could decide when you would like to receive stuff and then hit save settings. And we have closed captions on most of our webinars. We do them when we have five or six and we add them afterwards because we get much better captions that way. So if you see a closed caption symbol or if you see this link, it will take you to the ARC YouTube channel and you can turn on closed captions there. So if you need them, that's where they are. You can always contact me. This is my email address. And since we've had the mudslides in California and fires and other things, if you need disaster assistance, you can contact the National Heritage Responders. They have a 24-hour hotline and they're happy to help. And this is what we have coming up. We have managing resources for collection storage projects. Next month as well as ivory, one on medical specimens, the care of them and wet natural history specimens, one on caring for industrial objects, one on contracting or emergency response. So that's getting contracts ready in the event of an emergency. One on caring for globes and one on evaluating your emergency plan after an emergency to improve it. So that's what we have coming up for the beginning part of the year. And now I want to introduce Steve Lane, who's our speaker today. He's the president and CEO of Lane Consultants International and the founding director of the International Foundation for Cultural Property Protection. Steve's a former police officer, a criminal investigator. He was a museum security director and a public safety director. He's the author of Safeguarding Cultural Properties, which is one of the items mentioned in the handout. And he's directly responsible for the development of national certification programs in the field of museum and cultural institution security. And he's worked with over 500 institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad in formulating protection plans. So this is for best practices for protecting people, assets, and valuable collections. And I highly recommend their programs that they have in many, many offices or many, many meetings. They're very good and very helpful. So here's Steve. Well, thank you, Susan, and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. The introduction was almost as long as the program. I apologize for that. As the title suggests, we're talking about basic strategies in protecting your institutions. And in these strategies, they apply pretty much across the board. The biggest difference is the larger institutions that have larger funds and larger staffs have the capability of providing some of the things that you may or may not need in putting together a protection program. But the truth is that we all have the same resources or at least access to the same resources. It all depends on how they're applied. And I like to look in formulating any protection program. You have to make the determination of what are we protecting against. You have to determine whether you're in a high crime area, whether you're in an area that's more subject to natural disasters, or what have you. And the most likely threat, the largest threat to cultural institutions, at least in the U.S., is from fire. We have fires occur more often than any other threat. And when fires take place, you're done. If your place burns, if artifacts burn, they're gone. So we'd like to emphasize, even though we're going to talk about a number of other factors, we'd like to emphasize that primary responsibility in putting a protection program together has got to be doing something about the potential for fire. We're also concerned about internal theft, and I understand that there are a number of you from outside of the United States. I'm going to guess that the statistics are similar. And that is that most of the thefts that take place from U.S. institutions are related to someone inside the institution. Whether it's a direct theft by an employee, or someone related to an employee, or someone involving a former employee, there's some knowledge that was gained by employment of the institution. And the statistic that we like to quote is over 90% of losses in U.S. institutions are related to somebody who's either working there presently or used to, or is related to someone. External thefts definitely are a consideration. They are a problem. They do take place, and they must be dealt with. And for the purpose of this particular program, we're going to treat vandalism and the potential of vandalism the same as we would for either external or internal theft. The protection methods are pretty similar. And we also have to take into consideration how we handle, excuse me, particularly with the staff on hand, whether you have only a few people or you have several people, how do we handle people that are members of the public that come into the institution with a problem? It might be a mental problem. It might be an alcohol problem. Under the influence of alcohol, it might be a drug problem. And your staff is not necessarily trained to handle people who are potentially violent. And you probably do not have police officers or someone similar on the property who's immediately available in that first couple of minutes. So we're going to talk about some considerations in dealing with unruly and aggressive persons. It's a serious consideration because, at least once again in the U.S., statistics show us that the number of crimes seem to be diminishing in many areas, but the violence level of crime seems to be on the rise. And that's a disturbing thought. So there are two things that I'd like you to take back your institutions that when I go around talking to a number of different administrators, we ask the same question. And the first one is, who's in charge of your fire protection? Who is the person that is responsible for making sure that the systems work or that the fire department's going to show up or whatever? And in most cases, there's no one who's been designated to do that. It's assumed as a responsibility by the director or by the librarian or by the collections manager or whoever, depending on the staff that you have. But it's definitely necessary that someone within your organization have the overall responsibility on a daily basis of making sure that you're protected from fire. And it's more than just making sure that the systems work. There are a number of other factors that I'll get into in a minute. By the same token, you need to have someone who's in charge of security. We're not talking about somebody wearing a badge or stopping everyone at the door and saying, we're talking about someone who is aware of what systems are available, aware of the resources, aware of what it takes to get a police response and knows the people that are going to respond. In other words, has an overall viewpoint and control of the protection plan as a whole. Well, who's in charge of making sure that evacuations take place? Who's in charge of dealing with the different departments or different agencies that respond to your location? So it might be the same person. If you have a small staff, the same person may have five or six hats they have to wear. But we think it's critical that you definitely designate someone who's in charge of fire protection and someone in charge of security. And we'll talk about the elements that fall underneath each one of these categories. I'm going to talk about fire protection in some detail. And it's fairly simple. And it's not something that you have to spend a lot of money on. The protection methods are fairly equally applied and they're easily applied. And the first one of these, and it's covered in your handouts, I think we provided you with a sample in the handouts, you need to have a closing inspection every single day. And it doesn't matter whether you close at noon or at five o'clock, or if you stay open and have special events at the normal closing time, which is thought to be somewhere in the neighborhood from 5 to 6 p.m. every night that you're open to the public, someone has to perform a detailed inspection of the entire facility. And by detailed inspection, I'm not talking about walking around and saying everything looks fine to me. And the reality of this is, there are some people who, given that task, will do an outstanding job and they'll look in every doorway and they'll look in every closet and they'll do all of those things that are necessary. And the next night, someone else may have that same task and do none of those things. And the only way that we know to make these inspections proper and detailed and concurrent and consistent is to have them documented. And there are a number of ways to do that, but that's why we provided you with that sample sheet. That's the easiest way, yes. It's more paperwork and that's some aggravation. But the truth is, unless you require someone to put down what they found, there's a good chance that it'll get lost in the shuffle and it'll never get taken care of. And how many times would you document, for example, if someone finds that there's a light that's flickering, it's a fluorescent light and it's flickering, it means that the starter is probably going bad. And that's a potential for starting a fire. So if someone documents that and another person the next night comes through and finds that same thing taking place, should they document? Yeah. And the reason is, until it's either fixed or someone says, I got the message, you don't tell me anymore, we've got it. It should be reported every day. And these are the things that are a problem because the causes of fires in cultural institutions of any size are almost identical. The number one cause is somebody being careless and leaving something plugged in that should not have been, like a coffee pot, like a floor space heater. We had a dehumidifier that melted in one facility and came close to destroying a building not that long ago. So anything that didn't grow there, if it was not manufactured to be a part of the building, it really shouldn't be left plugged in overnight, except for computers. We understand that you can't unplug your computer and take the power away from them. But other appliances do not need to be left plugged in. Turning them off isn't enough. And the reason it's not enough is because the switches don't always work or they don't always indicate whether the switch is on or off. So just for everyone's protection and to do this consistently, we recommend that you unplug them. So that's any small appliance. Another consideration is the detection devices themselves. I can't think of any structure that contains valuable collections or that is a facility for cultural practices that does not have or does not justify having a smoke detection system. There's a difference between a suppression system, which is a sprinkler system and a detection system. A detection system detects that there's something going on, whether it's smoke or something similar in the air, long before a fire sprinkler system would be activated. The sprinkler systems are activated by the flames themselves. The heat from the flames melting a fusible link. Those smoke detectors need to be installed and they need to be working. You cannot assume, just because they were installed recently, or someone checked them at some point in time, that they worked. You can't assume that. The current systems, the most modern systems, tell you, they tell the operator they'll tell you at your control panel if something is not working, they'll tell you if a smoke detector needs adjusting or needs cleaning. They'll tell you if a manual pool station isn't functioning. But older systems, in fact, a good number of older systems don't give you any information of the sort. Therefore, the manufacturers recommend that you clean and test all smoke detection systems no less than once a year. If your smoke detectors are installed in your airways, and they're on the ducts, on the air conditioning or heating ducts, then they need to be inspected more often because they're closer to the source of where all the material is running through. So you really need to test and clean all detection devices. And that includes heat detection devices, which just cannot be done that easily. You also need to test all other aspects of the system, which include the audible devices, which would let you have audible and visible devices that let both hearing impaired and visually impaired people know that there is a problem with fire. And those need to be tested on a regular basis. And you also need to test to make sure that your system is sending a signal somewhere. Now, there may be some signals that you don't have the luxury of having them monitored and they may start sirens or bells or what have you to let neighbors know or let people within the building know. But most systems today, most fire systems are monitored insurers insist on it. And you don't know that that monitoring system is doing what it's capable of doing or what it's supposed to do unless you test it. And you need to test it on a regular basis. And it's not just the system where there's a potential problem. There's a potential problem with the training of the monitoring staff, so you need to make sure that they have the proper information that you've coordinated with them. There's a task for that person in charge of fire protection to make sure that the call lists are up to date, especially when someone leaves and that the monitoring station is well aware of what the situation is if you have problems going on with the system. On a daily basis, you should make sure that trash and clutter is removed on a daily basis. Why? Because they're fire enhancers. And the proper storage of flammables, almost every institution has a cleaning staff or a janitorial staff that uses flammable materials as part of their cleaning supplies. And there are proper storage cabinets that are properly vented for the storage of flammables, but that's not where cleaning crews put them. Cleaning crews put them back in the closet where the other cleaning supplies are located. And that's something that should be determined during the closing inspection is that flammables are not stored in the proper place. And finally, you have fire extinguishers. And most facilities have fire extinguishers of one kind or another. One thing to be aware of is whether or not those fire extinguishers are capable of being lifted off the wall. Are they too big for a small person or a person without a lot of strength to be able to remove them from the wall? And does anyone know how to use them? And you can't just take a fire extinguisher off the wall and point it at the fire and expect it to do anything. For one thing, the purpose of those extinguishers is not to fight the fire. It's really to give you access to an exit to get out of the way once a fire starts. Or if it's a small fire before it gets out of hand in a wastebasket or what have you, that extinguisher could help you to extinguish it. But fire extinguishers don't work right unless somebody shows you how to use them. It's a simple class. It's a simple demonstration. Your local fire department will actually help with that demonstration. If you ask them to, they'll come out and start a fire in a can in your parking lot and show you how to use your own extinguishers. I'm putting them out. And extinguishers need to be checked as part of the closing inspection that there's a closing inspection. Somebody should be looking at the fire extinguishers to see if they're mounted on the wall hooks where they're supposed to be, whether they have an inspection tag, whether they're the arrows that indicate that they're fully charged or in the right place. It's a simple inspection that that's something that should be done every day. So, we talked about fire and we know that it's a problem. We also know that internal theft is a problem. And internal theft happens from a number of reasons. One of those being that someone did not do everything that could be done to make sure that the people that you hire, the people that you bring on board as volunteers and the people that you let into the institution are those people that you would trust to be there without supervision. As the slide says, you wouldn't let someone in your home with your kids, with your children without knowing exactly who they are and trusting them or at least having them there with some form of supervision. And your institution is kind of like your home because you spend a lot of your waking hours there and a lot of your most valuable possessions that you're in charge of or that you oversee are in that particular location. So, why would you let just anyone come in when you don't know who they are or where they're going or what they're doing? You have to think about your protection plan, having to deal with the safety of the collection, the safety of the staff, the safety of visitors and that should be a primary concern. In the U.S., there is no law per se that requires you to conduct a background investigation. There is significant civil litigation that establishes a duty to conduct with the courts considered to be a reasonable inquiry into an applicant's background and character. And we're going to talk about what's reasonable, what's a reasonable inquiry. At the same time, the U.S. courts require that you provide a safe environment because you're open to the public and that safe environment is necessary to even be more stringent than other public buildings because on a daily basis you are dealing with minor children and at-risk adults and these are people in both categories that do not have the ability to protect themselves if they have to evacuate the building or if they have to get to an area that's safe. So you have that responsibility of making sure that they are safe as much as you can and part of that involves who you let onto your property. So in providing that reasonable check and making a reasonable inquiry, you have to think about the level of responsibility and the level of accessibility that the individual is going to have. If you're hiring somebody who's going to be there on the clock with your children, you can't be too careful. If you're hiring somebody that is just going to mow your lawn or wash your windows, you might reduce your scrutiny somewhat. So for the protection of valuable collections and the supervision of minor children and at-risk adults, you want to be as careful as you can possibly be and that means conducting an inquiry that can do everything that you wanted to do to give you what the courts consider is reasonable information based on what's available to you. There are a number of categories that are used in litigation in dealing with hiring and negligent hiring. If you hire people with criminal convictions that you have accessibility to and I can't speak to how this is done in other countries, some countries have central databases that will access criminal convictions. Others do not have a central database or do not make them available to the public. In the U.S., you can access criminal convictions in any jurisdiction, in any one of the states. You should not hire people with a known substance problem. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to test everyone coming into the institution, although it is a consideration that at least you have the right to test if certain suspicions come forward to make you feel that that person is having a substance problem then you should have the right to either have them tested or take some action that would preclude them being in the workplace. If there are persons who are known to be abusive, physically and verbally abusive, that is somebody that you should not be bringing into the institution. It's the same as people who are known to commit violent acts and people who are known to violate the rights of others. And the way you find out whether these conditions exist is by making these inquiries of farm or employers and other people that are available that have information that is available to you. Part of the reasonable inquiry involves the completion of an application form and the verification of the information that's on the application. The application is supposed to provide you with information about the skills and the education that that person has completed to give you an idea whether or not they're qualified for the job. But another primary purpose and in my mind one of the more significant purposes, the application is there to tell you whether or not that person is truthful. Because if they're not truthful, if they lie to you on the application, U.S. courts say that you can terminate employment immediately and there's no recourse. If they have lied about any aspect on the application and of course if you're in the application process and you find that somebody's lied to you and any part of that application, you can assume that they're going to lie to you if they have and the process should be over, they should be disqualified at that point. You need to have a personal interview. I'll back up a second and mention that the application should be completed on the property. If you allow someone to take an application home and bring it back at a later time, you don't know that they filled it out. You don't know if their English is faulty or if they didn't understand the questions on the application or if their mother filled it out, you don't have any way of knowing that. Your requirement should be that they complete it while they're on the property. You should conduct a personal interview to get an idea of how that person gets along with people. What is their ability to deal with a number of situations? And the way that you conduct an interview is entirely up to the type of employer that you are and how you conduct business. Everyone does this differently. Some people feel more comfortable sitting behind a desk and having a very formalized interview and others would prefer to have a casual interview. You may even be sitting side by side or sitting in a more casual setting. But the truth is that during this personal interview people will give you more information than you really need if you just give them the chance to talk. I can tell you as a former criminal investigator that more cases are solved by people talking to you than any other method. They're solved a lot easier by somebody telling you things than they are by someone crawling around on the floor with a microscope looking for fibers. That doesn't happen that often. So you've got to give the interviewee the opportunity to answer the questions that you ask and then if they want to talk about other things let them talk because very often they'll give you information that you would have liked to have had but didn't ask for it. You should verify whether or not that person has a criminal history. Most application forms in the U.S. have removed the question about have you been convicted of a crime? And the reason they've done that is because some attorneys feel that it's discriminatory to ask everyone about their criminal histories and the truth is that I have not seen that ever brought to trial about somebody being charged with discrimination for asking about criminal history. I've seen it go the other way when you did not verify, when the employer did not verify that there was a criminal history, if you hire a pedophile and they harm someone they sexually assault someone on your property where do you think the liability is going to fall? And by the same token if you hire someone who's an arsonist or has been a thief or has done other crimes there's a good possibility that they're going to continue in that mode if you haven't done something to eliminate them joining the workforce. Our laws say that you cannot deny employment for a single criminal conviction unless that conviction is applicable to the job that they're applying for. So if someone was convicted of a driving offense, they were convicted of simple possession of marijuana when they were 18 years old and they're now 25 and they've had nothing else that's taken place in that time period it's probably safe to hire them because if we denied employment to anyone who's ever been convicted of anything we wouldn't have a workforce. And it's not to say that everyone has been convicted of a crime but people who made a mistake and a minor mistake certainly have a right to work and they have a need to work and that's why those laws are written. So criminal histories need to be verified. There is a method within the U.S. to obtain criminal histories in every state in the U.S. and it's not difficult to do so. The prior employment verification is a little bit tricky and the reason that it's tricky is that many employers feel that you're opening up yourself to all types of trouble by letting someone know that someone was fired or that someone was a bad employee they're afraid that they'll be sued or what have you and the truth is that most states now have passed legislation that protects former employers from releasing legitimate information that they cannot be held liable for doing that but you need to check in the jurisdiction in which your facility is located to determine what laws may apply but regardless you should make every attempt even if it's just calling someone on the phone if you tell the applicant that it's your responsibility to provide verification of your former employment give me the name of a co-worker give me the name of a former supervisor there's nothing that says that you can't contact those people directly and ask them to verify the information. Some people ignore reference checks they feel why would they give this person as a reference if they were going to say something bad and it really has to do with how the interview is conducted so if you are making a reference check there's nothing wrong with saying I want you to tell me all the reasons why you think that we ought to hire this person and if you'll help me out here I need to know any reason that you think we might not want to hire them if you let once again if you give the reference relatives that provide some of the critical information that you weren't expecting to get driver's records checks are not mandatory and many people wonder why if the facility doesn't even operate a vehicle or if that person is not going to operate a vehicle and the reason for that is because if they have had arrest and convictions for driving under the influence or leaving the scene of an accident or a considerable bad driving record that gives you some idea of their character and their performance and if they been involved in a number of incidents involving alcohol or drugs that doesn't mean that they changed automatically when they come to work for you so the driver's records checks are very inexpensive they're usually between $3 and $5 in most of the states in the U.S. and it gives you more information plus if they come up with an address on that driver's record check that you don't have in the application form they omitted information that you should be checking on. The tools that you need and that you have available to you will vary based on your location based on the size of your staff, based on the budget that you have and most smaller institutions have no security budget so you have to look at what you have on hand and what you have available to you and almost every institution has the same resource that is a primary resource if it's used properly and that's the staff and any volunteers and by the proper use what we're talking about is enabling those people to assist by at least reporting things that take place I'm going to go into a little more detail on this as we move along but the use of the people who are on the property who work there on a daily basis or volunteer there on a daily basis is a major protection tool that needs to be utilized the first thing you need to do is when someone comes to work or when they started to volunteer is to tell them that security and the protection of the institution is part of their responsibility your telephones are a protection tool they can keep you in contact with other institutions they can keep you in contact with other staff and they can keep you in contact with response agencies and they're important that they're working and we realize that there are some locations that no longer utilize landlines and you may not have the best cell service available and if that's the case it would be nice if you could figure somewhere whether it's using a satellite phone or some means of communication to get hold of people on the outside at least to let them know that you need help video surveillance is a valuable protection protection tool as long as you recognize the fact that it should not be the only thing in your inventory because it is a tool and it's effective in letting people know when it's visible that they may be recorded in what their actions are and what takes place and it may be a deterrent in stopping people from doing things that are against rules or against regulations because they feel that they're going to be seen by video surveillance but the video surveillance systems have changed so much since they were first introduced and first utilized there's a number of different protection incidents that you can utilize now in the proper application of video surveillance systems and it's difficult in determining what those are and how much you should be paying and which vendors are proper and where the cameras should be mounted and where monitoring takes place and all these things are a valuable part of the protection plan that need to be taken into consideration we strongly recommend that if you have nothing else but a couple of staff members and hopefully a camera are too if not more that at the minimum that you make the expenditure which is also considered a minimum expenditure for a panic arrest system you have to have some type of alarm system in place in order to have a panic arrest system what we're talking about is an emergency button or a hold up button if you want to call it that but it sends a signal a silent signal to law enforcement and it does so through the monitoring station that you need a police officer and that's the sole purpose of that system it's like any other system it has to be properly selected and properly installed and tested and you want to make sure that the staff is aware of it and how it works and when to use it and what have you but a panic arrest system is critical and it should be in every institution regardless of the size you're talking about roughly a hundred dollars a hundred and a half for a wireless panic arrest button be worn on your belt or worn around your neck or kept in your pocket and another hundred and fifty dollars for a receiver that attaches to your alarm system that receives the signal so that these things are considered necessary as part of the protection plan and going back to that closing checklist and determining whether the place is ready to lock up and leave for the night you need to during the daytime to conduct patrols of the property and with a large staff and a uniformed security staff that's their function well most of you don't have that so who takes a look around is it the facilities person is it the curator the collections manager whose responsibility is it and this is why we talk about having someone in charge of security and someone in charge of fire protection to make sure that the people who are already on the property and just going about doing their jobs also understand that walking from one place to another on the property is in effect making a patrol so if you're walking through galleries or if you're walking through the facility and you're performing some other function there's no reason why you can't be observant to see what visitors are doing or to see if there might be some element of fire danger or if there might be some suspicious circumstance taking place and these patrols should not be every hour on the hour every 15 minutes or what have you it should be at any time that someone is going through the property and it should be every staff member and they should have an organized method of reporting those things that they see so the patrols should be both regular and irregular in that they can take place at any time and someone can't necessarily mark down when they know the next patrol is coming through alright so we have all these things excuse me that we listed I'm hoping the voice is going to hold up here we have all these things that we listed that are elements for our protection plan and what we need to do with them and I want to talk to you about how they should be applied and those elements are the protection plan itself incident command which I'll explain daily system testing patrolling, key control and emergency response coordination all of these are resources that every one of you in some manner or another has available to you and don't need to spend a lot of money to make sure that these particular resources are applied in fact most of them can be a part of your daily operation without creating any additional expense but they're important parts of the protection plan because these are the elements that are necessary to keep the people safe and keep the collection safe the protection plan starts with opening and closing procedures we talked briefly about closing procedures but there also need to be certain opening procedures to make sure that the facility is ready to receive guests ready to receive visitors and as the capability of dealing with any situation that may come up what are the situations that could come up you could have an unruly patron that's causing a problem in one part of the building your plan needs to and part of your opening procedures needs to make sure that there is space available if you have to move visitors to a safe location and lock it down you want to make sure that there's a place that's been designated and that the staff knows where it is and that it's open and ready to receive people if that's necessary you should conduct a staff awareness briefing if you have one extra person on the staff or ten extra people on the staff there should be a regular staff briefing to let people know here's what's going on here are some problems that we have here's a special event that's taking place here's something that's a suspicious circumstance that happened yesterday that we want everyone to be aware of you cannot expect the staff to respond properly or to be on the lookout for certain things that you're concerned about unless you tell them and it's kind of I guess old habit that we don't like to talk about things out of school we don't like to let everybody know what's going on all the time because we're afraid that they won't want to work here or we're afraid that they're going to act differently or what have you and I guess the best or worst example I can give you is the sexual assault took place on one property and we found that no one on the property knew about it except for management and we asked the question why and the answer we got back was well management was afraid that women would feel a lot differently about coming to work if they knew that type of thing happened here and our answer was they would take precautions and wouldn't act in a safe manner unless they were aware that that type of thing did take place and your chances of preventing it happening again are enhanced by letting the staff know that here's what took place and here's what we're doing about it so that applies across the board in any situation especially when you have suspicious people what if there are threats that have been made to someone on the staff or what if there's a suspicious vehicle that's got it at one time you would want the staff to know about it and that's what staff awareness briefings do for you you need to have emergency operations I know you have other webinars that are coming up to deal with this and I won't go into a lot of detail but you need to have some type of practice in dealing with emergency operations and training the staff for what their particular roles are if you have 10 visitors on your property and you only have two staff members at least one of them has to make sure that the area for the evacuation is clear and the other one has to make sure that all the people get out and someone has to go through the building to make sure all the staff everyone that's on the property has gotten out that's part of the training and that's part of evacuation training and that's why you need to have a viable evacuation plan with people walking through it no one reads all the things that come out you know and when you do a publication on this is our evacuation plan or here's our whole operation but nobody reads through all of those unless it particularly pertains to them and when they do look through those documents is when they are given the opportunity to walk through and put their hands on those things that they're dealing with they remember that a lot better and they're more likely to look at the written portion if they're actually walking through and participating in that particular operation conflict resolution is something that very few institutions deal with it's not you know I asked the question who do you call if you have somebody who's inebriated and they come through the front door and the answer is always well I call security and the truth is that even security officers trained security officers are not given any training that deals with self-defense or deals with ejecting people physically that's not their job they're not paid to do that so without having uniformed security on site who's going to do it and your answer can be well we call the police well unless the police live on your property and they're sitting in the next room they're not going to be there and at first couple of minutes and you've got to deal with it so there needs to be some form of conflict resolution training that shows you how you safely approach someone and how you deal with them and what you do about the other people that are on the property whether you move them out of the area how you get them out of the area or how you go about the whole thing and how you de-sensitize how you de-escalate that particular situation from erupting into something that you can't handle so it's definitely necessary to think about conflict resolution and how you're going to go about dealing with it and who's going to do it documentation and distribution are critical because if you don't document what the my statement is always if you don't write it down it didn't happen you can't go back on what took place last Tuesday unless you can refer to a document that lists the people that were involved the times that it took place the places that it took place what have you and when documentation is made it must be distributed to those people that have a need to have a copy of that particular document and finally the protection plan really needs to deal with emergency response because all of us have been taught that if you dial 911 the police will come or the fire department will come or the ambulance will come and the truth is not always not because think about the incidents that have taken place recently for example the fires in California are very tragic the fires and the mudslides there are no more fire departments, ambulances, police to come they're all out there they can't be stretched any thinner there are no additional people what happens if you happen to be an institution in the middle of a disaster and there's no help coming so what this says is that there are certain things certain responsibilities that you have to take on yourself and it starts with a discussion with these emergency response agencies because they'll tell you exactly what their capabilities are for one thing if you take the time to let them come and tour your property and discuss with you what they're capable of doing and not capable of doing you'll get a lot better attention and you'll get a lot better service if and when the need arises we're sorry to say you don't always have that emergency response at least not in the first couple of minutes and when you've got someone who's unruly and creating a problem it's very unlikely that you're going to have a response agency there in the immediate time in fact in some locations it takes a considerable amount of time the staff awareness portion that I discussed really involves doing some type of documentation that keeps a fairly critical record of everything that took place you should have an incident report form that form is the information that your insurer needs if they're going to conduct an investigation law enforcement cannot do anything as far as filing criminal charges or having someone arrested unless you have the information that gives them what they call probable cause and that's best maintained in an incident report you've documented who was involved and what took place and where it took place not what you think took place but what you know took place that's the purpose of an incident report form and the other strong purpose of an incident report form is to let management, let administration understand that we have to deal with certain things you know it's usually in the rumor mill that oh yeah we had a theft or we had an attempted theft or we had an active analyst or whatever but if you really want to see an accurate record of what took place that's where you need to be going back to those incident report summaries and if you're going to report losses at any particular time you need to have the documentation with as much information as available because the agencies that take those reports are going to be asking for it I mentioned the briefings to the staff I feel that they should be no less than weekly more often if it's something that's critical that just happened then you feel that the staff needs to know it right away but at the very minimum you want to have a weekly briefing you should have a discussion immediately following incidents to find out what took place and what might possibly be done to stop it from happening again or stop it from getting worse than it already is and it's best discussed immediately afterwards so before facts get twisted and too many people get to enter their opinion into the record and that's what usually turns the investigation in the wrong direction because too many people have had too much opportunity to talk too long after the event that needs to be discussed and written down and documented immediately most law enforcement agencies have a community service officer and that community service officer has a responsibility of coming to your institution and telling you what's going on in the neighborhood what type of crime are we having what type of things should we be looking out for what type of incidents have taken place that might threaten your institution or threaten your collection they may even tell you about suspicious people that have been seen in the neighborhood or they may tell you about someone on your staff that they've had particular problems with or someone that you're about to hire but none of this will happen unless you go to the police they will not automatically they don't have enough people out there and there's too many places they have to serve they will not automatically come to your facility you have to go to them and this is or should be a responsibility of that person that you've designated as being in charge of security to establish a relationship it's not take a cop to dinner but it's make a friend in the police department so that there's someone that you can call on a first name basis and they know who you are and at the very minimum give them the opportunity to tour your facility to see where you are and what you have most law enforcement agencies have no idea of the value of your collections or some of the problems that you face they have no idea of the extent and they don't have to be given a written summary of how much something costs but you can certainly give them a general idea of what you know might be a target because you are a soft target for all of those things that we listed as being conceivable threats the other thing that you want to think about doing and we're going to talk about entry and then entry procedures here very shortly but if any of you ever worked in retail you know that they always stress that retail greeting and that's the opportunity as soon as someone comes through the door letting them know that first they're welcome and secondly that you saw them and the security standpoint it really does make a difference because if you can walk into the facility and nobody talks to you, nobody looks at you as far as you're concerned you're home free you can do whatever you want they never saw you even if you have cameras in place so that entry greeting lets the person know that yep we're here we're aware, we're alert we know what's going on and we saw you so that entry greeting it doesn't mean that everyone coming through the door has to be giving a hi, how you doing what can I help you with at the very least you can smile and look in their direction and nod your head or tell them hello or ask them if you can help them find something if the opportunity exists depends on how many people you have on the staff and how many people are at the main entry excuse me no entry should be unmanned no public entry should be unmanned there should be someone on the staff at that entry or at the very least that their access is controlled so that they are channeled by a staff member very shortly after entering the facility conflict resolution is a touchy topic because it is conflicts or physical conflicts are taking place on a daily basis and they don't always make the news if it's not an extremely violent act they don't always make the news but you have to think about as a staff member in any institution when you leave for work in the morning you don't necessarily get in your car or get on the bus or whatever and think I wonder who I'm going to have to fight today or I wonder how I'm going to have to deal with a drunk today or I wonder you know how I'm going to deal with somebody who's got dementia and they're lost and they come to our building without any supervision you don't think about those things and you don't think about them because you don't deal with them every day those aren't really everyday occurrences and when they do happen now you've got to stop and think what am I supposed to do and who do I call and how am I going to handle it and it starts out by the consideration of making a safe approach and the safe approach really applies whether you're inside your facility or you're in the parking lot or you're in the grocery store or wherever and that is to think about what someone does that wants to take advantage of you whether it's they want to take physical advantage whether they want to rob you of something or they want to assault you they have to get close and inside the facility particularly if your position is to greet people coming through on access you have to get fairly close so they can hear you and they can see you but this distance is the distance that's beyond their reach the reach of their arms the reach of their legs if they were going to kick and that means that everyone needs to be made aware that when you greet someone that you should stay a safe distance back and to let that person know if they're getting too close and you can do that in a professional and nice manner you also need to understand that when you face them up close and your body facing them a full body target in any approach that is made by you or someone else should be at a slight angle so that you reduce the body target and it also gives you the capability of moving away from there if that's what you happen to do there's nothing in your contract if you have one that says I will stand and fight that's not your job in fact your job is to try to resolve a problem as quickly and quietly as you can but also as safely as you can you can't help anyone if you're laying on the floor so the safe approach is something that you need to determine and make sure that everyone on the staff regardless of their age or size their sex what have you understands that there is a way to approach people safely and there is a way to safely get out of the situation there is a national program called MOAB stands for management of aggressive behavior that's one training program we have others that are available if you'd like more information on that you're certainly welcome to contact us and we'll point you in that direction that everyone on the staff needs to understand particularly if you're open in the hours of darkness and they have to go through an unlighted area to get to the parking areas or what have you any time that you are approaching a situation that is either suspicious or there's no doubt in your mind that it could get out of hand before you do anything you need to notify a supervisor that should either be done by radio or telephone or any means of communications you have and the reason for that is the same reason that police officers contact their dispatcher when they stop a car in traffic it's because if something happens and you haven't told anyone where you are or what you're doing you may not be found until it's too late or you may not get any help until it's too late and no one knows unless you've told them and there are a number of methods to do that one method is to to make a loud exclamation toward the person who's advancing toward you and tell them to stop and if you do it loudly enough other employees, other staff members should hear you and come to that location because two against one is a psychological advantage and hopefully there won't be any physical response if you're going to have the opportunity to call a supervisor whether it's a dispatcher or just another person that's working you may not have a supervisor available to dispatcher but if you can let another staff member know that you got a problem we don't like the use of a lot of codes because people don't remember all the codes but there may be a signal that you can use to indicate that you're having a problem and you need another staff member present and it's really important one way that we do this in some businesses is to take these colors like hot pink and hot orange and hot yellow the types of things that they use in school and take a piece of paper and cut it into strips and give every staff member one of those pieces of paper and if they're sitting at their desk as long as that paper's on the desk there's no problem if they ever lift it off the desk they got a problem and they need help and by the same token if they can carry that strip of paper or square of paper what have you on them and they can manage to just have it visible to other staff members that's a signal I need help it's cheap, it's simple, it absolutely works if you have no other means of communication that's better than nothing at all it's necessary when approaching a situation to try to determine the level of aggression you know is this an angry person is this someone who's upset because their kids didn't get off the school on time or did they have a disagreement with their spouse or they just angry or they just upset or they just concern maybe they haven't been able to locate their child once they brought them to the building those people need to be dealt with in a certain way but more than likely that way is in your offering to assist them in being helpful and hopefully that will de-escalate the situation letting them know that there's someone there that cares and is willing to do something to try to help them if they've taken it a step beyond that and they've been verbally aggressive or abusive they also need to be dealt in a specific way so somebody needs to tell them that their actions aren't necessarily appreciated and they need to quiet down and how that's done nobody likes to be told what to do and nobody likes to be told to stop doing something but how you face that particular individual and how you deal with it is a manner of practice it's a matter of having the professionalism to deal with somebody without angering them and still letting them know that certain things are not allowed and one of the best ways to go about all of these particular methods is to practice them and doing it in role-playing situations in a training period where you get to see exactly what it's like it's fun, for one thing, if you get to be the bad guy in not being very cooperative but it also gives everyone who has the opportunity to participate an idea of what other things they need to be thinking about when they're coming to work on how they need to deal with particular people once you've determined a level of aggression and you've determined it's safe to take a certain stance and to make certain comments you need to request their compliance you need to ask them to calm down you need to ask them to leave the building if that's necessary you may need to ask them to do something else to comply with your rules and regulations you should remain at a safe distance at all time and you may need to move visitors to safety if necessary if you're another staff member and you see a situation developing you may need to approach other visitors that are in the area and move them to a safe area I'm trying to get to the questions that I see off to the side but I can't keep up with it with the comment and read the questions at the same time so excuse me if I take a second and check and see if there's anything critical here okay, the question Jenny asked is if it's a good idea to have two people staff or volunteers working at any given time and the answer is absolutely you can't send someone for help if there is no one and psychologically, two on one even if you're not being physical is always an advantage at least it gives people the idea that not a good idea to create a problem when there's more than one person but for personal protection it's always a good idea to have more than one person if you can do that okay, I'm going to move on and there we go emergency response coordination I mentioned that law enforcement agencies and fire departments are not always available or they may not always have the information that they need they are more than anxious to train wherever necessary to gather information to gain information the National Park Service has a document that they call a structural fire plan structural fire plan and what that is are simply drawings nothing but floor plans of the building that indicate where the exits are and where the fire extinguishers are and where the control panels are for the various systems and you don't have to have all that detail but you should have something that is available to both fire departments and police departments before they respond to your building that they keep in their vehicles in this particular place you can do it through a DVD they can keep it in their computers there are no secrets that you are giving away there is nothing that you have to worry about it now they know where our collection storage room is but you need to make sure that agencies have enough familiarization with your building so that for example if you have disabled people and they have to come down stairways you may not have the capability to evacuate them down the stairway but the fire department will do that but the fire department needs to know what plans you have and in effect what tools do you have or is there a particular stairway if it's not under smoke or fire that you're going to take those people to so that's a good reason for conducting the tours and they like to do those familiarization tours because there are things that they don't know that you have and how valuable your possessions are you need to encourage regular visits by the departments you know I recommend that if you have an entry fee or whatever that you invite the departments whether it's a free day or at any time to bring their families and come and visit your institution because it's going to get you better service in the long run and it will give them that familiarity with the institution include them if you're going to do if you're going to be doing evacuations you want to include the fire department and the police department if they're available police department will not always participate they can't have everyone participate they'll have some people why because most of the evacuations that you conduct are going to be for fire and you'd like to know what the fire department's going to do and where hoses are going to be running where the trucks are going to be parked and where your safe assembly area is and all kinds of things like that and it's not going to take place at the last minute when the smoke is rising you've got to do this ahead of time and the fire department has to be involved in it so you want to coordinate the response conditions with police, fire and emergency medical don't forget about emergency medical service I mentioned incident command this is a term that was coined I believe by the department of homeland security it's in effect throughout the country government agencies all government agencies are required to have an incident command structure an incident command system and what this basically means is that there's someone who is designated to be the incident commander not necessarily the director not necessarily the collections manager they may not even have a role in your hierarchy it's someone who has the capability when the smoke is filling the room to take charge and get things done and there's always somebody in every operation in every staff that is capable and qualified to do that and the reason that you want to consider it is because the police department and the fire department have incident commanders and that's the first person of any rank that arrives on the scene, whether it's a commander or a lieutenant, a captain, what have you they are in charge of their particular department and any other departments that respond from the fire standpoint or from the police standpoint they do not have someone that's in charge of your institution so they do not make the decision whether they're going to evacuate the building unless that building is on fire or unless there's an explosive device that's been discovered so if there's some reason that the building has to be evacuated you need your incident commander should be making that decision and by the same token what about the collections under what circumstances would you move the collections who's going to move them where are they going to go and how are they going to be safe during that transit and that's something that the incident command structure provides for you so you need to have if nothing more somebody needs to be in charge for emergencies every day and every member of the staff needs to know who they are and they have the capability of activating your emergency operation center there's another good thought is that something that you have or don't have or need to figure out and the emergency operation center may be a car in the parking lot but you need to have some place either inside the institution or close to it there's safety supplies available certain rosters and lists that are available and has a place for the person in charge to communicate with all these agencies and to answer questions and to put out information and that's something that you should be designating now and once again you don't have to have a special place for it if your institution is overcrowded now and you don't have any offices that might be utilized for that purpose you can use a vehicle in the parking lot for the same purpose you need to have call out lists many places call it a telephone tree but people leave people retire and people take leave of absence and people are out sick and those call out lists need to be up to date because when an emergency takes place you can't spend all day trying to call people who are no longer there you also need to have what's called a contractor a choice list and this is real important if you call for example if you decide that you're going to move your collection because there's a flood your collection is going to be threatened and you've got a day or two at the most you get the collection out of there you got to decide who's going to transport it is there a trucking company that has special HVAC considerations to protect the collection and if so how do I get a hold of it because if you call them the day of that you want to move you're too late especially if it's a large disaster but the truth is that you could go to them today and sit down and negotiate a rate and talk about what it is that you're going to do and where you're going to go and sign a contract it does not cost you a dime and there's no obligation but when something does take place now you've got a contractor on your list that you already have under contract that understands what the particular job is and they've agreed to do it and you're going to be a lot farther up in the line and that's why you need to come first serve for those with contracts not those without and you can think of all the services that you may need whether it's boarding up a window whether it's broken glass or it might be contract security service to escort the collection or to safeguard it on the other end there are so many different services and that's why you need to have that contractor a choice list and you need to find out and utilize them and so forth and have the proper information on the end you need an agency contact list now I'm talking about the emergency agencies it's not just police and fire most counties have an emergency management agency they have an emergency management coordinator and you need to have the phone numbers and the names of those people that are available through local government and maybe state government and maybe federal government who you want to have available to you as an art crime team and they're throughout the United States I think they have 12 divisions at least and they have someone who's within your region who will respond if you have a theft of artwork the FBI will actually get involved but you need to know who they are and how to contact them and you need to think about agreements with other institutions and those other institutions are those that for example if you have to move the whole collection maybe that's the place to take it that's the immediate area that's not threatened by the same disaster or the same problem and by the same token you may want to offer your institution if they have a similar problem there aren't that many commercial storage places that have HVAC that's capable of handling collections there are some and they're limited and you need to find out where they are and who they are now but if there aren't any available think about other institutions and having an agreement because once again you're going to be the last one in line from a physical security standpoint you need to think about what it is that you need to have in place that is going to protect your staff the visitors, the collection your other assets and I have to say that all of those things that we talk about I'm going to mention alarms and I'm going to mention collection within the building what have you but the truth is if you're building the perimeter here building is secure if you've dealt with the proper physical security of the building itself you have to worry a lot less the general public does not have access to collection storage they got to get in the building first and then they got to work their way through the building to find out where it is so if the perimeter is going to stop them from going any further or at least call for a police response almost immediately then your collection is a lot safer and sort of the people inside so you need to think about protecting the entire perimeter and all exterior access points and that includes ventilation screens and it includes elevator shafts and how they exit and roof hatches and anything that you could conceive of to gain access to the building it needs to be either barred off or alarmed or manned by somebody you can't just let it go on the chance that nobody's going to find it so if it gains if it provides access to the building it has to be protected in one form or another all of those public accesses that you do allow the public to come in they need to be controlled in one manner or another and those controls include somebody being there physically they include alarms they include physical barriers they may be electronic barriers they may be electronic locks on the doors and your staff has access cards or access keys to allow them to enter but all accesses that are public accesses need to be controlled in one manner or another you also need to think about your locks and the lighting and the various barriers that are already installed video surveillance that you have and the types of alarms that you have to deal with the physical security of the building because all of these things contribute to the protection of the building but they don't just appear magically when they were there back when the dirt was new and that doesn't mean that they're functioning properly or that they coordinate with other devices that you have or that anybody is still alive that knows how to repair them or service them so these are things that the person in charge of security needs to take into consideration and that means doing a real close physical inspection of the entire building to determine what the status is of all the different security devices and the different access points and what have you to do you need to be concerned about the personnel and where they're available if you decide that you are going to check packages coming in the door which we think is a real good idea you gotta have people to do that and you can't just have one person because if they find something now what happens somebody has to come and respond to that and deal with the person bringing something into the building but the personnel presence is important it does make a big difference because for security it's better than having a camera having somebody standing there or sitting there I prefer standing to sitting and it doesn't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger it needs to be somebody that has their eyes open and can say hi how are you and can I help you it's having that physical presence we talked about the use of patrols and regular new regular patrols and you'll hear the term layered security and physical security and what that basically means is you're on the outermost perimeter which is probably your parking lot and as you get closer to the center and closer to the collection the security increases whether it's the use of alarms or additional people or what have you okay I did mention the testing of smoke detectors but there's other testing that needs to take place and I have to tell you from experience most of these things that I'm talking to you about have to do with things that I've found in doing assessments on security and fire protection at a number of different facilities and we find them all the time it's rare to find any location that does actual tests on their intrusion devices smoke detectors are normally they're normally tested and cleaned by a contractor and you should be receiving documentation every time that that takes place and it should take place no less than once a year so I'm able to tell you that this particular detector was cleaned on this particular day and it was tested and so forth but intrusion devices like your door contact nobody ever tests them and you have the capability of doing that if you just decide that one day a week we're going to test alarms that means that a couple of people on the staff have to stay over an extra half an hour you need to call your monitoring company and tell them you're testing you need to turn the system on the door and see if the alarm goes off and see if they got a signal and what the signal was all those things need to be verified and the same thing you do with motion detectors and the same thing you do with panic arrest signals we recommend that every one of your panic arrest signals be tested once a week because those are life safety devices if they don't work when you need them somebody's in big trouble if you can't call for a cop when you have to have one you got a problem so those things need to be tested like once a week and the staff needs to understand what they're supposed to be used for and where they're supposed to be kept the audible and monitoring system same thing if your alarm transmission lines are not working sometimes they use telephone lines other times they use a cellular device but at any rate it needs to be tested and verified that the monitoring station received the signal they know what to do with it they have the proper up-to-date call list and so forth and what are the panic arrest devices and what are auxiliary detection devices we're talking about those things that detect rises in heat the presence of water whether or not there are other elements that have an effect on the structure itself and those are auxiliary devices that may be installed on intrusion detection systems what's the purpose of the patrolling and we talked about who does the patrolling and when it needs to be performed which is at any time that they're walking through the building but the objective of doing this patrolling is to remove any threats to the property it could be any representative it's a good idea to let that person be identified by something that they wear whether it's a jacket or a vest or whether it's just a photo ID that shows that they represent the institution that's what people recognize people may not recognize what your uniform is or what you're if you just require that everybody that works for you wears a tie and a jacket if it's a man and wears a certain type of outfit if it's a woman people from other locations don't recognize that unless you provide some type of identification like an ID that's worn on the outer garment or worn around the neck so that representative shouldn't make themselves known that they are representing the institution they need to do detailed observation that means they need to look at what's going on not just walk through caring whatever it is they're caring and not paying any attention to what the guests are doing or what the situation may happen to be we've had thefts that have gone unreported for a whole day with staff members walking by an exhibit on a regular basis and never noticing that part of the exhibit was missing well somebody has to look and if you don't have security that's detailed with that task then staff members have to do it and they have to do it on a regular basis you should make eye contact and greet visitors as much as practically possible without being obnoxious about it and once again again it takes away that anonymity factor and lets them know that somebody is watching and this is something that it's difficult to control it's difficult to enforce but when you have somebody that represents the institution those people who are members of the public judge a lot by their personal appearance and their personal hygiene and if you have someone that whether or not they're wearing something that you issued or whether or not they're wearing something that's considered to be uniform if they wear clothes that don't fit if they wear clothes that are dirty if their personal hygiene isn't good if their hair isn't properly kept members of the public get the feeling that why do I have to listen to that person obviously their manager doesn't care how they look and I'm not going to deal with somebody that looks like that it is important so you have to find a reasonable way to consider a part of the dress code that you'll come to work prepared to deal with the public and meet the public and you have to look presentable and you have to look reasonable when you're doing that some people have terrible body odor and the reason they have terrible body odor may be something that they can't help or it may be the fact that they don't wash their clothes or may be the fact that they're using some narcotics which tend to take away from personal hygiene but it's up to you as a supervisor or manager to have to say there's something we need to talk about and it's your personal body odor and how they work that I know that's a difficult thing to think about it does happen and it's something you should be aware of at any rate key control is essential and it's one of those elements that doesn't cost you a dime if you do it right and it starts with every time that you issue a key that you document it and that when you retrieve it you document it and when somebody terminates employment it's necessary to make sure that they turned into keys that they were issued and you should have a format when you issue the key and it says that you're going to be responsible for turning this in at the time that you terminate employment if not you'll be responsible for paying for the replacement of that lock if you don't say it at the time of employment then you can't collect it when they terminate if you do say it you do have the right to withhold that from their salary to replace it lock or have it rekeyed you should do an annual key inventory it's a real scary thought and every time we've suggested it particularly to facility managers they've said oh no I don't want to know and if you have a large number of keys out or a large number of doors or a large number of locks it can be frightening if you find out that half the keys that you issued are gone or you don't know where they are it may mean that you got to rekey you don't have to replace the locks but you may have to rekey the billing at the very least the perimeter doors the keys to the perimeter door should only be in the hands of those people who are responsible for opening or closing the building and no one else and you need to know where those keys are all the time if that person goes out of town for a period of time and I prefer three days or longer they need to turn the key in and not leave it in their home where someone can get it or in their car or on their key ring so key control is real it's a real concern and that annual inventory will give you some surprises that it's necessary to do it keys need to be kept in secure storage especially the duplicates and you need to tightly restrict not only perimeter access but also tightly restrict collections access and not just to the collection storage room but to the cabinets within the collection storage room and it's one thing to say yes we have everything alarmed but that doesn't mean anything if staff members have the codes of the alarms and if staff members have access to all those doors it's important that you think about what's actually necessary who actually has a need and you may have interns you may have volunteers working in collections that are not supervised you just have to be very cautious on how you issue those keys and in what type of protection you utilize and you should make sure once again that all keys that are issued are required to be turned into termination and you have a process that assures you you have that information many times we're told that somebody who's gone two or three weeks before anyone thought to ask about what happened to their keys or thought to look and see if the keys were actually turned in and then it's a little bit late because they're gone I listed a number of policies and procedures that we think that you ought to have on hand and I'm going to hurry up here I realize we're getting toward the time limit you need to have a substance abuse policy that says in no uncertain terms you can't come to work under the influence you can't be dealing carrying in possession have anything to do with illegal substances and alcohol is only permitted during supervised events where it's issued by the establishment that you can't be under the influence while you're working you need to have a theft policy that tells you under what conditions somebody can be charged with theft and what they can have in their possession they need to be told that they cannot have any institutional property in their possession or taken home unless they have written authority of a proper supervisor workplace violence policies say that you have zero tolerance for any form of violence or any threat of violence can you have visitors at work and it's a problem because if you ask someone to investigate a loss and it turns out that people had their family members in the institution after hours when the alarms are turned off and they weren't being supervised you can't investigate the whole family you don't have background investigations on the whole family so you need to think about your policy of after hours visitors that are there with the staff what have you in fact any after hours access should be taken into consideration and controlled we think that it is becoming necessary to perform some form of entrance screening whether it's putting a backpack on a table and opening or a purse or what have you but you're running the chance of people I mean they've already recognized the fact that you're pretty much a soft target and you don't have any professional help on hand from law enforcement or security letting them bring weapons into the building or anything else that's considered to be prohibited is a danger that you're only going to find out by doing some form of entry screening we realize that most small institutions don't have the capability either staff wise or budget wise but it's something to think about that termination of employment and how it's handled is really important at the very least that somebody who's terminated for cause should be told they're not welcome back into building even as a visitor and it should be done legally and it should be given a return receipt registered letter and at the time of termination given that notice that we're only talking about people that were terminated for cause if somebody was terminated because they were late three times or whatever you can tell them you're more than welcome come back and see the collection you just can't go into the staff areas or the non-public areas package inspection I just mentioned weapons it depends on your jurisdiction many jurisdictions now are open are just allowing everybody that wants to get a concealed weapons permit to get one or even have an open carry permits where you can wear weapons on the outside you have to find out what the laws are in your jurisdiction what you can do about it you should have the right to preclude people from carrying weapons on your property and you should have a policy that deals with it in writing so even police officers from another jurisdiction don't necessarily have the right to carry a concealed weapon on your property you should have written rules of conduct for visitors and written rules of conduct for staff because you really have a difficult time enforcing something unless you can show them what it is in writing use of force is the last resort only there should be no reason why any member of your staff should have to put their hands on anybody and if they do that person should go to jail because if you didn't have justification for sending them to jail you shouldn't have been putting your hands on them and no one on your staff was hired for or trained for using force against an intruder that the staff understands that it's an absolute last resort to protect yourself when there's no other alternative we've seen enough publicity about sexual harassment in the last couple of weeks I don't think I have to say a whole lot about it other than to say that you should have a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment it needs to be reported immediately and you need to take action and active shooters I'm not going to go into detail if you have not had this training in your institution there is a video that's produced by the Houston Texas Department of Public Safety it's called run hide fight it's a training video for the whole staff it's free you can get it online it's called run hide fight Houston Texas Department of Public Safety that's best active shooter training that you can get without having the people physically there to do something theft policy is based on what procedures are already in place and how you go about personally presenting preventing theft how do you report whether there's a suspected theft all these things need to be listed so employees understand what's expected of them and under what circumstances are the police notified and who else needs to be notified like the Art Laws Register and the FBI Art Crimes Team notifications that should be made include the curator or collections manager the local police the FBI Art Crimes team the Art Laws Register and other institutions in your area to secure the collection it starts with collection storage usually the majority of the collection storage including libraries rear books in highly valuable publications are not available to the public without going through some restricted area so not only should these things be restricted as far as who has access and how they have access and whether video surveillance is available the video surveillance is available to document what's taking place in each one of those areas those items on exhibit same thing if you're going to play something on exhibit you have to make the determination of what access the public is going to have and if it's a highly valuable item that is more likely to be the subject of something that's stolen you need to consider the type of security on the exhibit cases or the exhibit itself and whether or not alarms are available and cameras can be utilized and so forth and of course inventories are helpful but you can't do 100% inventory on a regular basis we recommend that you take periodic inventories of just a portion of the collection and there are certain formats to go by but if you take a dozen items or so and try to see them and do this at least quarterly there's a good chance that people within the staff recognize the fact there's a good better chance that they might be caught than an item for example in collection storage it wouldn't be looked at for some time until the next 100% inventory takes place and exit screening in the larger institutions yes staff members go through an exit screen where they have to open any containers that they're taking out of the building and we still feel that that's possible with smaller institutions it's just much more difficult particularly based upon the configuration of the building and how many staff members you have and so forth but if you can do exit screening we do consider it to be a preventive step the most effective steps the most effective means of prevention are that entry and exit screening both entry and exit strict key control those consistent patrols we talked about and specific exhibit alarms especially if they're tied to video surveillance if you have alarms that tell you that somebody is getting too close to the artwork it's not going to go anywhere else the police aren't coming for that and if it's tied to a video camera and you can look at a monitor and see what's taking place if you're going to call the police at least you can give them a description of what's taking place or you can respond to it properly internally if you have a better idea of exactly what's going on for entry screening you have to consider the number of staff people that you have available if you have enough to have two staff members at every entrance that you're actually monitoring what your daily visitor traffic level is the type of inspection you're going to perform or you're going to use metal detection or you're going to put a bag on a table or you're going to have them walk through an arch what type of inspection you think that you can conduct and can you afford it what's the configuration of the entry ways so that way different types of electronics can be applied how many entries do you have and what are the restricted items you need to have those listed then you got to conduct the staff training to make sure that people who are doing the screening know exactly how they're supposed to handle certain things there are a number of different places that you can go for help and one of those is IFCPP and in the book Safeguarding Curriculum Property covers a lot of these things that we're talking about particularly the policies there's another publication called Suggested Guidelines in Museum Security that's available through AAM and ASIS and that's a free publication Suggested Guidelines so time to go to the questions except that we don't have enough time and so I'm going to send the questions to you for written answers and I'll post them with the recording and in the meantime please fill out the evaluation link and I think we have to quit now but this was great thank you so much Steve and thank you for everyone who came and so once the advertisement for the webinar is no longer on the homepage you can find the recording the handouts, the answers to questions everything in the archive so thank you very much, thank you Steve thank you Mike and we'll see you next month