5,000,000 Reasons Why
Initial Perspectives on the New York State Enhanced Security Guard Course

By Erica D. Harrison, CPP

You may have received one of the over 900 letters from DCJS that announced the new enhanced “Train the Trainer” 40-hour course that is part of New York State’s Enhanced Security Guard initiative along with Office of Homeland Security. Apparently, the letter was a successful missive. Not only were there over 30 people in the class I attended last week, but the trainers announced that registration for the future scheduled courses is near or at capacity. Why are so many in our industry willing to take a full week of training?

Money is the motivator. However, it is a motivator on more than one level. The “legs” that are built into this enhanced training program will probably reverberate through the security industry long after the dollars that initiated the push are used up.

As many are already aware, Local 32BJ in New York City has made a concerted effort to unionize security guards. The organization started several enhanced counter terrorism courses over a year ago, and has promoted the idea of improved training with vigor. You can see the connection between 32BJ and the legislation supporting the Enhanced Security Guard Training Course. The “carrot” is tax credits for large building owners and the details
are described in Section 26 of the tax law. Building owners (or their contractors) must pay guards wage rates that meet union scale. The 32BJ logo appears on the cover of Philip P.
Purpura’s “The Security Handbook Second Edition”—a required book for the course.

In quick overview, $5,000,000 has been allocated annually for three years, by the New York State Legislature to be credited to building owners of single structures encompassing 500,000 square feet or more who comply with this new section of the tax law. The owners can either use inhouse or contract guards but all must have the required enhanced training and get the required (or higher) wages. The credit can be up to $3000 per guard per year.

Since the training program has just been released, those building owners who get their guards trained in 2006, presumably can get a pro-rated amount of the credit for 2006.

Why the rush to get the training completed this year? The tax credit money is allocated on a first-come first-serve basis. So a building owner, who in 2006 met the wage requirements for both 2005 and 2006, can apply for a tax credit of $3000 per officer against taxes that are owed in the various sections of the tax law.

A building owner with 30 security guards on site, who qualify, can receive up to $90,000 in credits. If that amount is more than he owes (beyond the minimum required tax payment) then he can get the balance as a refund from New York State! Or he can leave it as an overpayment to be used against future tax liabilities. Moreover, if he keeps 30 officers who have the enhanced training employed for all of the next year, when he applies for the credit the following year, he is in a priority position to get the full $90,000 as well.

Is there a cost associated with this? Of course. However the benefits may far exceed the expense.

The people hired to put this program together did it with an underlying intention to take the course ‘on the road’ in the future, since the tax relief law has only a 3-year life right now. Chances are this particular 40-hour program or a similar one will be promoted toward becoming a requirement in all states. The selling point for the course developers: it establishes that governments are serious about including the private sector in preparedness, and professionalizing “guards.”

The developers of The Enhanced Security Guard Training Program for New York built the course with the traditional ‘goal-objective-activity’ layout that has become familiar to everyone who writes (or suffers through) collegelevel curricula. And in many ways it is dry—even if the information is intense. Presenters, especially those delivering the material in New York City, have to keep delivery enlivened with many examples, hands-on classroom exercises, film/video-clips, etc. Keep it relevant and exciting for participants. (Eventually, people who complete the course may get more than certificates. Likely, the material will be certified as the equivalent of a college-level course and applicable in a degree-granting program, thus enhancing the training’s value to participants.)

Meanwhile, those who complete the Enhanced Course in 2006 do not have to also take their annual 8-hour refresher guard course this year. The Enhanced training counts toward that requirement in the year you take it! Tom Creamer, the lead presenter for the Enhanced Training Course, delivered some interesting pointers to help security officers improve their antiterrorism awareness (“Deterrence Through Preparedness”). He described ways to help patrol officers look at surroundings beyond the building perimeter and do it from an antiterrorism perspective:

• What about the ‘homeless people’ near your building? Officers doing exterior patrols come to expect the same homeless people on the same streets near their sites each shift. Are they really homeless? As Newsday recently reported, a naturalized American citizen from Iraq was a leader of the Mujahedeen Khalq, “a foreign terrorist organization.” She has been: “living at a women’s shelter in Manhattan” [at night] and she has been seen as a homeless woman on a busy Manhattan street.
  
  
• What about “new” homeless people in the locale?
  
  
• When someone is taking pictures near your building, do officers go up to the individual, engage the person in conversation and ask questions such as: “Are you a tourist? Where from? May I see your pictures?” Their behavior helps convince the wrong people to choose another target, not your building.
  
  
• What about a new food kiosk on the next street, especially the one where there are more people working than it looks as if there is business to support?
  
  
• Do your officers carry binoculars? They should.
  
  
• After completing the Enhanced Training, if officers spot a vacuum loaded tank truck, something that ought not to be on Manhattan streets, they will be able to recognize it as such. Then, based on the information in the Emergency response Guidebook (required course material), they can make appropriate notifications, perhaps while there is still time to do something.
  
  
• Let’s stop referring to them as suicide bombers— says Tom. “They are homicide
  bombers.” Recently, the shrapnel in their bombs is glass—it doesn’t show up on x-rays and means every wound on each victim has to be‘excavated’ in detail.
  
  
• If there is an explosion, beware that there is a likelihood of a secondary or tertiary explosion to hurt first responders as well.
  
  
• Review the NYS booklet called: New Permits, Licenses and ID Cards, with your security team. The enhancements and security coding on the new cards makes them harder to ‘fake’ and alter —but officers have to know what to look for.
  
  From my perspective, it is also time to review the cameras and recording devices used at your building as per: “The Future of Video Technology” from our spring 2006 Security Director Magazine. Moreover, if you are spending money to deliver this enhanced program to guards in the New York metropolitan area there are specific items to address:
  
  
• Select presenters who consider your guards as “officers” and are not afraid to use that word. Many people without private security experience, who only have law enforcement or military backgrounds, find some other euphemism. It doesn’t wash.
  
  
• Select presenters who can integrate the material in the Enhanced Guard Training program with the FDNY requirements in Local Law 26 and your Evacuation Action Plan Director, fire safety directors, fire wardens and fire safety plan. The information delivered has to be comprehensive and geared toward the results you want, not necessarily just what is in the course text. For instance, “Sheltering in Place” (SIP) has gotten mixed reviews from building tenants who were in New York City on 9/11 and during black-outs. In this program, you have the opportunity to
  coordinate and train officers on “selling” the SIP idea to tenants for responding to certain situations. Moreover, how exactly do you want officers to conduct themselves in your building(s) during such events? How will they convince tenants to go along with the plan? Did I hear someone say: “Table Top Exercises, Role-Playing Activities?”
  
  
• Have the guards complete the First Aid, new CPR and new AED training before they sit for the Enhanced course. If team members cannot get through those essential parts of the course first, then the balance of what you will require of them is not going to count. Better to spend this lesser amount of money and know up front.
  
  
• The National Incident Management System (NIMS) certification can be done on-line as a self-study course, before formal classes as well. It establishes your officers’ computer-competency and ability to learn material in a course structure. Even if you have to spend the money to cover the couple of hours it takes to master the information and then have the officers complete the NIMS test, the idea is to not
  waste a larger amount on people who will not be able to absorb or work through more intense material.
  
  
• Do it now! If your own organization can either get money back from New York State, qualify for tax credits, or you as a guard supplier serve such ownership, get all the guards through training in 2006. If you wish a list of people who have completed training in the Enhanced program and are certified to deliver the course on a “Train the Trainer” basis, or deliver it directly to security guards, contact me at: harrison99@mail.com, or erica.harrison@gmail.com. I will share the names of those with whom I trained and those who can do the updated First Aid, CPR and AED training on-site, etc.

Interestingly, among the people taking this Enhanced Course last week, were directors and managers from public sector organizations as well as private. They will be carrying the enhanced program back to use in training management personnel, law enforcement officers and security personnel who work for them in a wide variety of public venues. Hopefully we will all benefit from improved professionalization among those we meet in school systems, local government offices and at local New York State Parks.

My special thanks to Tom Creamer, New York State Office of Homeland Security, State Preparedness Training Director and the other presenters: Michele McDonald, Jim Turley, and Benjamin Webster, who delivered the NYS Enhanced Security Guard Training Program “Train the Trainer” at Suffolk Fire Academy, Yapank, New York, October 2-6, 2006.

Even if it is impossible to get the enhanced training completed for your officers this year, put it on the calendar for 2007, and include it in your budget. Who knows? If the legislation is extended; if the size of the buildings covered shrinks; if as a contractor, you win bids to cover additional major high-rises, then you will be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities and every officer on your team will be better prepared to assist you!

Erica D. Harrison, CPP, Security Director at Guardian Security, Inc. and President of AIMS Testing Inc., has been working with the New York City chapter of ASIS International since 1985. She has produced and moderated the seminar programs for the chapter trade show since 1990, and she writes extensively on security issues affecting chapter membership. A former Assistant Regional VP, Erica holds a bachelor’s degree from SUNY Stony Brook and a master’s from Greenwich University.

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