Page 22 - Campus Security & Life Safety, January/February 2020

“If your school possesses athletic
fields, their protection should be
part of your overall school security
management program.” By Bruce Canal
Safeguarding Your Athletic Fields
Tips on keeping your field of dreams from becoming a liability nightmare
Sports Security
When I was a kid I would often head to the schoolyard after class for a pickup game of baseball or soccer. Even as an adult, I have gone jogging on my local high school track after work. While having easy access to these open fields was great for me, I wonder if those schools gave much thought to the liability of me being on their property.
Now that my job involves safety and security issues for K-12 and higher education institutions, it is something I caution school admin- istrators about a lot. Protecting school property is not just about safety and security.
It is also about liability and risk management. While virtually all schools channel resources into protecting everyone in the building during school hours, it is also important that they protect their ath- letic fields after the bell has rung.
According to the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4), a leading research and education organization focused on threats and safety issues related to sports venues, “This forgotten period [when interscholastic athletics and after-school activities occur] remains a weak link in the safety and security plan- ning of our nation’s schools with little, and in some cases, no under- standing of the potential threats.”
To address this shortcoming, NCS4 offers school faculty and staff an extensive array of training courses as well as access to a knowledge base of best practices that can help them improve their safety and security position and mitigate risks. The partnership between NCS4 and a school often begins with a survey of students and parents to assess “the feeling of security” among its constituents.
From there, NCS4 works with the school to create a viable security plan that would include some best practices the school might con- sider adopting.
While the complete list of those school security best practices is too lengthy to enumerate here, I would like to highlight a few for your consideration.
Creating a Secure Barrier: Fencing and Lighting
An open field is essentially an open invitation for crime. And once someone is on your property, you could be held liable for anything that happens to them. So I would suggest all school sport fields be secured by at least a six-foot high, nine-gauge chain link fence with a lockable gate. And the fencing should allow no more than two points of entry.
This first line of safety and security can protect the site from ran- dom trespassers – whether a bunch of innocent kids gathering for a pickup game, a vandal intent on trashing the place, or even a vagrant looking for a place to bed down.
During practices, and on game day, a secure barrier can help school staff manage the flow of spectators, deny entry to banned individuals and prevent vehicles from driving onto the field and causing harm.
Keeping the area well lit is another important deterrent. Aug- menting the enclosure with motion-triggered floodlighting effec- tively discourages anyone who might be contemplating scaling the fence after hours. And it saves the cost of keeping the lights on all the time.
Another best practice is to illuminate the parking lot during sport- ing events. You can program the lights to go on at dusk on a game night and stay on until an hour or so after the game concludes to give cars time to exit the lot.
From there, you can switch to motion-triggered lighting as a loiter- ing or trespassing deterrent as mentioned above. Keep in mind that lighting should be adequate enough to illuminate people walking between and around parked vehicles.
Controlling Access: Keycards, Touchpads and Cameras
Many schools distribute master keys to faculty and staff authorized to open concession stands, equipment sheds, the announcer’s booth and other locked facilities used during athletic events.
The problem with this approach is that master keys get lost or retir- ing staff who leave the job forget to turn them in at the exit interview. So to maintain security, schools have to spend time and money re- coring all the locks.
A best practice would be to replace those metal key systems with card readers and touchpad locks. Keycards can be quickly repro- grammed with a few keystrokes. If a card is lost, the school’s database administrator can simply go into the keycard file and disable that keycard’s ability to open any doors, preventing anyone who finds it from using it.
Alternatively, schools could forego the card readers in favor of touchpads, assigning authorized faculty and staff their own unique pin codes to unlock doors. When an employee is no longer privi- leged to access these facilities their pin code can easily be deleted from the system.
If running electricity to any of the locked facilities is a problem, there are battery-operated models of card readers and touchpads that can be easily installed.
Cameras can provide another layer of safety and security. I am not talking about the smartphones that family and friends are using to capture the action or even the broadcast cameras operated by the local TV station airing the game. I am referring to a few well-placed security cameras that can create a forensic history of the day’s or night’s events.
In addition to having a record of what is happening on the field of play, I would suggest cameras monitoring your transaction areas like the ticket booth and the concession stands as well as your high asset areas like the athletic equipment shed and the announcer’s booth with its expensive audio system.
Other areas you might consider keeping a camera’s eye on are the bleachers and the sidelines where incidents between fans can flare up
22 campuslifesecurity.com | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020