More Than Meets the Eye

Sep 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Don Garbera

Living in New York can be an extremely rewarding experience for students who come to receive an art education. The cultural environment, coupled with the diversity of its inhabitants, can broaden someone's outlook on life, and perhaps even shape their artistic destiny.

Keeping safe the students and staff who use campus buildings, surrounding areas and classrooms at the School of Visual Arts, located in New York City's Midtown area, is director of security Nick Agjmurati's job. Agjmurati is responsible for more than 3,500 art students and numerous employees, as well as the physical security of 10 campus buildings.

Established in 1947, the School of Visual Arts provides an environment that nurtures creativity, inventiveness and experimentation. Among the notable individuals who have attended the School of Visual Arts are Pete Hamill, author and journalist; Bill Plympton, Academy-Award nominee, Guard Dog; Bryan Singer, director, X-Men, and Carlos Saldanha, co-director, Ice Age and Robots.

Agjmurati has been with the School of Visual Arts (SVA) for more than 17 years. Prior to this post, he was with Union 32BJ, in New York City, which is responsible for management companies in the security industry. He was a security officer for Greenthol, one of the union companies, which is involved in providing security for upscale residential buildings. His next position was assistant manager at an apartment complex, also in New York City, where he met Silas Rhodes, founder and chairman of the board of SVA. Rhodes asked him to join the school in a transportation capacity.

A year after joining the staff, Agjmurati became supervisor of security. In 1993, the executive vice-president of the school, Anthony Rhodes, made him director of security. “When I started, there were no cameras and recording equipment, and just nine security officers,” Agjmurati says. “There also was no 24-hour security. The doors of campus buildings were just locked with keys.”

Agjmurati built the security department virtually from the ground up. Today, there are 60 security officers, five supervisors, and more than 200 cameras — from Sony, Toshiba, Panasonic and JVC — strategically placed throughout the campus buildings. The cameras monitor student residences, lobbies and staircases as well as entrances and exits. Day/night units — which require less light because they go from color during the day to black-and-white at night — are used to patrol the outside perimeters of buildings. Because outside cameras are monitored and recorded all the time, the security department often receives requests from the New York Police Department to view their surveillance recordings.

Motion detectors from Rokonet are used throughout the college.

All campus buildings have constant CCTV surveillance. Three of the buildings are all digital, while the others still use analog equipment. Agjmurati hopes to eventually have all buildings on a digital system.

The security command center houses Panasonic IP-based digital recorders, which can be accessed from virtually any computer on the network, and a Panasonic 360 controller and Tote Vision monitors.

Students are issued an identification card from the registrar's office that is made with OnGuard software from Lenel Systems. All security stations have their own laptop computers that are directly connected to the registrar's student database. If a student leaves his or her ID card at home, the officer can easily find the student, by name, for entrance into a building.

Card access is used in the master's degree design department where students are issued a prox card. Ilco Unican card readers enable 24-hour access to studios.

“This was set up for the safety of students' personal creative art work, which could be stolen, and the protection of elaborate computer equipment,” says Keith Martin of KTM Electronics, New York, the vendor that also maintains the equipment.

Napco Gemini Series burglar alarm panels are used throughout the SVA buildings, as well as some older Ademco (now Honeywell) panels. Notifier Model AF 400 and AF 1010 fire alarm panels are also part of campus buildings.

Security officers are all proprietary. Two of the five supervisors are former NYPD police officers, and there is an assistant director of security and a receptionist. Security personnel wear a tie and blue blazer that includes the school logo. They are also required to wear their New York State ID badge and nametag.

Officers receive on-going training, in house, by either outside agencies or in-house management. Training consists of safety procedures, incident reporting, fire safety, handling bomb threats, evacuation drills, CPR procedures, customer service and phone etiquette. This training is beyond the basic requirement of the State of New York.

“Our supervisors spend a lot of time in the field doing hands-on training to enhance consistency of customer service and safety, as well as for morale purposes,” Agjmurati says.

SVA dormitories include roving officers who conduct vertical control of the buildings and “detect” patrols (determining whether officers are making their rounds correctly). Officers use a Detex wand system that must be swiped on each floor. Officers communicate via two-way Nextel radios.

The “My Best Friend” case

Recently, a female student reported that $500 was missing from her shoulder bag. Officers immediately began interviewing students to determine if there were any witnesses to the robbery. The victim's best friend was particularly helpful in the search process. She personally left no stone unturned when it came to asking questions of fellow students and checking desks, etc. But, no money was recovered. At the end of the day, investigators went over security recordings of the area where the crime was perpetrated. The recorded images revealed that the $500 was actually “lifted” from the shoulder bag by the victim's so-called best friend.

The victim refused to accept the fact that her “best friend” could do such a thing. After being shown the recorded images, however, she finally accepted it. Needless to say, action was taken. And, the friendship was terminated.

The “Going Away Gift”

Another successfully handled incident involved the report of two flat screen monitors and two computers missing from the design department.

“At first we suspected that it might be one of the building's maintenance staff or a student,” Agjmurati says. “When we reviewed the recordings from the previous night, we saw a male who, at first, appeared to be a stranger wearing street clothes and a hat pulled down over his face to conceal his identity.”

The person was traveling back-and-forth between the design department and the elevator, carrying loaded garbage bags on a small dolly. After a while, the man removed his coat and hat to make himself more comfortable. “He revealed his uniform and the fact that he was one of our security officers,” Agjmurati says.

The man thought he could steal the equipment undetected by only using hallways that appeared on his monitoring station. The central station, however, still picked up the images. “The irony of the situation is that he tried to pull off the heist the night before the day he was to retire,” Agjmurati says. “I guess he was trying to give himself a little going away gift. The way it turned out is the NYPD took care of that for him.”

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, circle the Reader Service number (listed below) or visit securitysolutions.com

Detex	61
Honeywell	62
Ilco	63
JVC	64
KTM Electronics	65
Lenel Systems Intl. Inc.	66
Napco	67
Nextel	68
Notifier	69
Panasonic	70
Rokonet	71
Sony	72
Toshiba	73
Tote Vision	74

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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