Setting A Security Standard

Mar 1, 2008 12:00 PM, BY CAROL CAREY

The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) in Hattiesburg has spearheaded a groundbreaking sports security management program that it expects to go national in the next three years. With the help of a $3.5 million grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the 15,000-student university, through its Center for Spectator Sports Security Management, will develop curriculum and hold workshops aimed at establishing sports security standards and risk management certification for all Division I, II and III NCAA schools in the country.

“The grant will allow us to conduct a National Risk Management Training Certification program,” says Stacey Hall, the Sports Security Center's associate director. The three-year certification program will reach five key personnel at each of the 1,055 NCAA schools. It will be broken up into two 18-month phases, with the first stage focusing on curriculum development and the second on a series of training workshops at 80 regional sites.

Campus police, athletic facility managers, emergency medical service personnel, fire and Hazmat leaders and county emergency management directors will be among the experts participating in the workshops.

The national program is an outgrowth of a statewide threat assessment program funded by DHS and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency in 2005. The program was piloted at seven public universities, with the goal of identifying vulnerabilities at sports facilities and recommending improvements. Working with USM personnel was professional security firm Security Management Solutions, Birmingham, Ala.

“We felt there was an inconsistency in security policies at both professional and collegiate sports venues throughout America,” Hall explains. “The vulnerability study identified security weaknesses.”

Prominent among these weaknesses were physical security, such as access control and camera surveillance; planning for emergencies and evacuations; and multi-agency communication.

Security at both professional and collegiate sports events has come under increased scrutiny in recent years — from the Olympic bombing in Atlanta to out-of-control revelry to bomb threats.

DHS has identified the truck bombing of a sports arena to be among one of a dozen potential terror attacks it considers most devastating.

Dr. Lou Marciani, director of the Sports Security Center program, believes that college sports arenas are particularly vulnerable to acts of terrorism, as well as fan, player and crowd violence, because of a varying security emphasis throughout the college sports community.

Marciani would like to see USM become a national laboratory for sports security management, with state-of-the-art systems and procedures in place at its stadiums.

“We would eventually like to see the campus be an educational and training center for college, professional and corporate security management,” he notes, “and we're working with private and government sources to develop funds for this. We'd like to see the highest level of security technology at our football and baseball stadiums and our basketball arena.”

USM strengthens its stadium security

The school has already put in place a number of recommendations stemming from the 2005 vulnerability study, according to Bob Hopkins, chief of police at USM. At the 34,000-seat M.M. Roberts Stadium, perimeter security has been expanded, the gate-locking system has been strengthened, credentialing has been improved, additional lighting has been added and a video surveillance has been system installed. Plans are in place to add electronic access control for the fall football season. Interoperable communications are in place both within the campus and between USM and the neighboring first responder agencies, which are part of its mutual aid network.

Video and communications systems

“We've installed a DVR system from Dedicated Micros, Chantilly, Va., in the Roberts stadium,” Hopkins says, “with nine cameras, mostly from Sony. The cameras include two pan/tilt/zoom (PTZ) units, one of which is outside in the stadium and covers the field, seating areas and entry gates. The other PTZ camera is located in the large foyer in the stadium's athletic center, or indoor area. That foyer is the main access area to and from the building.”

“Other fixed cameras cover such areas as visitors' locker rooms, entrances and exits, offices, hallways, equipment rooms and visitor areas,” Hopkins says. The two-floor athletic center covers approximately 30,000 sq. ft.

“The DVR system will give us 30 days of recording capacity,” he says. “Some of the cameras can be motion-activated so that we are recording from them only when needed,” he says.

While the camera system is permanently installed in a communications room, a second Dedicated Micros system is brought in on game days and placed in a mobile command-and-control trailer. “The trailer has communications systems that allow us to contact fire, EMT, police, private security and athletic personnel, as well as vendors. It also contains weather-monitoring and telephone communications systems,” Hopkins says.

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