In the News

Apr 1, 1997 12:00 PM, BY George Partington

Metorex got the call on Monday morning, February 24, the day after a 69-year-old Palestinian man opened fire on innocent bystanders visiting the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building in New York City. According to media reports, he killed one man and injured six others before taking his own life.

The call came from security officials at the famous skyscraper. They had closed the deck to the public, but when they reopened they wanted to be sure that guns were kept out.

They called, on a referral, Monday morning, relates John Bruns, technical support supervisor for Metorex, a supplier of metal detectors. They asked how soon we could get there, and we delivered the metal detectors that afternoon and set them up Monday night.

The Princeton, N.J., company (with headquarters in Espoo, Finland) did not have far to go. Metorex was already in Manhattan for Access Control's Security Systems Integration Conference and Expo, and some of its employees were called away for the Tuesday morning reopening of the observation deck.

The Metor 200 metal detector can be set up within 15 minutes, according to the company. The walk-through device is active continuously to prevent handguns from being passed, slid, tossed or dragged through undetected. The Empire State had four installed. The Metor 200 is well-suited to applications involving public access, such as tourist attractions. A vertical row of lights along the side indicates the location of the detected metal, facilitating a search with one of the 10 newly purchased battery-operated, hand-held Metor 22 metal detectors.

The Metor 200 detector will ignore small amounts of metal. It is looking at the entire field, so the combination of metal in your shoes, your belt, your change, your pens, your watch, your eyeglasses, won't produce an alarm, say Bruns. Rather than sum up the amount of metal in the entire field, the Metor 200 looks at eight different zones. Each zone is summing individually - not cumulatively - so you can carry more metal through without a true alarm, explains Bruns.

More importantly, any amount and type of metal used in handguns will be detected, including steel, aluminum, zinc alloys and mixed alloys.

On February 25 at 9:30 a.m., the Empire State Building's 86th floor observation deck reopened. Tourists from every corner of the world returned. Before taking in the view, they walked through one of four metal detectors.

Training reduces employee theft Entry-level restaurant and fast-food employees admit to stealing an annual average of $238 each in cash and merchandise from their employer, according to a recent survey conducted by McGraw-Hill/London House and the National Food Service Security Council. Managers confessed to taking an average of $89 each year.

The Second Annual Survey of Restaurant and Fast Food Employees questioned 1,204 hourly employees and first-line managers from 1,204 separate food service operations regarding their work attitudes and how often they engage in counterproductive behaviors such as workplace theft.

Employee theft cuts into an operation's bottom line significantly, says Scott Martin, Ph.D., director of psychological consulting, McGraw-Hill/London House. For example, using the study's theft admissions and assuming 20 percent of restaurant employees are managers and 80 percent are hourly employees, Martin says a company of 2,000 restaurants could lose $12.5 million per year to internal theft.

The study said that companies can mitigate these losses by providing training in workplace security and business ethics.

The thief's psychology The study found that theft was highest among employees who held these work attitudes:

* My coworkers view theft as acceptable behavior. * I can steal from my employer any time I want. * I've been treated unfairly by my current employer. Employees who held positive attitudes about providing customer service were half as likely to steal from their employer.

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