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American Morning

Interview of William Whitmore, Allied Security

Aired November 23, 2001 - 07:47   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: There's not a lot of action yet, but things may change as the sun comes up and the hours pass - we'll see. Security at malls and shopping centers like the Pentagon City Mall may be a big concern for many of you as you begin your annual shopping frenzy today. So on this busy shopping day we'd like to give you some safety tips. The man to do that for us this morning is William Whitmore. He is president and chief operating officer of Allied Security, the nation's largest independently held security services company and he's in Philadelphia this morning. Happy day after Thanksgiving to you. Thank you for coming in today.

WILLIAM WHITMORE, PRESIDENT AND CEO OF ALLIED SECURITY: Morning Leon.

HARRIS: All right now we've put together what you've got as a top 10 list of security tips for folks who go out and shop. Let's look at the first five here. All right we've got one, walk confidently and be alert; two, keep shopping bags inside at all time; don't burden yourself with too many; never display large sums of cash; use checks, credit, or debit cards when possible; and keep credit, debit cards in your hand until making transactions. Now this is basically just good common sense, right?

WHITMORE: Well this list is a combination of common sense plus information from incidents that have happened in the past. We see that shoppers when they lose credit cards or lose cash, frequently leave those items exposed and unattended, such as putting (INAUDIBLE) on top of a counter while they're conducting a transaction. So yes, it's partially common sense and as a result, the incidents that we've seen in the past.

HARRIS: Yes. All right, let's look at the next five now. And why don't you walk us through the next five here?

WHITMORE: I'm sorry. I can't see that.

HARRIS: Oh you can't see it. OK, here we go. It says carry a handbag close to your body with the clasp toward you. That's, I'm assuming, for women who are carrying handbags.

WHITMORE: It is and what that's meant to be is we see people with pocketbooks that are opened in the top, they leave their wallet exposed, and you know, in a mall or even in an urban shopping area, that pocketbook becomes exposed. HARRIS: All right, you say never leave purses on counters.

WHITMORE: Right. We see people go up to counters, take out their purse, pull credit cards out, conduct a transaction and then turn around to grab their wallet - it's missing from the countertop.

HARRIS: Speaking of wallets, the next one is men should carry wallets in a front or buttoned pocket.

WHITMORE: Absolutely. The front pocket, it's much less likely to be exposed, you know, if somebody wants to pick a pocket. The other thing is put all your valuables in a button-down pocket.

HARRIS: How about this one - this next one is interesting. You say shop with friends when possible - why is that?

WHITMORE: Well especially if you're carrying a lot of bags. Your friends can carry bags for you. If you become distracted they can watch after your belongings. So shopping with friends becomes important. I think you have to keep in mind here that these tips were put together because the first line of defense is that the shopper is aware of their surroundings and they provide defensive tactics such as provided here.

HARRIS: Yes and that vein, the final piece of advice here is to report suspicious people or situations to security immediately. Now how - now how do you do that without basically - without going overboard?

WHITMORE: Well I don't think you overboard. If you pick up an emergency phone in a mall or if you approach a security officer in a mall, I don't think that's going overboard. That's you know frankly doing a duty to report suspicious activity or suspicious people.

HARRIS: However, what is suspicious to some may not be suspicious to all. So there's got to be some sort of a threshold there for what suspicious activity is.

WHITMORE: Well I think if you see people walking around looking in people's purses, attempting to grab a wallet out of a purse, that's the type of activity that you would report as suspicious.

HARRIS: Yes.

WHITMORE: I think if you see a person in a parking lot that's walking around looking inside of cars, that's suspicious activity that you should report.

HARRIS: Now this sort of advice is the kind of advice that you would give out I'm sure every single year. But are things necessarily much more, I don't know, critical this year because of what happened on September 11th? Are you seeing security stepped up dramatically across the country?

WHITMORE: Well security has been stepped up - there's no question since September 11th, we've seen increases in number of security officers at malls and other clients increase. What we've also seen is with new threats, new incidents that may happen, what we've done is we've had to beef up training for you know unusual circumstances that we never expected before.

HARRIS: Yes.

WHITMORE: I think the other thing that's happened is the public private partnership of law enforcement has been phenomenal, and I'm reporting to you from Philadelphia today where the Philadelphia Police Department, as an example, is going out of their way, under John Timoney's guidance, the police commissioner, to share information with private security and private business and tactics they can use in the event there is an issue.

HARRIS: Yes. Are you expecting to see an uptick in crime this particular holiday season because - and the reason I ask you that is because for weeks now we've been talking about how the level of patriotism has picked up across the country and people seem to pull together and there seems to be more of a spirit of comradery across the country that we haven't seen before. And you would think or at least I would think as a layman, that perhaps that kind of atmosphere would not be one in which crime would actually - would surge at all. You would think crime would go down.

WHITMORE: I don't think crime increases. I haven't seen any statistics to indicate that even in previous years it increased during the holiday season. Now I'm separating crime involving shoppers and loss prevention with retailers. We have not seen any indication that that goes up during the holidays.

One advantage a shopper has is frankly more eyes and ears out there to provide protection. We simply have more people out there. So no we don't expect any uptick and I think that the law operators have been vigilant in providing refresher training and also updating disaster recovery plan so that if there is an incident we're better able to handle any situation.

HARRIS: Yes, well here's hoping for the best year. William Whitmore we thank you very much for your time this morning.

WHITMORE: Thank you Leon.

HARRIS: Good luck to you. Take care.

WHITMORE: Thank you.

HARRIS: Happy holidays.

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