Making a community safer - New World Security Associates Inc helps make Boston, Massachusett's Mattapan section safer

Nation's Business, Feb, 1994 by Harriet Webster

When Cassie Farmer and Roberta Adams go to work each day, they head for one of Boston's most violent neighborhoods. Farmer, 41, and Adams, 38, president and vice president respectively of New World Security Associates, Inc., work out of a crowded warren of offices tucked into the second story of a wood-frame building on Blue Hill Avenue in Boston's Mattapan section. Their business provides security services for credit unions, malls, health centers, and more than 2,500 units of subsidized housing. Security officers are also contracted for public events and for private parties.

Farmer, a former middle-school math teacher with an MBA, met Adams in 1988 when Farmer was hired to untangle financial problems at the small security company where Adams worked. Within two years, the owner decided to move on to new ventures, and Farmer and Adams bought the company.

"We pooled our funds and went for broke," Farmer says. To finance the endeavor, the two scraped together $20,000 in loans of $1,000 and $2,000 from friends, and New World Security was incorporated in May 1990.

The women inherited several accounts, 15 employees, and one vehicle. They won't disclose revenue figures, but they say annual revenue has increased fivefold and New World Security now employs 85.

The biggest factor in their growth, they say, was their ability to attract a substantial new client, the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency (MHFA), a state contractor responsible for managing thousands of units of assisted housing-- privately owned units subsidized by the state and the federal government. The MHFA was drawn to New World because the company is minority-owned, is based in the community it serves, and offers an armed security force--a service unavailable from many other security companies.

"They came to us with a very creative security patrol plan," says Ned Epstein, director of housing management for MHFA. '|Ve've had very favorable feedback about their management techniques from tenants, owners, management agents, and the police."

Farmer says that to be competitive and effective, New World had to include an armed force. "Our market calls for special police officers," she explains. "These are police officers who are under limited jurisdiction, but they're governed by the same rules that govern the Boston Police Department. They're trained by the Boston Police Academy, and they're licensed to arrest on MHFA properties." New World provides mobile patrols, foot patrols, and "site" workers, who are assigned to one locale.

Farmer and Adams spend their days meeting with clients, negotiating contracts, and consulting with their senior officers But come evening, Farmer, who has completed the same training program required of the officers on the armed force, sometimes straps on a .38-caliber pistol and makes the rounds of properties secured by the company. "I just need to know that our officers are doing their job," she says.

Adams attributes much of New World's success to the partners' commitment to listen carefully to both their employees and their clients. "We had one site that was generating a lot of overtime," she notes, "and our people had good ideas about how to control it."

Similarly, when employees complained that their uniforms made them look more like maintenance workers than security guards, new uniforms were purchased.

Bob Keville, New World's chief of security services and a former military police officer, says Farmer and Adams "are very open-minded. They're outstanding to work for because they really value your input."

In what proved to be a pivotal move, New World established a 24-hour hot line, increasing accessibility, reducing response time, and enabling the company to make arrests that would have been impossible otherwise. While other firms route tenant complaints through the property manager, New World makes its hot-line number available to the tenants themselves. "It's used every night, and 99 percent of the calls we get are legitimate," Adams says.

Farmer and Adams both live within a 10-minute drive of many of the properties their company helps secure. "I'm a Bostonian," Adams says. "I was born and raised here, and a lot of my relatives lived in public housing, so I spent a lot of nights there. I care about the community and being in the security business. It's a way of giving back."

Adams and Farmer recently bought a communications system that will let them expand, and they have begun to seek business outside the Boston area. "We've seen some hard times, and we'll see some more," Farmer says. "But we're betterpositioned now to deal with them."

Harriet Webster is a freelance writer in Gloucester, Mass.