The brave new world of business security - security devices for small businesses - Enterprise 2000

Nation's Business, May, 1996 by Dale D. Buss

Gee-whiz products and technology-based services are giving small firms new crime-stopping options.

When Jack Parker installed two video cameras to continually pan the parking lot of his Landmark Restaurant in Fresno, Calif., a little over a year ago, his intention was simply to make his customers feel secure. More and more patrons had been telling him that they didn't feel safe when heading to their cars because of aggressive pan-handlers they encountered. Some feared they might even cross paths with more-violent individuals.

By installing the monitors above the restaurants bar, his bartenders could easily watch over patrons. Soon, however, customers joined the effort, keeping an eye on the monitors to help out one another. Eventually, some patrons began to regard watching the parking lot not only as a security measure but also as entertainment of sorts.

"Sometimes it competes pretty well with what's on TV for the attention of my customers," says Parker, who invested about $2,600 in the cameras and monitors.

Parker's decision to install the cameras illustrates the growing determination of small-business owners to address head-on the safety concerns of their employees and customers. And his customers' enthusiastic response underscores Americans' increasing comfort level with a more-aggressive approach to crime.

Such attitudes are signs of a growing belief that businesses and their customers can make themselves safer in a society that seems increasingly criminal and dangerous.

If statistics were their guide, however, Americans would be feeling more physically secure these days than they have in years.

According to the latest FBI statistics, the nation's law-enforcement agencies reported a 1 percent decrease in serious crime for the first six months of 1995 compared with the first six months of 1994, and that followed a 2 percent decline for all of 1994 compared with 1993.

Despite that encouraging trend, businesses and individuals continue to spend increasing amounts of money trying to protect themselves against crime.

According to the Security Industry Association, a trade group based in Alexandria, Va., growth in the security products and services business is about 6 percent a year, and dealer sales for the major portions of the industry climbed to more than $11 billion last year from more than $9 billion in 1991.

With statistics showing that serious crime has tapered off, why is spending for personal and business security on the increase? Analysts offer several reasons for the apparent incongruity. Most important, they say, is that while many types of crime actually are easing, Americans still perceive criminal activity as an increasing threat.

"The more crime that people hear about and the media report on, the more people start to think about doing something for themselves," says Jim Paletz, president and owner of The Safety Source Inc., a Plymouth, Minn., company that sells security devices through catalogs.

After Americans watched in horror as crime rates rose for decades, they are going to want to see a steeper, longer decline before they're convinced that anything has fundamentally changed, say experts on crime.

"Crime went past Americans' threshold of pain so long ago that even a decline of 10 percent to 15 percent wouldn't change how people feel about their own personal security," says Albert Janjigian, principal of STAT Resources Inc., a Brookline, Mass., research and consulting firm that specializes in the security business.

Liability concerns are also motivating companies to invest in security measures. "Business owners know that if they have just one incident that could have been prevented by more attention to security, it could cost them dearly in terms of liability," says Jerry Aris, president of Citizens Against Crime, in Dallas. The firm has 40 franchised operations around the U.S. that give seminars for business on crime-thwarting techniques.

The declining cost of electronic and microprocessor-based technologies and the increasing variety and availability of new products are also fueling business interest in security measures.

The cost decline has enabled small firms to buy many types of sophisticated devices that once were affordable only to large companies. And specialty retail outlets are popping up around the country. Among them is Security World, a chain of eight stores owned by Winner International Corp., a Sharon, Pa., company that popularized The Club, a device designed to thwart car theft.

Of course, security guards still account for a huge segment of an industry that is growing in nearly every respect. There were about 1.5 million private security guards in 1990, When they outnumbered public law-enforcement officers by a ratio of 2-to-1. And that ratio is expected to grow to nearly 3-to-1 by the year 2000, according to the Hallcrest Security Report, a McLean, Va.-based monitor of the industry.

Central alarm systems operated by Honeywell Corp. and others also are a huge part of the business, accounting for more than $3 billion a year in sales, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank.