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Viewpoint |
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| Are community colleges training security officers to be cops? |
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Written by Brian Robertson
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Wednesday, 12 March 2008 |
In his presentation to the Private Sector Liaison Conference put on by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police in January of this year, Dr. Michael Kempa of the University of Ottawa drew attention to a troubling phenomenon. Researchers report that managers within the security industry fairly consistently describe the role of their industry in terms of crime prevention and proactive protection services, rather than in terms of law enforcement and order maintenance functions.
However, the little research that has been done on what security officers think suggests that “the worldview of many employees of the private security industry would seem to be at loggerheads with their own management’s stated desires.”
We all agree that the role of a security officer is different from the
role of a police officer, but apparently nobody told the security
officers.
This problem is less noticeable in provinces where officers have to
take a week-long basic level course before they can get licensed (BC,
SK, MB), and more noticeable in the provinces — like Ontario and
Alberta — where most of those officers who have any training at all
have Diplomas in Police Foundations (PFP) or Law and Security
Administration (LASA). One would hope that a person who has spent two
full years in college studying policing, security, and law would
understand the difference between a cop and a security officer. But
does he? Maybe not. There is certainly no suggestion that colleges
deliberately neglect this aspect of their students’ vocational
education. But there are a number of ways in which college programs
are traditionally structured that may be adding to the confusion.
(1) College programs designed to train police officers, non-police
officer law enforcement personnel, and private security personnel are
almost always all run out of the same program area, or even as
different “streams” in the same program. Should they be? Medical
schools don’t train nurses. Nursing schools don’t train doctors.
(2) Many college programs in this area have a common first year,
regardless of whether a person is going to be trained for policing or
security. But many of the “basic” topics taught in that year are
topics which are only “basic” if you are training to be a cop. How to
investigate a crime that has been committed is Cop 101. For most
security employees, though, the fullest role they’ll ever play in a
criminal investigation will be to rope off a crime scene, dial 911, and
be interviewed after the cops arrive.
(3) The traditional split is not into training for work in law
enforcement (Law Enforcement Foundations?) and training for work in the
private sector (Private Security Administration?). The split is into
training for work as police officers (Police Foundations) and training
for work in all other careers in law enforcement and security (Law and
Security Administration). So even in LASA programs the implicit
message is that law enforcement and private security are so closely
related that they don’t warrant separate programs.
(4) The vast majority of PFP/LASA instructors are retired police
and/or law enforcement officers. Too few college students receive
private security training from instructors who are from the private
security industry.
(5) Finally, there is the “elephant in the room” when it comes to
talking about PFP and LASA Programs … mismanaged student expectations.
Almost all students who enter PFP/LASA Programs plan to become cops or
law enforcement officers. Almost as many of them graduate with the
same ambition. Yet colleges have known for years that for every
graduate who makes it into a law enforcement career there (at least) 3
or 4 others who won’t, and that a significant majority of them will
come to the private security industry instead.
There are colleges all over Canada which now run programs that are
specifically designed to train students for careers in private
security. These programs are unafraid to call themselves “private
security” programs, and are successfully marketed to students as such.
Security employers should hire the graduates from these programs.
Security employers shouldn’t, however, be surprised when they hire
security officers with diplomas in policing instead, and then discover
that they think of themselves as junior cops.
Brian Robertson is the president of Diligent Security and Training based in Toronto, Ont.
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