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Security industry in favour of body armour regulation |
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| Written by Kathleen Sibley, on Mon-September-2009 |
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“There are lot of people who think personal body armour should
be viewed same way the hard hat is viewed,” explains Marentette. One
respondent, he says, commented that the use of body armour should be
considered safety equipment, much like steel-toed boots or reflective
vests. “Security deals with what-if scenarios,” the respondent wrote.
“Various levels (of government) ensure that law enforcement people have
all matter of safety equipment but they will not make the same effort
for security personnel.”
But before any such regulations are adopted, there are issues
that need to be resolved, Marentette says. For one, who will pay for
the cost of the criminal record check, the equipment and the licence,
the employer or the employee? Although survey respondents favoured the
employer bearing the costs, the high turnover in the industry could
pose some challenges to that approach. On the other hand, some
employees will require custom-fit equipment, which could incur
considerable costs, Marantette notes.
But not everyone agrees with the proposal.
Mike Jagger, founder and president of Vancouver-based security
firm Provident Security Corp., says such legislation will probably do
little to deter criminals or solve the problem.
“You’re talking about a group of people who make their living
importing and distributing illegal drugs and shoot at rival gang
members with illegal guns,” he says. “I fail to see how regulating the
sale of body armour does anything to impact that other than getting in
the way of regular people.”
Creating more laws might look good, but that’s about it, he
says. “There are more than enough rules in place right now that they
can’t enforce,” Jagger says. “There aren’t enough resources to enforce
what already exists, so adding more rules and levels of bureaucracy — I
don’t get it.”
It shouldn’t be up to the government to decide who is or is
not at risk, he says. It’s obvious that body armour is necessary for
some jobs, such as that of armoured car driver or police officer or
corrections officer, but often it’s more a matter of how threatened the
employee feels.
“It feels to me like legislation created for the purpose of
being seen to do something without a lot of thought going into what’s
the purpose,” he adds. “I think personal safety is just that — it’s
personal, and employees need to be empowered to communicate whether or
not they feel safe in a situation and do whatever it takes to be safe.
They should never be put at risk, and that’s a combination of having a
good company and people being responsible for themselves. If you’re
missing one of those things, legislation is not going to have much of
an impact.”
Jagger disagrees that body armour should be seen the same way as a
helmet or a seatbelt. Treating it as an occupational health and safety
issue is just “one of the best of the worst ways” to handle it, he
says.
“If it’s really about personal safety, then why not focus on
getting that message out to employees to educate them on what they can
do to better protect themselves irrespective of who they work for?”
CSIS’s next step is to send the B.C. government a letter outlining the results of the survey.
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