On March 1 of this year, Kenneth Mazik barreled his SUV through a security fence at the Philadelphia Airport and drove onto the runway. Aircraft controllers were given only seconds to divert an incoming commercial jet before collision with the rogue vehicle. Fortunately, airport police and security were well prepared to deal with the incident; as Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan reported on ABC News: “The ground radar kicked in; the tower was alerted immediately and they made sure to divert flights coming in and then quickly shut the airport down.”
In an effort to state the state more than $13 million, the Michigan Department of Corrections has decided to eliminate the armed officers who protect the perimeter of 27 state prisons. The concern is that no one will be around to stop weapons, drugs, or other items from being thrown over the barbed wire fences to inmates. Instead, surveillance cameras around the perimeters will replace 120 patrol officers.
the Bureau addressed the need to address a broader spectrum of conditions, including vehicle types, attack velocities and acceptable penetration distances.
Achieving security awareness around perimeters and outdoor areas comes down to timely, credible alerts with detail to respond appropriately to the level of threat. Knowing the nature and location of an intrusion is the key to forming an effective response.
Outdoor perimeter security is an often-overlooked area of physical security design that can dramatically improve the effectiveness of a facility’s security system. If you are involved in designing or managing physical security the infrastructure located in the buildings likely consumes the majority of your budget.
Most everyone understands keeping military bases, embassies, courts, nuclear plants and other hard targets safe from terrorists. However, today, we must also keep retail shoppers safe, shield structures from accidental or intentional automobile crashes, protect hotel patrons from suicide car bombers, and keep employees and visitors from vehicle-based harm. From pedestrian-filled farmers markets and universities to new and used car lots, a wide variety of organizations find peace of mind through the use of barriers, bollards, barricades and crash gates for vehicle-based physical access control at the perimeter.
For those areas where a vehicle will never enter, fixed bollards and barriers are the norm. However, at entrances, barriers that go up and down are needed to let authorized vehicles through.
