AST April 2018 Magazine AST April Magazine (3.30.18) | Page 66

Concert halls, sports are-
Volume 22
nas, theme parks and oth-
er large public venues are
prime soft targets for mass
casualty threats.
April 2018 Edition
Extending the perim-
eter to provide an en-
hanced, distanced layer
to the overall security
capability, to effective-
ly, identifying threats
ahead of choke points
and crowd density.
In recent years, organizers of
large events have augment-
ed the security methods they
use to protect a venue, using both walk-through metal Many facilities also use observational methods to screen,
detectors and hand wands, and deploying K9 and police such as drones, CCTV, security officers or police walking
units to patrol the lines to enter security.
the crowd and looking for suspicious behavior, or explo-
sives-sniffing K9 units patrolling the area.
But these current methods share a universal flaw:
Each of these methods has intrinsic limitations.
To be caught, evildoers have to be on the verge of actually
entering the venue with hundreds of other people, which Observational security methods are just that – observa-
means they can still cause a massive amount of destruc- tion-based, not detection-based.
tion.
They rely much more heavily on human factors that intro-
duce greater degrees of error and chance, and positive
Current Methods Are Not Enough
visual identification of a suspicious threat requires a rela-
Conventional walk-through metal detectors are a compro- tively close proximity to observe the threat.
mise between effective screening and high throughput, as
they successfully detect metal objects, but only can screen They’re also slow and laborious.
about five or six people each minute.
Walk-through detectors and wands will catch someone try-
They are generally placed 10 to 20 yards from a venue’s ing to enter a facility with a weapon, but by the time they
front façade, either just outside or just inside, to screen do, it may be too late – a terrorist will already be well within
proximity to do a lot of damage.
people as they enter the facility.
Hand wands are used for anyone that sets off the walk- Bad guys don’t need to actually enter the venue; they just
through detector as a secondary screening method for need to get close enough to injure or kill a large number
of people.
confirmation.
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