SubscribeAnti social behaviour and lack of respect are dominating the headlines of today’s news.
Anti social behaviour and lack of respect are dominating the headlines of today’s news. Inadequate safety measures can put our frontline professionals at unnecessary risk, and cause intolerable injury or harm. Body armour have therefore unfortunately become a vital requirement within the private security sector.
The Health and Safety Laboratory (HSL) developed 18 case studies in 2003 and approached over 400 organisations of various sizes and across a range of different occupations.The outcome is of immense significance to the question: ‘Body Armour - Why?’
The HSL highlighted the main areas of risk:
- Certain geographical location are high risk, such as poor or run down council estates.
- Dealing with certain high risk individuals, such as potentially violent or aggressive members of the public, drug users or dealers, or mentally ill individuals.
- Visiting people in their home or office to enforce laws and regulations, police the system or having to give bad news.
- Dealing with frustrated and disappointed customers (e.g. customers unhappy with the service your organisation has provided)
- Working late at night.
- Evicting people from their home.
- Visiting clients in unfamiliar industrial and domestic premises.
- Visiting unoccupied buildings.
Protective Body Armour
These above highlighted points should be reason enough to issue body armour to domestic frontline services and departments. However, many more reasons can be highlighted, making a decision notto issue potentially life saving PPE even more controversial.
Our corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide law 2007 as well as improved health & safety regulations are among these reasons.Assaults on personnel who are not wearing protective clothing also create bad publicity for the Authority concerned, not to mention the welfare of the person involved and operational problems resulting from the injured staff being unable to work.
The most common argument against body armour I have personally come across is the concern about how it might be seen by the public. Well, ‘perception’ is enormously important within personal safety, and I very much agree with the fact that overt body armour can often be perceived as very confrontational, especially when dealing with intoxicated members of the public or those who seriously dislike authority, your organisation or presence to begin with.
Covert Body Armour
For me, security professionals dealing with the public should be doing their utmost to express themselves as peaceful ambassadors within their line of work. ‘Covert’ body armour allows them to do exactly that, whilst still being protected.
Please also note that regardless of the outcome of any common risk assessment, the fact of the matter is that there is always an ‘unknown’ level of risk due to unforeseen circumstances. Ordinary risk assessments might often conclude in the verdict of ‘low risk’, however these often poorly executed risk assessments are based on technical facts or ‘on-hand information’ only, and as much as I appreciate them, they often do not go beyond these facts.
The fact that a security professional’s activity involves dealing with ‘unforeseen circumstances’ must urge managers and directors to remain at least open minded when it comes to body.
Recommending body armour does not mean we suggest you are in danger, we simply say that you will have a higher chance of remaining unharmed in the unlikely, but possible, case of something going wrong.
Wearing body armour can be compared to wearing a seat belt when driving a car. We do not put the seat belt on because we believe we are going to have an accident today. We are simply acknowledging the fact that there is an exceptionally small chance that we might crash. Yet, if this chance becomes reality, you have increased the chance of survival by wearing a seat belt.