Garin COLLINS

‘Look out for the vest: we’ll do the rest’ could be the motto of the new contract security staff who are now patrolling the Crawley campus.

The University now employs security guards 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They wear blue vests with bands of red and white checks to ensure staff and students notice them and know they can ask them for help.

Garin Collins, a UWA staff duty officer and field supervisor, said there was a fine line between providing a presence and unnecessarily interrupting people as they work.

“But we want everybody to know we are here to help,” he said. “I think, at first, people weren’t approaching us because they thought we were parking inspectors!”

The contract staff constantly patrol the campus four at a time – in two pairs. They are part of a complete security upgrade being implemented by Bob Leaver.

Mr Leaver has been the Manager of Security for 18 months and is completing a new master plan for the University.

“It started with a lot of staff training, then we got the Wilsons Security contract guards on board,” he said. “We are in the process of creating improved response services and hoping to get an electric vehicle to make our night time escort service quicker and more efficient and enhance response capabilities to incidents and emergencies.”

The most visible change is that security guards are now also on duty during daylight hours.  There were only night shifts before the new regime.

“We’ll find that our incident statistics will increase,” Mr Leaver said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean more crime on campus. It means we are detecting more incidents and dealing more efficiently with crime and problems.”

He said the guards recently made a citizen’s arrest of a man who was trying to break into a vending machine near the Maths building recently.

“The evening patrol noticed the locks had been tampered with and they assumed whoever had done that would come back. So we put on extra patrols the next day and the man came back with a drill to drill out the lock – and he was arrested.

“That could not have happened last year, without security staff working in daylight hours,” Mr Leaver said.

The contract staff provide the foot patrols; the UWA staff supervise and help them, and are available for emergencies.

Mr Collins said he thought students were slowly getting used to seeing the uniformed guards around the campus and even inside some areas such as libraries. “At first, it was like seeing police walking through your work area.  You ask: What’s happening?  Now they realise nothing’s happening, but I hope they are feeling safe.”

Mr Leaver said the new guards were high quality employees who had a focus on customer service, had good education and experience, and were able to deal with any incidents.

He said he anticipated that the new security plan would eventually include improved closed circuit television cameras, ‘Help’ points and lighting to make the campus even safer.