How to Better Protect and Ensure Police Station Physical Security

During a time when physical security concerns are front and center, discussions around safety inevitably have to include law enforcement.

Police and law enforcement officials — who are charged to keep everyone else safe — are inextricably linked to any effective physical security strategy. As a result, any modern and robust physical security policy has to also incorporate fortifying police stations and law enforcement offices.

A multi-layered approach

In a recent piece for Security Magazine, Amanda Powell writes about the importance of safeguarding police stations with the latest in secured entry protocols.

Police stations are often the key targets of a range of bad actors — from domestic terrorists to active shooters. Powell highlights a few tried and true solutions, including “turnstiles and revolving doors” that offer “a multi-faceted approach to securing police building entrances.”

Effective police station entrances keep traffic flow in and out of the building in mind while also “detecting unauthorized access,” Powell writes.

She goes on to explain that there are three categories that these entrances usually fall into — those that deter, detect, and prevent threats from entering or hitting the building.

Some options include tripods, which refers to turnstiles that stand at an average person’s full height. Another option is the optical turnstile, which has “embedded sensor and access technologies” that detect unwanted and unsanctioned entries. These turnstiles “issue alarms in real time,” Powell adds. Additionally, she spotlights interlocking mantrap portals, or revolving doors that work seamlessly with high-tech sensors and cloud-connected cameras that can “block a bad actor from entering, even without a guard present.”

Shielding a police station’s perimeter and entrances

Shielding the building’s perimeter from any unwanted entrance is made possible with access control, video surveillance, and modern intercom systems. Cloud-connected systems, which are today’s top industry options, collect data from “embedded sensor systems” that can then be utilized by security staff “to anticipate and measure the risk of infiltration,” Powell writes.

While smaller stations might be served well by full-height turnstiles at the exterior perimeter and front entrances, Powell spotlights the kinds of integrated, multi-faceted options that make sense for larger, higher profile police stations that have extensive lobbies and entrances. This might entail a “dual front lobby entrance screening mechanism,” which “can be installed in conjunction with a single exit revolving door for traffic exiting the lobby,” she adds.

“Using high security revolving doors with features like tailgating and piggybacking prevention that are purpose-built for security in high-traffic areas ensures optimal protection,” Powell writes.

Protecting those who keep others safe

During a time when sophisticated threats run rampant, it’s important to keep the stations that house law enforcement as safe and secure as possible. Those who work around the clock to keep everyone else protected from security threats need to be kept safe in turn.

For the full article, head to the link here.