Security Assessment

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Studying Security Threats and the Related Risk Levels

CHAPTER OUTLINE

C H A P T E R

Prison Inmate Escapes from Private Se- curity Transportation Firm

Tragic Portent: Slain Doctor Predicted Violent Abortion Protest

Turkey Farm Cries Foul over Parrots: Disease Threatens Pt. Arena Ranch

“Biotech Terrorist” Threats Taken Seri- ously: Iowa State, Pioneer Hi-Bred May be Targets

Teamsters Strike Overnight Trucking

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Security professionals must be able to analyze risk from various levels. The fol- lowing security scenarios have been included to help readers think about the concepts presented in Chapter 2. In each scenario, some of the facts are still under investigation and may be unclear. Work with what you know.

After reading the following cases, think about each situation and then re- view the “facts for consideration” section. These are hypotheticals, in most cases, but will provide additional facts for you to think about as you review the scenarios. Use this opportunity to begin identifying and exploring essential

Prison Inmate Escapes from Private Transportation Firm*

While state police and helicopters searched the New Mexico terrain Thursday for escaped convict Kyle Bell, North Dakota officials wondered why it took a private security firm transporting the killer 10 hours before it discovered he was no longer on the bus. “We have a lot of questions,” Elaine Little, director of North Dakota’s Department of Corrections said in an interview.

One prisoner told police that Bell unlocked leg irons and handcuffs with a key he had in his shoe, then another inmate helped him climb through a roof vent in the TransCor America bus. He escaped during a fuel stop in Santo Rosa, NM 110 miles east of Albuquerque. Bell apparently jumped off the bus after it left the gas station.

The bus, carrying 12 inmates, was operated by Nashville-based TransCor, the nation’s largest prisoner transport company. Bell, who was convicted in the death of 11-year-old Jeanna North of Fargo, was being taken to an Oregon prison. Little said TransCor guards did not count the prisoners before the bus left the gas station, nor did they make counts after two additional stops during which some prisoners were transferred.

Bell was discovered missing during a stop in Arizona, between 1:00 and 1:30 P.M., or 10 hours after the fuel stop in Santa Rosa. TransCor staff members apparently spent up to three hours trying to determine if Bell had been accidentally let off during transfers before they notified North Dakota authorities of the escape at 4:30 P.M.

“We want to know from the beginning to the end what they did with Mr. Bell and how they could go so long without realizing he was not in the bus,” Little said. She said she also wanted to know why a vent was unsecured. “We want to know whether there were procedures that weren’t followed or if they don’t exist.”

TransCor issued a news release, saying “it appears that several procedural violations have occurred involving security policies.” Those included “searching, counters and agent positioning,” but the company did not elaborate. It said, “we are embarrassed by this incident” and that the bus crew had been relieved of duty. Bell received a life sentence for North’s death in 1993. He was already serving a 30-year sentence for molesting two children in 1993 and 1994, said Birch Burdick, Cass County states attorney. TransCor was informed by North Dakota officials that Bell was a high risk, Little said, because he had tried to escape from the Cass County jail, and officials on another occasion had found a letter with an escape plan on it.

*Furst, Randy. October 15, 1999. “North Dakota Officials Have Lots of Questions About Bell’s Escape.” Minneapolis Star Tribune.

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FACTS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. The company you work for is Van’s Transport Service and you are hired to oversee the security of inmates being transported from one facility to another.

2. It is often the case that you transport an inmate a significant distance, requiring between two and eight stops on any given trip. On no occa- sion does your company allow for stops to include overnight lodging, but some trips may take as many as 48 hours to complete.

3. The company has been providing this service to public prison facili- ties for over seven years. In the history of the company, two inmates (on two separate occasions) have attempted to escape while the van was refueling, and one incident involved some friends of an inmate at- tempting to overtake the van on a highway. In the escape attempts, other inmates were involved in attempting to assist the escapee.

In the case of the alleged attempt to overtake the van, the facts were never clear. The attempt failed because highway patrol officers responded to an alert, cautionary radio call from the driver, who be- lieved she identified a potential problem after she noticed the same car make a second, then a third refueling stop with the transport van. Because of police intervention, the alleged suspects were picked up, questioned, and later released. While nothing could be proven, the circumstances resulted in the company’s decision to arm all officers during transport.

Please respond to the following items:

1. Make a reasonable list of threats based on the facts presented. 2. Identify whether the probability of each risk is high, medium, or low. 3. Identify whether the criticality of each risk is high, medium, or low. 4. Would a reactive or contingency plan be required here? If yes,

please describe one you believe appropriate to the circumstance. Be prepared to justify your response.

security information, threats, risk levels, and vulnerabilities for starters. You have the enviable task of planning with the benefit of hindsight. After reading each scenario, ask yourself if a security management team you worked with would have been better prepared for the threat outlined in each setting.

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Tragic Portent: Slain Doctor Predicted Violent Abortion Protest

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Buffalo, N.Y.—Dr. Barnett Slepian’s own words signal a chilling premonition of his own violent end. In an August 1994 letter to the editor reacting to his frequent run-ins with “nonviolent” anti-abortion forces, he wrote: “Please don’t feign surprise, dismay and certainly not innocence when a more volatile and less restrained member of the group decides to react . . . by shooting an abortion provider.”

And in a television interview, the father of four worried about how his family would cope if his work ultimately led to his death. Slepian, a 52-year-old obstetrician- gynecologist, was killed by a sniper who fired a rifle bullet through a window in his home Friday night. His was the first fatality among five sniper attacks on upstate New York or Canadian abortion providers in the last four years.

The killer remained at large yesterday as an international investigation continued. Police listed no suspects. All of the previous attacks have occurred within a few weeks of Nov. 11, Veterans Day, which is known as Remembrance Day in Canada. In the 1994 letter to The Buffalo News, Slepian said he did not begrudge anti-abortion demonstrators who “scream that I am a murderer and a killer when I enter the clinics at which they ‘peacefully’ exercise their First Amendment right of freedom of speech.

“They may also do the same when by chance they see me during the routine of my day,” he wrote. “This may be at a restaurant, at a mall, in a store or, as they have done recently, while I was watching my young children play at [a children’s restaurant].” But “they all share the blame,” Slepian wrote, when “a more volatile and less restrained member of the group decides to react to their inflammatory rhetoric by shooting an abortion provider.” Yesterday mourners left flowers by the door of Slepian’s office and a banner that hung on a bush read: “We won’t go back—defend the right to abortion!” Taped to his office door was a photo of Slepian and a baby he had delivered.

In a statement, the founder of Pro-Life Virginia called Slepian’s killer “a hero,” one who ended Slepian’s “blood-thirsty practice.” “We as Christians have a responsibility to protect the innocent from being murdered, the same way we would want someone to protect us. Who ever shot the shot protected the children,” the Rev. Donald Spitz said.

Slepian often expressed his fears that abortion foes were encouraging violence. In a 1994 interview with Buffalo television station WIVB, Slepian said: “Maybe they are not going to perform it, but they’re setting up their soldiers to perform the violence.”

All of his children were home when Slepian’s wife, Lynn, called 911 after the sniper’s bullet entered the doctor’s back, pierced his lungs, exited his body and ricocheted into another room. Fifteen-year-old Andy had been watching a Buffalo Sabres hockey game on TV and ran into the kitchen. “He saw blood in back of his dad,” Andy Berger, 14, a friend of Andy Slepian, told The Buffalo News.

Generally, people on both sides of the abortion debate condemned the killing. The Revs. Rob and Paul Schenck of the National Clergy Council, who helped

organize the massive “Spring of Life” abortion protest in Buffalo in 1992, urged “all people of conscience to defend life peacefully.” “The murder of Barnett Slepian,” they said, “is wrong, sinful and cowardly.” Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, who was wounded in an August 1993 shooting in the parking lot of his clinic, called it “a well- orchestrated political Armageddon against women and their freedom.”

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FACTS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. You are the director of security for a women’s health center that per- forms abortions. An antiabortion group has planned a four-day con- ference in your city in the next week. Several of the groups expected to participate in the conference have been indirectly associated with an activist group connected with several bombings of abortion clinics.

2. You have a staff of 9 officers. You have 5 doctors and 13 nurses and staff members. On any given day, your clinic may see as many as 135 women for various medical needs, including scheduled abortions.

3. Members of the staff have expressed concerns to you about rumors that their clinic might be a target during the conference.

4. You arrive at work to find fliers saying “The End Is Near” posted on the front door of your facility.

Please respond to the following items:

please describe one you believe appropriate to the circumstance. Be prepared to justify your response.

Turkey Farm Cries Foul over Parrots: Disease Threatens Pt. Arena Ranch

BY TIM TESCONI

Press Democrat Staff Writer Feathers are flying on the Mendocino Coast where a newly-established parrot preserve is threatening the survival of a turkey breeding farm that has operated for years in the remote hills of Point Arena. Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms, an international, Sonoma County-based company that operates the turkey farm, has given notice that it will vacate the ranch if the neighboring parrot farm is not closed by the county. Simply stated, parrots and turkeys don’t mix because of the transmission of fatal and highly contagious bird diseases.

The turkey breeding farm was established in Point Arena because the area is so isolated from pet birds and backyard chickens. “It does seem ironic that there’s only one turkey ranch and only one parrot breeding farm in Mendocino County and they’re next to each other in Point Arena,” said Keith Faulder, a Ukiah attorney who has been hired by the Stornetta family. The Stornettas, longtime coastal dairy ranchers, own the property that Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms leases in Point Arena. Barbara Gould said Thursday she and her parrots are not budging from her 17-acre farm in Point

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Arena, where she has established the Parrot Preservation Society, a nonprofit group dedicated to saving parrots around the world. She and her husband, Geoffrey, acquired the Mendocino Coast property this summer and began moving hundreds of parrots, many of them rescued birds, from her previous home in Arizona. “I’m gearing up for the fight of my life. They are after my life and livelihood,” said Gould, 53.

The battle of the birds is raising issues of private property rights, zoning laws and the clash between agriculture and urban transplants that move into farming areas. Sources said millions of dollars are at stake for Nicholas Farms. The threat of disease from the parrots jeopardizes Nicholas’s ability to ship fertile turkey eggs to its markets around the world. Nicholas is one of the world’s primary turkey breeders, producing the parent-stock of turkeys raised for meat. “How someone can move in and ruin a business that has been here so long is just not right,” said Walter R. Stornetta, a fourth- generation dairy rancher who owns the Point Arena ranch. “The parrot people are a classic example of what happens when people from urban areas move into agriculture areas and don’t understand the ramifications of what they do to farming.” Ed Merritt, an executive at Nicholas Farms, declined to comment on the parrot controversy.

The Mendocino County Planning and Building Department is investigating the parrot breeding operation, which, according to a preliminary ruling, is in violation of county zoning regulations. Nicholas Farms already has moved some of its 1,000 pedigreed turkeys off the Point Arena ranch to other North Coast sites because of the threat of disease from the hundreds of parrots on the neighboring property. Nicholas employs 10 people at the ranch. Scientists said the proximity of the turkeys and parrots is a serious health issue because diseases, such as exotic newcastle, Avian influenza and psittacosis, can be easily spread by the wild birds and rodents traveling between the two properties. The properties are only 1,500 feet from fence line to fence line but should be miles apart to prevent the spread of disease, according to avian specialists. “Both parties should be very concerned,” said Dr. Francine Bradley, an avian specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension at Davis. “There are a whole gamut of diseases that can be transferred between the turkeys and parrots when there is so little geographic separation,” Bradley said that in poultry- producing counties, such as Fresno, Madera and Kings. There are strict county laws that regulate distances between poultry operations for disease control.

Bradley said Nicholas has an extensive “bio-security” system at its ranches to prevent the spread of disease. Turkeys are kept in environmentally-controlled houses and human visitors are strictly regulated. On the rare occasions that humans are allowed on Nicholas farms they are required to enter a sanitation chamber where they must shower and put on sterile coveralls. Gould questions Nicholas’ bio-security system, saying Nicholas workers have moved freely between the two properties when they’ve told her she and her parrots had to move. Gould said she did extensive checking on zoning and land-use regulations before buying the property. She said she was assured by county planners that she could raise and breed parrots on the Point Arena property. Gould said now because of political pressure from the Stornetta family the county is saying she may be in violation of zoning laws. “They said parrots are not considered a bonafide agricultural endeavor,” Gould said. A county zoning enforcement code inspector is scheduled to come to Gould’s property today.

Gould expects to receive an order to remove the parrots from her property and is mustering community support. Alan Falleri, chief planner for the Mendocino County Planning and Building Department, said the county’s preliminary decision is that Gould is in violation of zoning laws because parrots are not an agricultural activity and she is operating in an agricultural zone. “Unless she is raising parrots for meat, it is a violation of zoning regulations,” he said. “There is a fine line between what is an agricultural and non-agricultural use. Generally, we consider an agricultural use to be the production of food and fiber.” Falleri said today’s inspection will determine what

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Gould is doing with the parrots and if there is a violation. Falleri said a cease and desist order will be issued if Gould is in violation. He said because of the disease potential of the parrots on the neighboring turkeys, she could receive an emergency order to immediately remove the parrots. Falleri also disputes Gould’s claim she was told by members of the county’s planning staff that she could establish the parrot breeding operation on agricultural land in Point Arena. “The testimony of our planners is that no one told her any such thing,” Falleri said. Gould has her own lawyers working to protect her interests. “My attorneys in Arizona can’t find the basis for the complaint” by the county, she said. The Mendocino County Farm Bureau is supporting Nicholas Farms in the battle and has sent a letter to the Planning Department urging that the county take swift action to get the parrots out of Point Arena.

FACTS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. It is your job, as the director of security at Acme Turkey Farm, to make sure the health of the birds is maintained.

2. Your boss, the head of the company, has indicated that losses of at least two birds have occurred over the last three weeks. Your boss asks if you can look into it.

3. The boss suspects an employee, but if the loss was caused by a per- son from the outside, the risk of contamination of the birds would be dramatically increased.

4. The company is a small operation and includes only about 200 turkeys per season. You are the only security officer working for the company.

Please respond to the following items:

please describe one you believe appropriate to the circumstance. Be prepared to justify your response.

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“Biotech Terrorist” Threats Taken Seriously: Iowa State, Pioneer Hi-Bred May Be Targets

DES MOINES, IOWA Iowa State University and Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. are on alert following an Internet threat of terrorism against biotech seed research and production facilities, the Des Moines Sunday Register reported.

“We’re alerting everyone to the possibility” of some kind of attack, said Walt Fehr, an agronomist who heads Iowa State University’s biotech-based agricultural research.

Faculty and staff members at ISU, the nation’s oldest land-grant university, have been alerted and urged to notify campus security if they see strangers in buildings on campus or protesters gathered on campus, Fehr said.

At Des Moines-based Pioneer, the world’s largest seed corn supplier, employees were notified of the threats Friday by e-mail.

“You don’t know whether or not people are going to follow through on these kind of threats, but you want to take them seriously, and you want to make sure you’re prepared,” Pioneer spokesman Tim Martin said.

The anonymous message recently posted on the Internet said: “All of a sudden ‘venture capitalist’ scum realize that biotechnology is not such a great investment and they flee with their bags of cash with them. . . . Our view is that if corporations, governments and universities have any relationship to biotechnology, they are targets.”

The message went on to say that U.S. Department of Agriculture test plots are the No. 1 target and that researchers receiving “corporate biotech money” are next.

Three years ago, Greenpeace members sprayed pink, milk-based paint on a soybean research plot near Atlantic, Iowa, destroying a year’s worth of research by scientists working for Monsanto Co.–owned Asgrow Seed Co.

Anti-biotech activists contend that crop research sites have been sabotaged throughout the United States this year. Groups with such names as Reclaim the Seeds, Future Farmers and the Minnesota Bolt Weevils claimed attacks last month on:

• Genetically engineered sunflowers and corn growing at a Pioneer site in north- ern California.

• Biotech-based crops at a Pioneer facility near Mankato, Minn., and at a Novar- tis site in Goodhue County, Minn.

• Genetically engineered plants at a University of California–Berkeley research location.

Some of the harshest critics of the growing use of biotechnology by the seed industry are appalled by the call for violent protests.

“Clearly, harm to people is a sort of action which we totally deplore,” said Rebecca Goldburg, senior scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund in New York City, adding that her group also opposes vandalizing property.

Biotechnology, which weds the study of living organisms with high-tech genetic engineering, is pushing the parameters of traditional plant breeding. Scientists can further enhance or suppress certain characteristics of crops. For example, they can make plants resist particular pests, tolerate application of certain herbicides that otherwise would kill the plants, and yield more nutritious food ingredients.

Opponents contend that the genetic changes may have unintended results that could be harmful. For example, earlier this year a laboratory study by Cornell University concluded that corn plants genetically designed to resist European corn borers were also capable of killing monarch butterfly larvae. Although the results of the study have been challenged, biotech opponents cite them to support their view.

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FACTS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. Acts of domestic terrorism on biotech labs have increased 500 per- cent over the last five years. You are director of security for the largest biotech lab in the upper midwestern part of the United States.

2. Threats to your facility have been received at a rate of approximately three per week for the last month.

3. Three years ago an animal rights group broke into the facility and re- leased 45 rats, mice, and monkeys and contaminated various samples in five areas of the facility.

Please respond to the following items:

please describe one you believe appropriate to the circumstance. Be prepared to justify your response.

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Teamsters Strike Overnight Trucking

OVERNITE-TEAMSTER NEWS RELEASE

Overnite Strike Goes Nationwide

(Washington DC) Yesterday, Overnite workers at Teamsters Local 667 in Memphis Tennessee initiated an unfair labor practice strike against Overnite Transportation Company, the sixth largest LTL trucking company in the country.

By late Sunday afternoon, Overnite workers at South Holland, Palatine and Bedford Park, IL, Farmingdale, NY, Dallas, Fort Worth, Tyler and Garland, TX, Harrisburg and Bensalem, PA, Miami, FL, Sacramento, CA, Milwaukee, WI, Lexington, KY, Omaha, NE, Portland, OR, Little Rock, AR, Decatur, AL, Nashville TN, New Orleans, LA, St. Louis, Bridgeton and Springfield, MO, Toledo, Dayton, Richfield and Cincinnati, OH, Indianapolis, IN, Atlanta, N. Atlanta, Macon and Marietta, GA had joined the unfair labor practice strike in support of the Memphis Overnite workers. “The Teamsters had sought to avoid this strike,” said James P. Hoffa, President of the Teamsters, “but Overnite has brought it upon itself. This strike is the bitter fruit of Overnite’s unrepentant and unrelenting violation of its workers’ federally protected rights.”

Background Since 1994, the Overnite workers have been struggling for justice against one of the worst labor law violators of our generation. The National Labor Relations Board has filed more than 1,000 complaints against Overnite Transportation Company. The charges include: unlawful withholding of wage increases, unlawful harassment, unlaw- ful intimidation, unlawful surveillance, unlawful discharge and unlawful bad faith bargaining. Despite having to pay out tens of millions of dollars for its violations and legal fees, Overnite continues to contemptuously disregard the federal laws that protect American workers. Despite 4 years of negotiations, despite the Labor Board ordering the Company to bargain in good faith, Overnite refuses to do so. Over 150 negotiating sessions have yet to lead to a contract. The Overnite workers played by the rules but the Company will not. Currently, the Teamsters represent approximately 40–45 percent of Overnite’s dock workers and drivers at 37 Overnite terminals (26 certified, 11 bargaining orders), including five of Overnite’s largest seven terminals (Kansas City; Lexington; Memphis; Atlanta and Indianapolis). Overnite is a wholly- owned subsidiary of Union Pacific Corporation.

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FACTS FOR CONSIDERATION

1. You are the security director for ACME Transport, which has 5 security personnel, 15 staff people, 30 packers, and 45 drivers. After an unsuc- cessful meeting with union officials, workers are threatening to strike.

2. Company officials are firm in their efforts to replace any striking workers and to keep the business open and operational until the con- tract discussions are resolved.

3. Your security personnel suggest that the packers are the most volatile group within the organization, with the staff and drivers well behind them. The drivers do not see their situation as similar to the packers’, but they are planning to support them by not crossing the picket lines.

4. An anonymous phone message suggested that a takeover of the chief executive officer’s office might be planned, and efforts to protect the upper management by removing them from the building “would not be tolerated.”

Please respond to the following items:

please describe one you believe appropriate to the circumstance. Be prepared to justify your response.

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