Johns Hopkins has hired a national consulting firm, iXP Corp., to evaluate University security services and to develop a "security master plan" to equip the University with better security technology.
Over a four to six month period, the company will evaluate the University's security dispatch system, emergency phones, surveillance cameras and other security technology to develop a plan for Hopkins to improve security.
"We will be looking at the emergency communication infrastructure," said Richard Dale, chairman of iXP Corp. "We will be looking at facilities, at radio communications, at the availability for officers and at the utilization of CCTV (Closed Circuit Television)."
The company will also assess alarms at entry and exit points in University facilities.
"They have discussed with us our vision for the future," said Ron Mullen, director of security. "And they will take that vision and where we are and give us a 'gap' analysis.
"There's a gap between where we are and where we want to be - and they'll tell us how to get there."
The company will also evaluate security service and officer workload.
"They'll look at our calls for service, how much workload our officers are doing and how many calls they dispatch," Mullen said. "They will give us a prescription for how much you need in the control center and how you have to staff it."
"What we have is a process where we go through methodically each component of the University and its infrastructure related to security," Dale said. "A report is then delivered outlining the finding and recommendations."
Although the fatal stabbing this month of student Christopher Elser has highlighted the need for heightened security, the University has been negotiating with iXP since November. It grew out of the need for more security in a growing campus community.
"We're expanding off-campus and on-campus, so the question comes up: Can you possibly provide security services to this expanded community with just campus police officers?" said Mullen. "It would be very difficult, so why not draw on technology and look to the future?"
Already, some parts of campus are equipped in the fashion Mullen envisions for all of campus and off-campus University buildings.
The new Hillel building has surveillance cameras, and Hodson is already wired for them. "At Eastern High School, if someone activates an emergency phone, the cameras on the roof swings to those phones so that we can see from here in Shriver and the Security desk at Eastern what's going on at that phone," Mullen said.
A similar system has been installed by iXP Corp at University of Pennsylvania, where cameras have been installed over security call boxes. The camera can shift its zoom and focus to settle on the suspect.
"The responding officers now have a visual and they can give a better description," Dale said. "It's really been proven to be not just a good crime fighting tool, but it actually works as a very good deterrent too."
