How big is the facility that you’re responsible for protecting?
It’s a 5/8 mile racetrack with 25 large barns, a casino that’s being built, and parking areas. Right now there’s a temporary
casino facility that has about 1,400 machines in it, and they’re in the process of building a massive casino grandstand
area due to be completed this year.
What are the challenges that face the security and safety team?
I have a 42-man security force whose job is largely asset protection, prevention of crime, and safety patrols. There are
approximately 1,300 head of horses—that’s an awful lot of assets not owned by the racetrack (their owners lease the barn
space)— and it’s our job to protect them as well as ensure the conduct of safe racing.
We’re also a parimutuel racetrack and we have large amounts of money being wagered, so we have the assets of money in the
main vaults. That can be fairly substantial at times. Our goal is to prevent crime from occurring by creating a hard-target;
we make everybody understand that we have security tools such as surveillance cameras and guards on duty. The presence of
those actually prevents the major types of crime.
What we do get are very general crimes such as intoxicated patrons and criminal vandalism, and on the racetrack side and
barn area there are some incidents of horsemen stealing from each other. Also, because in Pennsylvania harness racing is
a regulated industry, there are a lot of rules established by state that we have to enforce, such as on how horses are to
be treated. Generally it’s largely crime free, but crime does exist; if we were less astute we would have a great deal more
of it.
What are some of the benefits you’ve found with the Guard1 Plus system?
About four years ago we transitioned from Detex to Guard1 Plus. It’s a very reliable system
and the recordkeeping is just excellent. It’s just so much easier than swiping systems that we used before.
It’s good for recordkeeping. Each barn has two buttons, and when guards do patrols and hit the times, it makes it very easy
if have to investigate a particular incident. For example, we did have a barn fire one year, and we wanted to see where
the guard was, when he stopped his rounds and identified when the fire was occurring. That information was right there.
If there’s a theft of hay in the middle of the night, we can see what time the guards were in barn.
Our insurance company loves it too! We show them our rounds, and they can see we’re doing everything we can to record what
we’re actually doing in safety patrol rounds.
How many PIPES and checkpoints do you have at The Meadows?
We have one PIPE that the officers share. The 8-4 and the 4-12 shifts are responsible for one complete barn round during
their shifts, which they can do at any time. They usually split it up, with one officer doing one set of barns and another
officer doing a different set of barns. During the daylight hours the barns are filled with people. But the midnight shift
does two complete rounds.
We have about 80 checkpoints including the paddocks and the administrative offices. The checkpoints are inside, not outside,
the barns. Each barn has four fire stations with a hose and fire extinguisher, and we put the checkpoints near those. That
way the officer can see if somebody left heater on, or if there’s an electrical arc from heat tape on a water pipe. They
have to see at least three-quarters of the barn to get to the checkpoint.
How often do you download data from The PIPE?
Once a week. We print it out and verify rounds. On the reports that each of the three shifts fills out, they identify the
time they did the rounds and the person who was doing it during that time period. If one button was not hit, it will register,
but that’s not an unusual thing; a guard will sometimes miss a checkpoint because he could be talking to someone, or doing
something else in the same area.
Do the officers like The PIPE?
They like it and they’re happy with it. The system we had before was a gunlike object that you had to swipe over a pad.
It was awkward and inconvenient to use, and they were constantly dropping it. The PIPE is
very handy, easy to use, and it doesn’t interfere with anything they have to do.
Has Guard1 Plus helped prevent any safety incidents?
Because the Guard1 Plus system was in place, there was a guard on patrol in a barn who stopped
a fire from occurring by removing heat tape that had arced. In a racetrack or barn, the worst-case scenario is to have a
barn fire. The horses will die and the next two adjacent barns will catch fire. So it actually has prevented a fire.
What other problems does the system help you solve?
It gives a good timeframe if major theft of something like horse equipment has occurred. We have video surveillance at entrances,
and a lot of times we can narrow down the time frame of an incident because we know when the guard was there. If put it
together with other assets we have like vehicle logs, it does help give us the timeframe for crime.
But the most important thing is that it maintains safety. It prevents incidents from occurring and it prevents major safety
issues from occurring because the guards are noticing things that could trigger a fire, or a water leak.
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