Methods of Security
The American School of Paris is located at 41 Rue Pasteur in Saint-Cloud, France, and holds more than 800 students from grades K through 12. There is a gate at the west entrance and a gate at the east entrance, for cars coming and going. Numerous entrances and exits into the building are available. Because of a recent spate of terror attacks in major cities around the world, it is important to secure a building such as this one, where important American assets are established.
As Fennelly (2016) states, securing access control is a method of security that can be used primarily for “decreasing crime opportunity” (p. 4). An example is to have security gates at main points of ingress and egress with accompanying armed guards operating each. As the school already has two access control points, both with gates, the compound should focus on securing these with CCTV cameras and guards installed at both gates to oversee ingress and egress and to monitor traffic in both directions outside the compound, which is surrounded by a fence all the way around.
The main access points are on the north face of the school and the guard booths should be installed...
A third booth should be installed on the roof of the complex allowing for a 360-degree surveillance of the perimeter and beyond. This guard booth would be armed in case of a terrorist breach of the perimeter. A turret on both west and east wings would be installed for defensive purposes and a turret on the north face and the south face could also be installed for further defensive measures.
However, in order to prevent a culture of criminality, as Tanner-Smith, Fisher, Addington and Gardella (2018) call it, the security forces should be blended in with the natural surroundings of the environment and with physical installations already available. The perimeter of the building should not be made to look as though crime were a threat. Safety and security are the primary objectives—not creating a defensive disposition that could invite criminality by making it appear as though the environment were already steeped in crime. It is therefore critical that turrets installed on the roof of the school on all four faces be blended in with the existing structure so that they do not appear like defensive structures.…
