Sometimes it can be difficult to measure how well a security system is working. “You can’t measure crimes that aren’t committed,” says Steve Reed, security director at Arden Fair Mall in Sacramento, Calif.
But you can measure against crimes committed before the security system was put in place, which is what Reed has done. Before he took over security, shoppers didn’t want to shop at the Arden Fair Mall because of the high amount of crime in the area. “When I started, we had 19 cameras for 77 acres and 10 million visitors,” he says. The former law enforcement officer saw that a major security overhaul was called for. One of his first acts when he took over in 2007 was firing the contracted security company in order to bring the security operations in-house. He convinced the mall’s owners to commit to $1.2 million in a camera upgrade.