Date: November 6, 2019
To: Department of Public Safety
From: Ruth Redfield, Thierno Diallo, Fernando Alban, Eddie Ozuna
Subject: Proposal to install ID Scanners and Turnstiles in all Entrances to the North Academic Center at City College of New York
Purpose
The purpose of this proposal is to persuade the esteemed public safety department to consider using our products and services to assist in improving the student, faculty, and staff experience at the City College of New York. The public safety officers exert an extraordinary amount of appreciated time and effort to ensure the safety of all those within the building, yet they are in need of assistance. By installing ID scanners and turnstiles in the North Academic Center’s main entrances, the security and safety of every individual that enters this campus building would be significantly improved and the public safety department could direct their man power to other equally important tasks.
Summary( abstract like)
Not only does this scenario illustrate issues of safety for the students and other people in the building, but it is also a highly stressful situation for those working in the security area. Their attention is required to be attuned to a dozen different areas all at once. They have to watch for student’s IDs and ensure that they are all going in the correct doors and have to simultaneously check for suspicious behavior or packages. For all these reasons, the current system is highly ineffective and in desperate need of an upgrade. At present, the campus and all its buildings are open, meaning there are several access points that are scarcely monitored. Therefore, to meet these security need, we propose the use of turnstiles and ID swipes. With the implementation of the turnstiles, the entrances and exits would be restricted and monitored. The doorways would be more strictly regulated as exits and entrances only, which will require the implementation of only a few pieces of equipment, such a wall or barrier which will divide the flow of people leaving from the flow of people entering and trenches to run the cables and wires from the turnstiles to the monitoring system. The turnstiles would need to be positioned in areas where access is restricted unless you pass through. For most of the buildings this will be directly inside the doors. The turnstiles will be affected by the different building structures. Some entrances are very narrow and do not allow space for all the necessary components of the upgraded system. Checkpoints in these buildings may need to be re-evaluated and may require the restriction of some stairwell.
The City College of New York is one of the oldest public schools in New York City and has stood for over 170 years. Over the years thousands of students have come and gone, and the school has always done their best to ensure the safety of their current students. At present City College has more than 13,000 students and staff, however, the school does not currently have an adequately updated security system. The current method of school security depends on using only a single public safety officer as a checkpoint in each building’s main entrances. A desk is set at a point directly inside the buildings’ entrances with the public safety officer sitting behind. Upon entering each building, students and faculty are required to show their ID card to the public safety officer on duty, and after receiving the go-ahead sign, they are allowed to enter the building. This system is flawed for several reasons. Before classes start and after buses and trains drop off students and faculty, large waves of people flood into the school. The single guard has no effective way of ensuring he/she sees every person’s ID before they pass by, and in almost all cases several people walk past the security desks without any sort of inspection. Any person with basic observable information on the school’s security flaws could very easily join the flood of people and bypass the minimal security. In the event that a public safety officer did spot a person presenting even a small threat, to immediately help and subdue the threat they would have to leave their desk, leaving no one to continue checking the flow of people that pours through the entrances.
Not only does this scenario illustrate issues of safety for the students, staff, and other people in the building, but it is also a highly stressful situation for those working in the security area. Their attention is required to be attuned to a dozen different areas all at once. They have to watch for student’s IDs and ensure that they are all going in the correct doors and have to simultaneously check for suspicious behavior or packages. For all these reasons, the current system is highly ineffective and in desperate need of an upgrade. At present, the campus and all its buildings are open, meaning there are several access points that are scarcely monitored. Therefore, to meet these security need, we propose the use of turnstiles and ID swipes. With the implementation of the turnstiles, the entrances and exits would be restricted and monitored. The doorways would be more strictly regulated as exits and entrances only, which will require the implementation of only a few pieces of equipment, such a wall or barrier which will divide the flow of people leaving from the flow of people entering and trenches to run the cables and wires from the turnstiles to the monitoring system. The turnstiles would need to be positioned in areas where access is restricted unless you pass through. For most of the buildings this will be directly inside the doors. The turnstiles will be affected by the different building structures. Some entrances are very narrow and do not allow space for all the necessary components of the upgraded system. Checkpoints in these buildings may need to be re-evaluated and may require the restriction of some stairwell.
Proposed Tasks
Task 1: Gather Information
We interviewed several public safely officers from City College and we questioned them about their job and the potential stresses it may have. They did not have many complaints about their job except for having to guard the main entrances of the building of the school early in the morning or at lunch hours. The public safety officers described to us that for them it is practically impossible to properly check every person that is trying to get into the school because of the high influx of foot traffic in those specific hours. Because their attention is so divided, they felt they were not doing a good job. When asked how they would feel about having to work the desk at the entrances in coordination with a turnstile and ID swipe system, they responded positively, saying they feel it would be significantly easier for them to focus on important security matters and would be less stressful.
In contrast to City College public safety officers’ statements, we also interviewed several public safely officers from other CUNY schools that currently use the ID scanners and turnstiles system, such as Hunter College and Borough of Manhattan Community College. From the information that we gather from them, we were able to conclude that the ID scanners and turnstiles help public safety officers do their job much more efficiently than the system from City College. The public safely officers from these schools said that because they didn’t have to look to see that students had their ID card in hand they just had to look at the monitor to see who is checking in, giving them more time to observe the type of people coming in and also if they were carrying anything suspicious. The people that do not have an ID card are not able to unlock the turnstiles to enter the school forcing them to have to talk with a security guard first. This, the interviews said, ensured that no one who wasn’t authorized to be on campus could sneak past. Some students did claim, that this was an inconvenience but the general attitude indicated that it was preferable to be slightly inconvenienced rather than unsafe in their own school.
Task 2: Implementation
The best place in City College to start the implementation of the ID scanners and turnstiles system would be in the main entrances of the North Academic Center because this is the building that has the highest traffic in the whole school. For the process of implementation, first trenches will have to be dug to the locations of the turnstiles in order to have a safe means of running wires to the turnstiles and then back to the computers. Proper tubing will need to be installed with the wires to ensure compliance with safety regulations. Once the wires have been places, the parts of the turnstiles can be assembled over the trenches, and the wires, consisting of Ethernet cables and power cables, will be connected. The computers will then need to be configured with the correct programs to store the data from the IDs when they are swiped. The position of the turnstiles would be most beneficial in the middle of the entrance area and enclosing the doors that are used to enter the building. Also, the desk with the computers and monitoring system that is connected to all the ID scanners will be placed in a center space to ensure the public safety officers have a good vantage point on all persons entering the building.
Schedule
Budget
| Name | Cost |
| Salary for hired persons | $12,480. |
| Equipment | $24,500. |
| Setup | $10,000. |
| Total: $ 46,980. |
References
* City College of New York, Hunter College and Borough of Manhattan Community College employees asked that their names not be given for personal reasons.
