The headline: Shoppers Shaken by Assaults With Carts at City’s Malls tells how shopping carts are "the latest, bizarre weapon of choice" in the New York City area malls.
According to the Times, there have been two recent incidents. In one case, someone allegedly threw a shopping cart from the third floor of a parking garage. In the other case, two 12-year-old boys dropped a shopping cart from a fourth floor walkway.
The Times failed to mention if any arrests were made.
Since we, as risk management practitioners, are unable to control people's anger (in the fist instance) or stupidity or meanness in the second, what can we do to avoid a recurrence, if not in the New York venues then in our own areas?
Security guards apparently are not the answer. There were rent-a-cops at both locations. CATV - closed circuit cameras - also is not the answer ; they can capture an image, but the response time, the time between someone thinking an incident may occur and the time someone can respond, is far to long to prevent an incident.
One mall security expert (consultant) told the Times that, based on his 40 years experience, these two incidents did not indicate a pattern. Attack by shopping cart, he told the newspaper, is rare; in his 40 years as a shopping mall security consultant, he's only heard of couple of (other) incidents.
Fencing, such as seen now on most Interstate overpasses, particularly in rural areas, is one answer.
It won't prevent fights - which led to the incident in the parking garage - but it will corral flying objects.
Likewise, fencing would have prevented the juveniles from seeing if they could hit passersby with their cart.
Limiting shopping carts to a pick-up point next to the facility entrance works in some areas; this is common in Northern Virginia, but not in most Florida cities. Would it work in New York City or San Francisco?
Obviously, as with most things "risk management," one size does
Yet something must be done to protect people and shopping carts as well.
Secondary concern: Image
In addition to protecting people, which always must be the top priority, business owners need to consider both their image - "Attacked by Shopping Cart" makes a great headline - and their insurance coverage. Lawyers for people injured by a shopping cart will go after the property owner and the shopping cart owner. (Strangely enough, most people do NOT think of taking a civil action against the people responsible for the incident; in the New York cases, against the person who threw the cart from the parking garage, and against the parents of the juveniles who "cart bombed" passersby, nearly killing one woman.)
Coverage of the incidents also appeared in "SFGate," the San Francisco Chronicle Web site at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2012/01/31/MN891N0RCU.DTL.
If I wrote it, you may quote it.
Longer articles at https://sites.google.com/site/johnglennmbci/ passersby with their cart.Limiting shopping carts to a pick-up point next to the facility entrance works in some areas; this is common in Northern Virginia, but not in most Florida cities. Would it work in New York City or San Francisco?
Obviously, as with most things "risk management," one size does
Yet something must be done to protect people and shopping carts as well.
Secondary concern: Image
In addition to protecting people, which always must be the top priority, business owners need to consider both their image - "Attacked by Shopping Cart" makes a great headline - and their insurance coverage. Lawyers for people injured by a shopping cart will go after the property owner and the shopping cart owner. (Strangely enough, most people do NOT think of taking a civil action against the people responsible for the incident; in the New York cases, against the person who threw the cart from the parking garage, and against the parents of the juveniles who "cart bombed" passersby, nearly killing one woman.)
Coverage of the incidents also appeared in "SFGate," the San Francisco Chronicle Web site at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/c/a/2012/01/31/MN891N0RCU.DTL.
If I wrote it, you may quote it.
Longer articles at https://sites.google.com/site/johnglennmbci/
No comments:
Post a Comment