The Deal of the Sentry

The Battery Park City Authority (BPCA) has extended for one year its contract with Allied Universal, the firm that provides security guards (known as “safety ambassadors”) to the community. The original agreement, signed in November, 2015, provided for three years of such service (at a cost of $2.1 million per year), and was set to expire last month.

At the October 29 meeting of the BPCA’s board, Authority chief operating officer Eric Munson, said, “the relationship with Allied has been very, very successful. Real time reporting, digitally, and a consistent presence, have really made lots of inroads with the community. The one thing that’s been lacking has been the ability to actually enforce certain quality of life violations in our parks and public spaces.”

Mr. Munson added that the BPCA has, “started a special patrol officer pilot with the New York City Police Department. Due to some delays on the City’s side in getting some approvals, that pilot hadn’t started until just a few weeks ago. So right now we have special patrol officers in Battery Park City parks patrolling and issuing warnings for certain violations. Those warnings will turn into summonses in the weeks ahead, which we hope will change behavior overall.”

“But since that pilot has just started,” he continued, “I’m requesting an additional year to engage Allied again, at $2.1 million, to judge the efficacy of the pilot and to issue a full RFP [request for proposals] for security services for a longer period of time.”

BPCA board member Donald Capoccia asked, “I know from previous years that the employees make better than a living wage. You were checking what they’re paying the employees?”

Mr. Munson replied, “right now the wage is at 14.90. Our contract with them enables us to increase wages for the employees pursuant to collective bargaining agreements and minimum wage laws, which we plan on doing on December 31st of this year, and subsequently on July 1st of next year. Those wages will go to $15.00 and $15.50, respectively.”

Authority board member Martha Gallo asked, “Are these special patrol officer authorities, are they granted to ambassadors who go to training? Are these people coming from the New York City police? How does that work?”

Mr. Munson answered, “Allied identified a series of supervisors whose names we submitted for background checks. Upon approval from the NYPD, we then sent those folks to special patrol officer training. It’s called the basic peace officer training course that’s administered by the division of Criminal Justice Services at the State. When they passed, they were then sworn in as special patrol officers by NYPD. And then they went back to Allied for supplemental training over that, to make sure that they’re well equipped to enter the field.”

“Is this a brand new thing for Allied?” Ms. Gallo queried. “Or is this something they’re quite familiar with in other settings?”

“Allied has this in other settings for other clients, as well,” Mr. Munson noted. “There’s an example of another community in New York City, but those folks are armed. Ours are notably unarmed.”

He went on to detail then rollout of the program that will allow Allied security guards to issue summonses. “The way that we’re starting is proactively based on the complaints that we’ve heard the most of. So based on the parks user study, we’ve learned that canine violations are the ones that have been the most intractable in the community over the past three years. Based on the data that we have from the real time reporting from Allied, we’ve learned that certain folks continue to violate at the same times and the same places. And so the special patrol officers are going to use that data to inform where they position themselves to issue the summons at the right time.”

“Overwhelmingly, when asked to change their behavior, folks do,” Mr. Munson observed. “For the folks who are not, we’re going to then — based on that data — ensure that we’re targeting this.”

BPCA president B.J. Jones added that, “the NYPD has changed its policing model and now has a neighborhood coordination program. So we have four officers that are dedicated to the Battery Park City area as part of this new zone based approach. And we’ve established a very close working relationship with them. And Allied in general has forged a close relationship with the NYPD. So they’ve been very responsive to security and criminal and safety issues.”