Students requesting safety escort services on campus can rest easy knowing escort staff are well trained, according to Budd Group security.
The Budd Group is a company that provides N.C. State with various services, including security. The company began the partnership with N.C. State by providing non-essential services, such as locking up buildings at night, and then started offering the safety escort service in 2007.
This has helped free up time for the police department, allowing them to focus on other issues.
Art Klose, Budd security operations manager, said the escort officers undergo sufficient training and the service is operating smoothly.
The current safety escort team consists three officers, one of whom is new and undergoing training this week. She is replacing an officer who was recently promoted to another site, according to Klose.
“All three officers have several years of security experience,” said Klose. “It’s safe to say they’re career security officers.”
The officers must complete 16 hours of security officer classroom instruction mandated by the North Carolina Department of Justice Private Protective Services Division.
They then go through a minimum of 16 hours of escort driver training. The first eight hours include riding along with an escort officer and getting exposed to the escort service and learning how to operate the equipment, such as the police laptop and radio. The last eight hours are usually spent driving with an escort passenger–usually N.C. State students–according to Klose.
In addition, criminal records and motor vehicle records checks are conducted annually.
“It’s all on-the-job training,” Klose said. “And wherever the training officers feel their skills need to be brushed up on or refined, that’s where they’ll spend the remainder of their training.”
In response to student complaints about the officers’ occasional slow response times, Klose said it was important to keep a realistic mindset.
“You’re always going to have one or two people that say, ‘They didn’t get here quickly enough,'” Klose said. ”People have to keep in mind that these three officers are running main campus, north campus, south campus, centennial campus… They’re all over the place. They get there as quickly as they can but sometimes there is a wait.”
Klose also said he does recognize there is always room for improvement and explained how the police department solicits feedback from the student body and forwards that information to Budd. Budd then assesses the feedback and takes appropriate action, said Klose.
Gerry Stickl, branch manager, also commented on the concerns surrounding the officers’ response time.
“When you have a lot of people calling, sometimes it get’s backed up,” said Stickl. “The state has a budget and it’s very difficult to throw in another vehicle.”
Stickl said he thinks the escort service hasn’t encountered any major problems.
“For the most part everything’s going pretty well,” said Stickl. “You get a few complaints here and there saying they were slow, but we’re always open to ideas to make everything more efficient.”