Protecting our crowded places from attack

On 17 September, New Zealand Police released its long awaited strategy to assist owners and operators of ‘crowded places’ across New Zealand increase the safety, protection and resilience of their venues.

Protecting Our Crowded Places from Attack: New Zealand’s Strategy / Te Whakamaru i Ō Tātau Wāhi Kōpiripiri mai i te Whakaekenga: Te Rautaki a Aotearoa sets out a consistent approach to promote the safety of crowded places.

Crowded places include locations that large numbers of people access easily and predictably, such as transport hubs and public transport, buildings and offices, tourist attractions, and civic spaces. They can also include open spaces like busy streets, parks and pedestrian malls.

The nature of crowded places means they pose extra risks to people, as they can be a target for attacks.

The new strategy explains what crowded places are, the risks they pose, and how businesses, event organisers, sports clubs, charities, community and religious groups, central government agencies and local government can help to keep people safe. It highlights that: • As New Zealanders we need to work together to protect ourselves against the possibility of an attack to ensure the safety of those working in, using and visiting crowded places. • Owners and operators of crowded places have a particular responsibility to ensure protective security measures are in place as part of their emergency planning

Protecting Our Crowded Places from Attack:

New Zealand’s Strategy

Te Whakamaru i Ō Tātau Wāhi Kōpiripiri mai i te Whakaekenga:

Te Rautaki a Aotearoa

and health and safety practices.

The strategy sets out a consistent approach to protecting crowded places. It introduces guidelines and tools to help owners and operators of crowded places reduce the chance of an attack occurring, and lessen its consequences, using methods that are proportionate to the threat, helping owners and operators to: • better understand how to Deter,

Detect, Delay and Respond to an attack • conduct self-assessments of the risks of an attack at their location or event, and • assess the appropriate level of protective security needed. and better information-sharing are key elements of the strategy. National advisory groups, representing businesses and communities will be established to facilitate collaboration with the objective to increase the capability across New Zealand to Deter, Detect, Delay and Respond to an attack or similar incident.

In addition to the main strategy document, crowded places resources include a suite of resources, including: • Self-assessment tool: an initial assessment of how attractive your location may be to an attacker. • Assessing protective security tool: to aid your thinking about how to best protect your event from attack, and to support you to make improvements. • Detecting hostile reconnaissance tool: provides an overview of the potential indicators and protective security measures that could be considered when developing or reviewing security plans and measures to mitigate hostile reconnaissance. • Security audit: to check which security matters are relevant to the type, size and risk profile of your crowded place, identify any security gaps that you need to resolve; and record the actions you plan to take to resolve them.

The strateg y, guidelines, planning tools and answers to common questions are available at: www.police.govt.nz/crowdedplaces.