Industry News by Robert L. DiLonardo
Demonstrators Block Entrance to
DiLonardo is a well-known authority on the electronic article surveillance business, the cost justification of security products and services, and retail accounting. He is the principal of Retail Consulting Partners, LLC (www.retailconsultingllc.com), a firm that provides strategic and tactical guidance in retail security equipment procurement. DiLonardo can be reached at 727-709-6961 or by email at rdilonar@tampabay.rr.com.
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oward the end of January, a few hundred protesters gathered in front of San Francisco bank entrances in the city’s financial district as part of a daylong, nationwide Occupy Wall Street exercise demanding that banks end evictions and foreclosures. Eleven people were arrested after a group refused to move from their human chain blocking an entrance to Wells Fargo corporate headquarters. Traffic was rerouted around the area, and commerce was disrupted as protesters spilled into the streets. In Greece the populace has rioted on multiple occasions since 2010 causing deaths, store lootings, and wanton destruction in the wake of government-forced austerity measures due to the country’s sovereign debt woes. Billionaire investor George Soros actually predicts in comments given recently to Newsweek that as the U.S. financial system begins to collapse, “riots will hit the streets.” Amid the possibility that these incidents could boil over into more violent situations, we should take the opportunity, thankfully in advance, to get better prepared for large-scale civil unrest here in the U.S.—a phenomenon that hasn’t really occurred here for about forty-five years. Since only those over 60 years of age were on hand for the violent and massive civil rights and anti-war protests of the late 1960s, I thought it would be a good time to look back at the
If you haven’t considered the worst-case scenario, you should do that now. As I discovered first hand, these things can erupt quickly and endanger innocent people. scale of some of those past occurrences and suggest some potential best practices in case the scenario in the U.S. becomes more violent. The objective is to get the current set of retail loss prevention and asset protection professionals to review and update business contingency plans by knowing what the “worst case” has been and could be well before anything really bad happens. Fortunately, so far, the Occupy Wall Street crowd has been tame compared to the perpetrators of two classic large-scale, long-run demonstrations that I had the displeasure of witnessing first hand.
1968 Washington, D.C., Race Riots
Five days of riots erupted in Washington, D.C., after the April 4, 1968, assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Civil unrest affected
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Baltimore, Chicago, and at least 110 other U.S. cities. In Washington crowds gathered in the predominantly African-American sections of the city where activist Stokely Carmichael threatened violence and incited the crowd, which began rioting in earnest that night. By the next afternoon crowds exceeding 20,000 overwhelmed the D.C. police force, forcing Vice President Hubert Humphrey to dispatch federal troops and mobilize the D.C. National Guard. By April 8 twelve people had been killed, over 1,000 wounded, and over 6,000 arrested. Additionally, about 1,200 buildings were burned, including 900 retail stores. I was a frightened sophomore in a D.C. college at the time and vividly remember the orange tint of the nighttime sky as we hurriedly evacuated the campus and tried to find a safe way out of town. The college had no contingency plan. It simply closed up shop and was vacated as soon as possible.
1969 Vietnam War Moratorium
Between mid-October and mid-November 1969, large-scale anti-war demonstrations took place nationwide. The two largest were in D.C. where 500,000 demonstrators gathered in protest to the Vietnam War. The history books say that it was generally peaceful, but there were clashes with the police, a significant disruption of commerce for an extended period of time, and a high degree of tension between the demonstrators and the authorities. I was deployed for the month, rifle in hand, on the streets of Washington as a member of the D.C. National Guard’s military police battalion. Uniformed military weren’t particularly well thought of by the crowd, but incidents of large-scale violence were rare.
What to Do?
I queried some knowledgeable retail LP professionals, who provided some useful information. While these respondents wished to remain anonymous, I provide their suggestions here to stimulate thought about your preparations for these types of situations. This information will also appear on the magazine website, LPportal.com, where you can add other suggestions. Flash Mobs ■ Keep your video system up-to-date and operating. The recordings may be valuable evidence after the fact. ■ Call the police. Notify the proper management authorities. ■ Stay away from the flash-mob participants. Do not confront, challenge, or attempt to apprehend participants. continued on page 70 |
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