Revise standards for transport of cash - Overton
Published:Friday | February 11, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Industry wants laws updated in face of robberies
Dionne Rose, Staff Reporter
Jamaica has no overarching standard for how security companies transport cash and the head of the industry group says recent robberies have highlighted the need to upgrade laws.
"I have already started the lobbying for the Private Security Regulations to look at other segments of the security industry and to bring that legislation into the modern times and in keeping with the development of the industry," said Commander George Overton, president of the Jamaica Society for Industrial Security (JSIS).
Two weeks ago, an unmarked motor car that was transporting more than J$60 million (US$700,000) to banks in Kingston, the Jamaican capital, was held up and robbed when it stopped after being hit by another vehicle.
The three security guards, who apparently had come off a main route to avoid traffic, were reported to have come out of their vehicle when they were accosted by gunmen. They worked for a company that no one was willing to name, when asked by the Financial Gleaner.
One of the security guards has since been detained and questioned by police, but none of the money has so far been recovered.
The hold-up was the latest in several of its kind in Jamaica in recent years, including one in 2005 involving Guardsman Group, the company for which Overton is director of operations.
In that incident, an armoured car transporting around $150 million (US$1.7 million) was held up and robbed. However, members of the team transporting the cash were later held for conspiring in the robbery.
According to Overton, the circumstances in which the cash was stolen last week appeared to have contravened accepted security procedure.
"It is clear that there is no one person to leave the truck," he said. "Somebody has to be in the truck."
However, in the absence of industry standards, he explained, security firms operated by their own schemes for the transportation of cash and what was acceptable to their insurers.
"You are highly guided by your insurers and under what condition they will insure the money," he said. "They will set your guidelines. It really comes down to you and your insurer ... ."
Guidelines
Overton said that under a normal cash-in-transit policy, that amount of cash would have to be transported in an armoured vehicle and the minimum number of guards to that truck would be three.
"If you are to use a normal car, it would be four armed persons and you would have to carry less amount of money," he explained.
Peter Levy, managing director of British Caribbean Insurance Company said any insurance company underwriting a policy covering the transportation of money would, as Overton noted, have specific guidelines.
These guidelines would include a ceiling on the amount of money to be transported in a regular motor vehicle, and against when an armoured vehicle would be necessary.
There were circumstances, though, invoking the concept of "security by obscurity", when a large amounts of cash would be transported in a normal vehicle to prevent suspicion.
That, however, was done under specific guidelines. Usually, police and/or armed security would shadow the vehicle.
"I have never seen that in practice in Jamaica," he said. "And it is not done haphazardly."
Overton said the latest incident would have repercussions for the industry, which has more than 200 registered private security companies and employs some 16,000 armed and unarmed guards in the industry, according to Private Security Regulation Authority data.
"This is not good at all," he said. "Pretty soon, Jamaica will not be able to buy insurance service (for cash-in-transit operations)."