Industry News

Sexual Assault in Caymans Adjudicted in Boston

A 48-yr.-old woman on vacation in the Cayman Islands was returning to her lodging late at night. She stopped to use a public restroom at a resort spa's open facility. At the time, the spa itself was closed. But no lock was on the door of the restroom and no security staff or security devices monitored the spa bldg.

While the plaintiff was in a stall, an unknown man entered, extinguished the light, punched through a louvered wooden stall door, and raped the woman at knife point. She sued the hotel for negligent security. The case was recently settled for $1.1M in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts.

An expert witness for the plaintiff testified that sexual offenses in the Caymans more than doubled in the year prior to the attack. The expert further demonstrated that the US hotel chain had substandard security in the Caymans. The unnamed US-based parent company had not analyzed its security program at the location. The expert witness testified that the defendant had breached the standard of care in many ways. In effect, the location became “an attractive nuisance” for criminals by isolating and obscuring the spa's restroom.

Why would an incident that occurred in the Caymans be heard in a Boston court? The Caymans had a law prohibiting contingent-fee agreements. Therefore, the plaintiff sued the U.S. corporation that owned the hotel.
Source: Security Newsletter, 166 East 96th Street, New York, NY 10128 - 212-348-1553.

Hotel Security

The coordinated attacks at two Mumbai luxury hotels is a warning to high visibility, luxury hotel operators and their security staffs in any country, including the United States.

Security planning and procedures for at-risk hotels should include:

Establishing and protecting a security center. This place must be secured and not obvious to the public. Bullet-resistant glazing, bullet-resistant doors, and electrical utilities feeds can be vulnerable and therefore must be protected.



Improving communications. Communications equipment should be co-located with the security center and capable of messaging to and from defenders. Also to hotel guests and the public at large so that innocent people can avoid the area.



Rethinking access control. Hotels are welcoming places. But their doors do not need to be wide open. Electronic technology at the security center can be used to confirm guest status and confirm the right of casual visitors to enter. A very great aid is CCTV at unattended entrances.



Maintaining liaison with local police. Mutual assistance agreements supplemented with well-understood and practiced procedures can provide critical assistance.

For U.S. hotels overseas, the following protections are recommended:

Maintain contact with the State Department's Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) which can be contacted at www.osac.gov. Embassies and consulates around the world gather intelligence and disseminate it to corporate members on a daily basis. (There are no fees of any type.) In turn, members in possession of intelligence information should report it to OSAC for distribution to other hotels that may benefit from it.



Consider using the services of iJET Intelligent Risk Systems. This non-government group provides daily intelligence updates and on-scene emergency response services. iJET can be contacted at www.ijet.com.



Avoid high-visible, luxury hotels. For those who must visit terrorist-infested countries should use alternative facilities such as apartment buildings within gated communities.

Source: Security Law Newsletter, December 2008 issue, 166 East 96th Street, New York, NY 10128

White Collar Crime

White-collar crime is not necessarily crime committed by employees who wear white collars. The criminal can just as well be a shipping dock employee as a senior executive. In fact, the term white collar has nothing to do with the criminal's apparel and everything to do with the nature of the crime. The common elements are non-violence, deceit, corruption, and breach of trust, and are demonstrated by lying, cheating, and stealing through misrepresentation. The crime has no boundaries; victims can include individuals, businesses, non-profit groups, and governmental units.

White-collar crime can go on and on because it operates out of view and is difficult to detect. The victim is not aware of the loss, which usually takes the form of repetitive, incremental thefts. When discovery is made, it may be too late to recover even a small portion of the loss or to take strong action against the thief. Also, the mixed-bag nature of fraud techniques rules out the application of a universal test for determining the existence of a crime in progress. The best a potential victim can do is to ensure that loss control standards are operating properly.

The relative invisibility of white-collar crime is complicated by two other factors well known to investigators: a strange willingness of the courts and public to forgive fraudsters, and an inability of police detectives to deal with complex business-related crimes.


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