Cedar Point new security checkpoint

Dead Sexeh said:

You constantly try to downgrade the opposing argument by using the term security theater which has a negative connotation instead of calling it just additional security, and now you are implying that you know for a fact that this added security does nothing.

I can't speak for anyone else. I call such checkpoints security theater because they are indeed theater, not additional security. The negative connotation is deserved.

By and large, these checkpoints are staffed by outsourced, low-paid people wearing costumes performing simple tasks. They have no authority to engage, detain or arrest people attempting to bring contraband into the park. They're not law enforcement officers. Like TSA screeners, they're security assistants.

Were these checkpoints staffed by actual police officers, or by licensed, trained security professionals, I wouldn't like it more than I do now, but I would grant you your point about additional security. But.... mostly, they're not.

TSA, with billions of my tax dollars and your tax dollars and everyone's tax dollars at its disposal, is incompetent.

No. Not merely incompetent. Stunningly, incredibly, astoundingly incompetent.

TSA, repeatedly tested on its ability to discover banned items, tests that it knows are coming and warns its screeners about, not only is demonstrably incapable of finding the vast majority of banned items in these tests, but has gotten progressively worse over the years.

Think about that: billions to spend on improvements, repeated tests of which they are forewarned, and the agency has become progressively less capable of performing this vital task.

I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that if TSA is missing 95% of banned items in these tests, it's not magically finding 100% of the banned items that aren't part of these tests.

Do I know for a fact that security theater does nothing? No. Do I (I think) reasonably assume that if an agency like TSA, with the resources at its disposal, cannot catch 95% of banned items, security checkpoints at arenas and museums and amusement parks aren't doing much better with sticks to probe bags with and inconsistently tuned scanners and wands? Yes.

With my 11 visits (this year), I've only encountered a security check one time. It was a Saturday, late September, during re-entry @ main gate, around 5:30. This involved hand-held wands only. I was oddly enough looking forward to encountering a check-point, to see the efficiency of it(if possible). Moving forward, we we approached by the working (out-sourced or otherwise) employees. I was immediately approached and gingerly told I needed to have a hand held wand pass over me, no big deal. I threw the guy for a loop though....he was a bigger man, and held his hands out like a big burly bear. I quickly told him " if you needed a hug, just ask", he laughed, did his thing, and I went on my way. Thinking back, the wand wasn't even passed close enough to detect a potential danger/ threat on me (or any other guest). Meanwhile, my daughter didn't get stopped, but just watched others go through same process. I found it to be very random & nonchalant attitude(s) from employees(and guests, including myself this time) doing this. It didn't waste any time. IMO, not consistent. I didn't feel violated, nor want too feel that way. Didn't feel any safer either. But if it's going to be done @ any time, any gate, any form, do it right or not at all.

One of them asked to look in my jacket pocket when I told him what was in it that would set the wand off. I opened it. Now it was dark out and with my pocket opened I couldn't see into it which means he couldn't see into it either but then he let me go. There's no way he could have known what was actually in my pocket so if he was trusting what I said why put on the show to pretend he saw what was in my pocket?

Perhaps he'd satisfied the requirements of the script. He'd looked in your open pocket.

Though he probably did not know what was in your pocket, he did know (assuming his wand was properly calibrated) whatever was in your pocket contained under a specific amount of metal. Of course, this begs the question, if he knew it was not a firearm, why did he need to look? A good wand will be able to locate a normal conceal carry piece from about a foot away (or more, based upon size and number of rounds loaded). The best wands have an interference button that allows the operator to tell it to ignore belt buckles, cell phones, change, and re-bar in the concrete below. The wand is only as good as the operator though, and will only have the potential to catch threats that happen to come when it is actually being used.

Why does security often ask people to remove their hats? Anything I can hide under my hat I can also hide in a boot. Though, what I hate the most is when Great Adventure wants everybody to take off their belts. I always untuck my shirt, forget I am wearing a belt, and I have yet to trip the alarm. Growing up, being told to take off a belt meant you did something very bad.

I feel the best way to secure a park is to have a large, mobile, and armed security team. This is essentially what Dorney Park has been doing for years, with their security on bikes. There is nothing that says behave quite like being greeted by a line of professional officers on bikes handing you a park map when the park opens for Haunt. Since Dorney Park started to wand, it has felt like the security is all bunched up outside the entrance, with very little inside the park until most people are in the park. On a side note private security in Pennsylvania falls under the Private Detective Act of 1953.

It would help a lot when parks use overtime police officers, they use gear appropriate for occasion. When I was at Six Flags America earlier this month, I observed a police officer with a thigh holster. Now this type of holster works very well in this particular officers normal job as a K-9 handler sitting in a car a lot of the day. However, standing alone in the middle of a crowd, the officer was so nervous that someone might grab his weapon, he was standing there constantly fingering his pistol's back-strap. This brings me to another point, security should always work in pairs, and should avoid loosing sight of their partner. That being said, they should often be a few feet apart and not talking to each other for their entire shift. This makes them much more approachable with concerns or issues.

I think most of you are missing the point that it is a deterrent. Someone with malicious intent will see the security checks and think twice before trying to sneak a weapon into the park. Someone with a thought-out plan for bypassing security would probably just drop it next to a fence that is easily accessible from within the park. That is why I used the locked car analogy. If someone is just pulling door handles until they find an unlocked car won't spend the extra 30 seconds trying to unlock one specific car. Someone that is targeting a car will get into it whether or not it is locked. Deterrent.

A person looking to rob a car, under most circumstances, has no reason to steal my car when they can steal another car with less effort. Someone who is planning to steal from the parks cash office, is not likely to be an impulse thief. I understand wanding is a deterrent, and yes, it may stop someone from taking a laser or the pocket knife they carried for thirty years into the park. However, I believe the resources can be applied other places a lot more effectively, with a lot of less inconvenience to people paying a lot of money. As I said before, I believe the best deterrent is a fast response of professional, friendly, and armed security.

Anyway, if someone wants to steal my car that badly, they may, it is fully insured and its contents are easily replaceable.

...Which, incidentally, is why Cedar Point has to use an outsourced security team for their gate security show: they have a good sized, effective, armed, sworn police detail working in the park...and they are busy working in the park. And my own (limited, thankfully) experience watching that detail in action suggests that it is a capable and effective force to maintain safety and order *in the park*. At least Cedar Point is smart enough to hire additional manpower for the gate charade instead of pulling their safety forces from their work inside.

The problem with any kind of additional security measures, no matter what they are, is that there is no objective way of evaluating them. If the park does as they normally do and doesn't do any customer screening at the entrances, and there is an incident, then somebody is going to claim that they didn't do "enough" to prevent it. If they subject every customer to cavity searches on the way in, and there are no incidents, then there is no way to correlate the lack of incidents to the additional precautions. The park might have done enough, or they might have just gotten lucky. The absence of an incident doesn't indicate that precautions were adequate, but any incident that happens can indicate that precautions were insufficient. You can't do enough, you can't spend enough money, and you can't inconvenience the customers enough to guarantee security. How do you know when you've taken *appropriate* measures?

Gee, this all sounds so familiar. It's the same problem we see with safety theater up on the ride platforms, isn't it?

And for what it's worth, I think in both areas they've gone too far.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

CP Maverick said:

I think most of you are missing the point that it is a deterrent.

I don't think it's a deterrent.

Someone with malicious intent will see the security checks and think twice before trying to sneak a weapon into the park. Someone with a thought-out plan for bypassing security would probably just drop it next to a fence that is easily accessible from within the park.

Why do you make a distinction between someone with malicious intent and someone with a thought-out plan? Wouldn't someone with a thought-out plan have malicious intent? How will intermittent security checkpoints prevent either person from entering the park?

If someone is just pulling door handles until they find an unlocked car won't spend the extra 30 seconds trying to unlock one specific car. Someone that is targeting a car will get into it whether or not it is locked. Deterrent.

So I have to suffer a security checkpoint at multiple venues on the very off chance that someone bears a specific grudge against one specific venue I'm entering? Locking a car is a passive action against a reasonable threat: car thieves. Having a costumed security assistant poke a stick in my bag is an invasive action against a non-existent threat.

I would wonder if the lack of constant gate security is related to the process starting mid season. The park may have had to work around the availability of the third party company's personnel, and next season a contract may be in place to guarantee sufficient coverage for the duration of the season (that or the park training their own staff).

The argument shouldn't be that such a process needs to be eliminated because its not 100% effective, it should be that it should be eliminated because its 0% effective. Nobody is deterred by Paul Blart; in fact, by replacing uniformed police with minimum wage wanders the idea is presented that they are the extent of the security. If the park wanted to be honest and admit that their presence helps alleviate their exposure in the event of an incident or lowers their insurance costs, I'd be inclined to give them a pass. Id still grumble, but at least there would be a clear and logical reason for it.

Its not even good theater; last Friday night the wand chirped at my belt line due to the buckle. I was in the process of lowering my arms in order to lift the front of my sweatshirt to demonstrate that when I was told I could go. I could have had all sorts of compact weaponry there, and the baggy sweatshirts that we all wear in October would have concealed it perfectly.

We-o-we-oooo said:

...it should be that it should be eliminated because its 0% effective.

Yes. This.

At least here in Chicago, Bank of America branches each have a uniformed guard standing outside the branch entrance during business hours. The branch at Belmont and Sheffield often has a guy on duty who looks like he gets winded opening a door; it's hard to imagine a bank robber who would in any way be intimidated by this guy.

I hope it's not there at all next season. I want to feel like I'm going to an amusement park, not prison. I hope enough people complained that they will get rid of them altogether. It's sad that we live in a world where people are willing to give up their freedoms "in the name of safety".

I highly doubt getting wanded at the gate is anything like prison. Again, it can't be stressed enough - the place is private property. You have no "freedoms" there in the first place.

They have every right conduct business the way they want. As I've said before, if you're that bothered by it, vote with your wallet and stop going. If you don't wish to stop going, it obviously doesn't bother you as much as you think n

They've gone all these years without any sort of incident. They are trying to eliminate a problem that didn't even exist in the first place. I'm willing to bet most people who would bring in a weapon couldn't even afford to get into the park. You need to fork over money twice before even stepping foot inside the park. You have to pay the parking fee then the admission fee. Those are good enough deterrents right there.

That is the most ridiculous thing I have read on this thread.

I commented on this thread before and I feel like I should once more, but please note I won't be replying to comments here. Please know that I respect each and every one of your opinions and passion on this matter, and that I'm just presenting my perspective.

For the last 4 years, I've had the pleasure of running these type of first-contact security teams, both in-house at a rather large university in Columbus, as well as multiple other venues throughout the greater metropolitan area as a contractor. Myself or my team has probably had the opportunity to interact with some of you and your families over the course of this time. I'm not going to get into the specifics of who I work for, but I just want to put a couple things out there:

All of my guards are licensed through the State of Ohio and have full authority in whatever venue we work in, granted to us by the management and ownership groups. This means that, as representatives of these groups and by the authority of them and the state, we have the right to engage and temporarily detain individuals, prohibit access to public and private areas, deny entry for any justifiable reason (even if you have a valid ticket), confiscate items, and eject anyone for any reason. We do not have the right to arrest, cite, or charge anyone, or to detain them for longer than reasonably necessary (which typically amount to enough time to gather information or await arrival of a police officer). We work in conjunction with local, state, university, and federal law enforcement (depending on where we're working) to enforce laws and policies, and have their full backing and cooperation when engaging in our duties.

I'm not here to defend what Cedar Point is doing, quite the contrary. I think it's asinine to not only limit the timing of their checkpoints to peak hours, but to contract, especially through Tenable. Personal preferences aside, I've had nothing but awful experiences when attempting to work with their employees, especially out of the Cleveland office, as they're generally incompetent and poorly trained, and are a poor first interaction for Cedar Point's guests.

This may just be a trial run for next season, but to me it's quite simple: don't half ass it. Go all in or don't do it at all. If they want security checkpoints, great, but have them all the time or not at all. Make sure they're staffed with reasonable people who have a passion for creating a quick, efficient, and as pleasurable as possible experience for the guest. Personally, I'd have them work as direct employees for Cedar Point, but again that's just personal preference because then you get to choose who's on the front lines, not some recruiter 75 miles away. Back them up with CPPD or SPD, who can engage in the more difficult guests and have that arrest authority.

Final closing point here. We all know the world changed on 9/11. We no longer live in a world where we have time to be reactive, because sometimes that's just not good enough. That's one of the big reasons why you see these checkpoints at pretty much every public assembly venue across the country. There doesn't have to be a precedent for it, the purpose is to ensure that the precedent doesn't exist, because by the time it does, it's already too late.

The more I have thought about it, I don't think the additional security is to prevent a terrorist attack of any sort. The fact that they only do it on peak days lead me to believe that there have been issues with people in the past getting frustrated with the amount of people there and getting into altercations or intimidating people with a weapon. Those type of things happen more than you would think at these type of places and are usually kept pretty quiet if reported. Also these incidents usually happen between parties who knew each other, so there isn't much to worry about for the average guest. It would be a terrible PR event though if people get in an altercation with weapons invovled. A few years ago there was supposedly an issue with someone having a weapon in one of the huanted houses. Earlier this year the was a scuffle at Kennywood and there have been several violent incidents in the parking lots of other parks. I believe this security is in place to keep people from having a weapon to use when/if those type of incidences occur. Granted this won't do too much to stop it from happening in the parking lot, but the further they can push the altercation away from the park is a win for the park itself. This type of security would be able to catch weapons from the type of people who carry weapons with them at all times.

Thabto said:
They've gone all these years without any sort of incident. They are trying to eliminate a problem that didn't even exist in the first place.

The quote "there's a first time for everything" comes to mind quite a bit. Not to mention, you don't know who has been in and out of the park with a weapon. I guarantee CP Police and CP Security does though. That very well could be why this is implemented. In closing, why does CP have to wait for a tragedy to happen before they implement prevention?

I don't see security checkpoints being set up in schools, yet there continues to be school shootings. I don't see checkpoints at shopping malls, movie theaters, etc, yet there have been shootings in those types of places. I wish the media would stop giving so much attention to shootings. It just creates fear-mongering that we live in a dangerous world. It's sad that we live in a world where we have to give up our privacy because some places are afraid that one of us might be carrying a gun into the place.

You might want to look harder. Lots of places have had security check points set up in the last 14 years, some of them including those places you listed.

Again, minor nuisance, butI don't really see how a want is violating your privacy. It's not like you're being forced through a body scanner like at the airport - that... is a violation of privacy.