After Rampage, A Look At Mall Security

Security Experts Assess What Can Be Improved In Wake Of Omaha Mall Shooting

(CBS)  The last mass murder at an American shopping mall happened last February, when five people were killed at a mall in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Then, like now, security analysts like Richard Conklin at the mall in Stamford, Conn. will evaluate what can be done differently, reports CBS News national correspondent Byron Pitts.

“It's difficult, especially in our society,” Conklin said. “We live in a free society. We've had some members of the Israeli security forces here at this mall and gone over security. Their security is much different. As you enter the mall, you go through metal detectors, you go through pat-downs.”

“I don’t want to see armed guards walking around the mall,” one shopper told Pitts.

Like most malls across the country, almost every inch of public space in this mall is covered by surveillance cameras. Hi-tech equipment that can zoom in on a license plate in the parking lot, follow a suspected shoplifter through the mall or hone in to a suspicious person.

The mall in Omaha relied on unarmed, uninformed security guards and off-duty police officers - and it is the same at most malls across the country.

Today at the country's biggest mall, The Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minn., it was business as usual.

“It wasn't really about shopping centers,” said Gene Thompson, a vice president of corporate security in Walnut Creek, Ca. “It was going to a place where there were a lot of people. We've seen this at schools."

In the aftermath of mass killings across the country, some procedures have changed. Officers no longer wait for a shooter to come to them.

“Instead of the old-fashioned way of staging, to actually go in and actually hunt this active shooter,” Conklin said.

“You become the aggressor as opposed to waiting passively by to see what they do next?” Pitts asked.

“You have to,” Conklin said.

A haunting possibility in this season of hope and joy.

[kailumego1]

Here lies a savage barbarian, a "monster" created by a society that forges a misanthropic "Social Darwinian" ideology, seen in constant others, and like them, has come back to bite them in the ***.

Not too long ago it was "Virginia Tech", Columbine, etc., etc. etc., etc., etc.

So what makes a person decide to take an AK-47, or any assault gun to a busy mall, school, restaurant, etc. and start killing innocent helpless people, because he is "fed up" with his life, or he''s depressed, etc.

Less apathetic people go to a quite place, write a lengthy suicide note, and blow their brains out, or take an overdose of pills, but not grandiose individuals.

No they live for the attention, the elaborate ostentatiousness, they hadn''t received from others, schoolmates, family, or society. Etc.

Now I ask why all the drama, histrionics, grandiosity, pretentiousness, flamboyance, ostentatiousness, etc.?

Why murder innocent people, because you''re fed up with living, a lot people are acutely depressed, and attempt suicide, "alone", but don''t have the conscious mind to take other people down with them.

A barbarian savage shot a child in Detroit six times, because he had a grudge with the child''s mother, so he kidnapped them both, drove to a gas station, took out his 9mm handgun preceded to shoot the mother, when the child begged for him not to hurt her mother, he then turned the gun and without hesitation shot the child six times.

[kailumego1]

Now I ask you what kind of "monsters" is this society breeding that they have absolutely no regards for human life or respect for the life of others?

It''s nothing mall security, Columbine school, or any school, unless forewarned, Virginia Tech, etc. could have done to foresee this tragedy.

And those screaming if only some of the mall patrons had a gun, well this enraged individual had an AK-47, which he started randomly shooting people, like Columbine, Virginia, etc., no one could''ve seen this coming.

Look at the history of this country, one that is marred with imperialistic hegemony and a grandiose ideology that is responsible for the death of millions of Native Americans, Africans, Nicaraguans, Philippians, Vietnamese, Koreans, Iraqis, etc.

A country that surreptitiously endorses "illegal" wars, for profit, masqueraded as "peace missions" for democracy, and later marvels at the slaughter of thousands/millions of innocent civilians.

This is the country that has created the Columbine, Virginia Tech, Lundy, Post office, Omaha Mall massacres, because it%u2019s through this society''s socialization that these individuals are craftily created.

[kindrox]

Securing the mall is as easy as put up a few signs:

No guns
No bombs
No chemical weapons
No killing
No shoplifting
No offensive behavior
No violence
No pickpockets

With signs like these, who needs police or guards?

[toolmangler-2009]

Getting rid of guns won''t stop the killings, Any teenager that has the ability to think already knows (or can find out) how to blow things up, I did when I was a teen ager. I learned about it because of curiosity. I just never hurt so bad that I wanted others to hurt with me.

[toolmangler-2009]

Lookout!!! here comes the ''Police State''.

[ms38654ob]

I demand metal detectors, trained killer attack dogs, pat down searches and at least 100 machine gun equipped guards ready to kill at the first sign of trouble at each mall before I''ll go back to one...

then again, forget it. There''s nothing worth buying at those places anyway.

[eggy1620]

Most of the malls I%u2019ve been in lately have municipal or county police officers patrolling on foot inside. Is this so difficult to repeat in all malls?