Michael Jackson’s death forces hospital into a lockdown

Hi folks, it’s Scott Wallask. I was chatting by e-mail with Vernon Goodwin, security director at UCLA Health System in Los Angeles, about the hundreds of people that gathered outside UCLA Medical Center after Michael Jackson’s body arrived at the hospital last Thursday.

Goodwin told me the medical center went into lockdown mode, at which point security officers and administrative staff members monitored all entrances and screened anyone who wanted access into the building.

He brings up a good point in mentioning administrative staff: As some of you have seen in the past, lockdowns will often necessitate drafting non-security personnel to help out because a) there’s probably not enough security officers to go around, and b) you don’t want to drain your security resources on the fairly routine task of watching a door.

The use of administrative personnel (or environmental services workers, maintenance crews, etc.) for lockdown duties could be part of your security plans or even get rolled into your incident command system job assignments.

For hospitals, the death of Michael Jackson has proven to be an interesting case study in terms of security, media control, VIP policies, and perhaps even civil disturbance plans (luckily everyone stayed peaceful outside UCLA).