Harvard Security Guards Claim They’ve Gone Years Without Working Radios
“As of June 15, only 19 of the 49 radios required at Securitas Security Services posts across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were operational”
Better that this is found out now than after a tragedy that could have been prevented.
The Harvard Crimson reports:
Harvard Security Guards Went Years Without Radios at Dozens of Campus Posts
Each time John F. Carbone Jr. started a shift, he said, Securitas asked him to confirm he had the equipment needed for the job: keys, a work phone, and a working radio.
But for years, the 18-year Harvard security guard and union steward said he has signed in at posts across campus the same way: “no radio, no radio, no radio.”
The problem stretched across much of Harvard’s undergraduate campus.
As of June 15, only 19 of the 49 radios required at Securitas Security Services posts across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were operational, according to interviews with more than 15 Securitas employees and visits by The Crimson to more than two dozen posts.
Thirty of the 45 sites staffed by Securitas had no functioning radios, leaving guards assigned to residential Houses, labs, and academic buildings without one of their most basic tools for emergency communication.
The gaps were especially stark in undergraduate housing. Just four of the 14 radios required across Harvard’s 12 Houses, DeWolfe, and Cronkhite were present when The Crimson conducted its inventory.
Two days after The Crimson completed that inventory, Securitas distributed radios to all 14 residential posts, according to a person familiar with the matter and two longtime Securitas guards. By Friday, nearly all FAS sites had a working radio.
Securitas had possessed working radios since at least August 2024, according to the person, who said the radios issued to guards cost about $1,000. Securitas did not respond to a request for comment on the radio shortages or the timing of the distribution.
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Comments
It turns out that having a faculty who can denounce handheld radios as fascist tools of white supremacy does little to nothing to actually make them work.
Well, those tampons in the men’s rooms aren’t going to pay for themselves!