John W. Kennish, Security Consultant

Proactive Robbery Risk Analysis Study Projects


Of Your Bank, Credit Union, Savings & Loan, or Other Business

Retail, Currency, Armored, ATM, and After Hours Depository Operations

To Best Assure Employee, Customer, Vendor, and Police Safety

Protect Your Assets, Limit Losses, Support Recovery, and Prosecution

Through A Survey, Comprehensive Report, and Employee Training Effort


As a young police patrol officer in the Cities of Detroit and Kansas City during the turmoil of the 1960s and 70s, Mr. Kennish experienced the real world of armed robbery attacks, and of having to make significant but quick decisions, in very first person way. He also and as a non gun person, became a Distinguished Expert with firearms as a pure matter of survival. Now that seems like so distant a time and place, however, those lasting vivid and very personal impressions became and continue to be the base of his career objective of prevention in this threat area.

To work toward attaining that objective it was necessary to leave the after-the-fact enforcement world of police operations and enter the prevention-based world of the security profession. To accomplish this, in 1976 Mr. Kennish turned in his badge, took a cut in pay, and began a new career path as a Security Specialist by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. In that role he was to conduct many dozens of commercial bank proactive risk studies across the 10th Federal Reserve District for Federal Reserve member banks.

In 1980 he was employed into the role of the Corporate Director of Security for Commerce Bancshares of Kansas City, a bank holding company. In that role he was to conduct hundreds of risk surveys, in addition to managing, coordinating, and/or personally conducting investigations into numbers of robbery and kidnap attacks against the Corporation. During this ten-year period he also developed a comprehensive robbery and extortion prevention, reaction, and training program for the Corporation, published and instructed at dozens of professional conferences on the topic.

In 1990 he elected to leave his corporate cocoon and develop his independent consulting practice; a venture which has been successful and very rewarding from a medical center risk study project in Hawaii, to presenting his one-day Security Workshop in Bermuda, to teaching the Russians about bank security, to hundreds of other assignments which make the consulting role so interesting.

Regarding the threat of robbery and associated risk survey work, and training programs: he has been engaged by numbers of financial institutions to conduct such reviews in a proactive mode. This type of project is based upon the rationale that while the threat of robbery can never be eliminated, it can be managed and prevented to a high degree, and when it does occur, it can be responded to properly. There have been three consistent variables to these projects which are: 1) that these client organizations have made the commitment to learn from the prior experiences of others instead of waiting for their own to occur, 2), they learned to not ask the question unless they wanted the answer as my efforts are objective in the truest sense of the word, and 3), that no matter who you are, there is always something new to be learned.

On the other hand, some organizations seem to think that they know it all, and those are the ones that I often have the opportunity to meet me in court, in a reactive mode, in my expert litigation support role, following an often tragic robbery event over which they are now being sued for millions of dollars in a premise or reasonable security context. And you would be amazed to learn that many of those incidents involve the very large banks, with the big security budgets, who none-the-less simply do not know what they are doing in the threat area of robbery.

And on security consultants and experts ...

I have been a sole proprietor independent security consultant since 1990,which is considerably prior to the terrible experiences of September the 11th. In turn my long consulting tenure is an accurate measure of my capability. That role is supported by substantial qualifications, education, technical training, and experiences as a practitioner, and full-time consultant.

Under the “Daubert Rule” http://expertpages.com/news/daubert_dow_kumho.htm the U.S. Federal Courts now only recognize experts following an assertive and complete examination process. In today’s world an expert must be just that, and not just an I-wanta-be. This Court process is a standardization for the qualification of experts.

If a consultant represents himself to you as an expert, he or she in fact is not, unless both their qualifications and testimony have been Daubert tested.

I have provided very complex litigation support for several hundred cases, for both defense and plaintiff, and at both the State and Federal Court levels. I am in fact recognized by these Courts as an expert in the area of security, bank security, and robbery. In turn it is my most sincere suggestion that you do not want to learn from your own experiences, nor do you want to meet me in court.

I am ethical, proven, objective, reliable, dependable, and mature, and I would value your consideration, and the possibility of working with your group. And this in a proactive mode while you have the luxury of time on your side. After all, who better to have on your team as I can assure you that it is best to learn from the experiences of others, than to wait and learn from your own. And my litigation experiences give me an insight that others simply do not have.

Please read http://www.kennish.com/consult/ for some suggestions on engaging a security consultant.

But why out source at all ? Simply, to engage a self-motivated and proven expert to;

* Provide advice and communicate clearly,


* Fulfill a sensitive but temporary need,


* Understand and solve your problems,


* Render objective viewpoints,


* Provide sound recommendations,


* Develop and educate yourself,


* And your staff members,


* Augment your limited resources,


* Engage specialized, but temporary skills,


* And provide quality and accurate results, on a timely basis,


I will look forward to your call to discuss the possibilities. Please use your time, now, to your best advantage to avoid a possible robbery attack. Thank you.