After Rampage, A Look At Mall Security

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.