Evac

11/01/05
Off-duty

I decided that while I was at another mall (where our headquarters was near to) with a good friend of mine, I would be nice to my supervisor and pick up some supplies for our mall. I picked up some evidence notebooks and decided to head home but first to my site.

I get there and I enter the office, drop off the notebooks and had a chat with my supervisor and a former guard of the mall that was leaving. Good fellow, just some things he had to take care of. Anyway, while I'm dicking around the security office, an emergency call goes to my supervisor who took it instantly without saying much and left the office.

About twenty minutes later, the afternoon guard comes in and the first thing he says is.

"Martin, there's cops with rifles everywhere."

I had a sudden "What the fuck" moment and the two of us took off, the former guard already having said his goodbyes to us. We rounded the corner, and there was a crowd that had formed, with my supervisor telling people to get back.

A female law enforcement officer was also there, helping as much as she could. When I turned the corner, there were at least twenty other law enforcement officers, carrying G36 rifles and I may have seen a C8A1 in the crowd somewhere. They were pointing it into one of the local cell phone stores.

So I give a look at my supervisor, who nods at me, and he tells me to get the crowd back. I do so, with the afternoon guard doing it.

Now it was weird--I was out of uniform, only wearing a black hoodie, gray t-shirt and blue jeans. I was telling people to move back or redirecting them away from the situation. Even the female cop was confused and at one point yelled at me to stay back too but I told her I was with security and was off-duty and she understood and gladly accepted my help.

Now, my supervisor told me to get the mall manager, who was just packing up to leave, and told her of the situation. I escorted her to the scene where she began to talk to the police as I went back to controlling the crowd. At this point, they had the subject subdued and cuffed. Then, by police orders, we evacuated the mall and had the mall tenants and employees assemble in their areas.

The afternoon guard and I then took attendance of some of the shop employees, a few of them had turned up, others were around but just not where they were supposed to be.

Now, we waited.

I was then ordered to clear one of the entrances to the mall in case emergency vehicles needed to go through there and had quite the fun time explaining over and over,

"There's a major police incident, the mall has been evacuated and closed. Please move along." I said that to maybe...fifty or so people who kept trying to enter the mall despite seeing police and security personnel and a crowd of people outside of it.

I even had some tenants tell me they needed to lock up their stores. Now I understand that you may lose your business to some person whom may have been left inside. But the tenants didn't know what was going on--no one did (or, we wanted the public to not know just yet). I'm just glad none of them argued with me.

Still waiting around, it began to rain a little harder and the temperature dropped a little more. Some tenants and employees went to the McDonalds at the little corner of the mall property (which was not on our property, so I couldn't go there if I had to). Others waited in their cars and from what I heard, a few went home. Customers were still asking if they could still enter the mall. Again I explained the situation without revealing too much.

Then as it always works, hear-say went about...

"The guy had a bomb!"
"He threatened with a gun!"
"Maybe he was a terrorist!"

Really. Yeah sure, go around telling others that and see how they'll feel. Especially those who are already shitting their pants.

After another hour or so, they reopened the mall--employees first, then the customers and it resumed like normal. I was being compensated for helping out in the event and allowed to stick around if I wanted to.

I began to think to myself how well people can handle situations like this if there were police and security around. But if it was left up to them, I began to get curious. People always say "Fuck the police" or "Goddamn tyrannical enforcers!" (heard that from some hippy) or even "We don't need police."

Really?

I've always respected control and we need it. I learned that once you have no kind of control, shit flies off the handle and people get hurt, sick, and even die. I realized that a while ago when I was a child and here it was again being proven in my life that our society, as unfortunate as it seems to some, needs control. We are animals on this planet--we're only adapting to the way the world works. Yet no one sees that.

If something worse happens, and no one's around to answer their call for help, we'll just have to see what happens.

Maybe people should pick up on my preparedness lifestyle in case that happens :D

-HappyMallCop

By the way; without revealing too much, the subject got out of jail and made threats to the phone company and the mall.