Just thought you should know..

11/01/12

Whoever thinks that all security guards can do is call the police is really…missing something important..

Especially in a public setting (like me, guarding a mall).

We can / have a duty to:
-Enforce rules and regulations of the property (if you owned a building, and set your own rules, wouldn’t you want someone to make sure it’s run that way?)
-Detain for police investigation (iffy subject…)
-Perform a citizen’s arrest and Charter the subject if a crime is witnessed in our presence
-Physically remove a subject if they are trespassing and charge them with Assault by Trespass
-Fight you if you fight us
-Trained in self-defense and arrest and control procedures
-Blend into crowds (even in a high-vis uniform)
-We have a tactical mindset (the ones who take the job seriously anyways..) so, think twice.
-We READ people’s body language. We know when you’re lying to us.
-Perform medical aid
-Crowd control
-Perform equipment safety checks (extinguishers, sprinkler valves and systems, alarms, etc)
-Preserve crime / incident scenes for investigators
-And most importantly, we protect life and property

We may not have the powers of a peace officer. But we are agents of the property owner. Which means, if you are on OUR property, and you do not FOLLOW OUR rules, we have the legal authority to enforce what the property owner wants.

Why people believe we can only call the police?

Because they don’t understand the concept of liability.

Liability. Some companies and clients are too scared that if their guards do anything to hurt a subject who obviously broke the law, they can be sued in civil court. The company loses the contract, the client loses money, the employee (guard) is fired. This includes performing first aid. Even if someone’s trained—they can’t do anything because the company or the client is too scared that ANYthing can happen that will be redirected back towards them.

Or.

We don’t want to create a scene and fight someone when we are in fear of our own safety. Taking an individual down and fighting him while being paid $11 / hr isn’t worth it. Sorry, but I’d like to go home and not worry about contracting AIDS or that I was almost run over by a person trying to escape me (yes this has happened to me).

Besides, if we take someone down, we have people yelling “rent-a-cop brutality!!” anyways.


So, think twice before you call someone a “Rent-a-cop” or a wannabe. Those who take the job seriously do it professionally and for the better good. We remind people of reality and do things objectively. The young ones do it for practical experience before becoming a police officer, the old guards do it to give back to the community after retirement. So yeah, just think about that for a second.