The Security Sham

I just recently resigned from a security position at a large convention center. I've been in the security field for five years in various posts, including position at a majot local airport. In this latest position I held the rank of lieutenant, and was charged with directing the actvities of security personnel, guarding this enormous venue and so, you might say, I've seen it from all sides. What I have seen is not good. In fact it stinks!

I left to pursue other business opportunities, so there was no bad feeling on anyone's part; in fact they were sorry I was leaving (and even threw a little going away party), but in looking back it was the right thing to do. No regrets. In fact it serves as a "moment of truth" as, contrary to what my state license represents, I wasn't really doing much security work. Quite honestly, I was "playing the game".Much of the security industry (funny what they call 'industries' nowadays) is not at all what the term implies. Funding is erratic, personnel are poorly trained, and the people running these shows display a wide variance in competence, dedication, and plain ol' common sense. Cronyism and corruption also play a part in many instances. Take this last assigment.

The convention center is a major attraction in this city and one would think that the local government would install security to protect taxpayer funded assets, and to ensure public safety on the premises. But that isn't why they have security; it's because they get a substantial reduction in their insurance if they have something called 'security' guarding the premises. They have, but it is the furthest thing from security imaginable.

The security company the city hired was chosen by a single criterion: it submitted the lowest bid. That's it! Little or no thought was given to the quality of the service this company would provide and, as an employee of the company in certain high-visibility, adminstrative security positions, I was effectively shielded from the down-and-dirty, ground level aspects of the job. The year and a half I spent at the convention center was revealing.

First let us consider the hiring practices of this now-defunct company. If you could find the convention center, had no missing body parts, and could correctly spell your name, you were in! The starting pay wasn't bad, well above minimum wage, but it was a 'blind alley' in that there were no raises. So the combination of hiring off the street and no incentive to excell resulted in a turnover rate of 85%, and we were almost always short handed. The full compliment there is twelve security officers to guard a four acre installation. Many nights there were only five of us, and replacements were slow in coming. This was ot due to an unavailability of appliacnts; when we were short handed the city was still billed for the full crew and the extra money found its way into the account manager's pocket. The payroll was short a lot of the times the result of someone tampering with the time reports; the payroll would be shorted, the agrieved parties would complain, and in time the corrections would be made, but not before the regional manager booked these shortages as 'cost reductions' and collected a bomus. Once the check was cut, then the records were straightened out - and nobody caught on to what was happening.On the city government's part, this gigantic facility was poorly kept up and nobody seemed to care. There were 36 CCTV cameras, of which fourteen actually worked. The displays in the 'nerve' center were poor owing to the 1970's technology that wasn't adequate to the task. The radios were damaged and held together by tape, the NiCad batteries had 'memory' problems that necessitated changing batteries every two hours; an electronic wand and button security control was dropped because the city didn't want to spend the money to download the data from the wands. The golf carts were in a miserable state of disrepair and once, quite recently, I checked the oil on one that I was using and found it to be 2½ quarts low: the thing only holds about three quarts. But equipment failure and poor maintenance are only part of the problem; there is alo the matter of authority.

Private security officers have little or no enforcement powers. Here we are not talking about Blackwater-like goon squads, just common, ordinary, civilian security. Their mission is to 'observe and report', make sure buildings are secured, and bar access to facilities to unauthorized persons. Security officers are no police and do not have anything like the powers granted to law enforcement. For one thing, most security personnel are unarmed, may not use physical force except under very specific conditions, and when confronted by hostile persons they must retreat. A couple of weeks before I left I foiled a felony-in-progress: a woman was being sexually assaulted on the property. When I intervened the perpetrator left the premises quickly; as he was off the property I was unable to apprehend, the police had to be called, and by the time they showed up (twenty minutes) the woman had already been taken by ambulance to the hospital. One of my officers watched from a distance and we both furnished consistent descriptions of the perpetrator, who was by this time long gone. Armed security officers have it even worse.

To qualify as an armed guard or officer requires classroom instruction and range time amounting to three days, in some instances an entire week. If the security company pays for it, you're fine, if not be preared to pay between $800 - $1,000 to complete the cycle. This includes all the gear; weapon, gun belt, safety holster, handcuffs, et al. The weapon itself counts for at least half the cost; and what do you get for all that?


You get to wear the weapon. Actually getting to shoot it can be a very dicey matter.
In fact, armed officers are in greater danger than their unarmed colleagues. It's all about the rules governing the use of a weapon by security personnel. They are very stringent: you practically have to wait to be shot before you can act. And it's great if you have witnesses who can testify that your life was in danger when you fired. Police can use deadly force; you can't. There has to be a clear and present, mortal danger to you or to another person before you can use your weapon; even then you can count on being arrested, booked, and relieved of duty until an investigation clears you. This is without pay in most instances. You are guilty until proven innocent.

As to the perils an armed security officer faces, these are very real. If you have a suspect covered and he reaches for his wallet, a cop can shoot if he feels that the party is going for a weapon; you can't. Make a mistake like that and you'll face manslaughter charges at least - the cop won't. Then there is the clear and present danger of confronting an armed perpetrator, say in a robbery. He wants to get away with his crime and won't abide any threat to his success. You. Unless you see him first and act quickly, you could end up dead. An unarmed security officer poses no threat to the perpetrator. He too may get shot but his chances of survival are much better than yours.

It's a dangerous game.

And it's played for the most part by amateurs. Private companies fund security staffs and appoint directors by the eenie-meenie-miney-moe method, a pet employee gets the job - or more often than not someone just gets stuck with it. That's when the fun starts. I have personally checked out an installation that was supposedly secured by a top company. I walked up to a keypad door, pulled on the handle - and it opened!
Nobody had noticed that the lock mechanism had hung up and the tongue wasn't seating in the receptacle on the jamb - and this was at an airport! This same venue had emergency exits from each classroom; they looked secure but when I pushed on them with some force - they flew open! Another door, this one in a kitchen had paper stuffed into the jamb plate to prevent the door from locking; the caterers wanted to keep from having to use a key each time they entered the building to prepare lunch for the staff and trainees. When I found this breech it was evening, well past lunch time, and the place was deserted. But that was nothing compared to the "bomb" a group of us were charged to find.

This was at another site, a nationally known insurance company. They played the security game" to the hilt, holding meetings every so-often to discuss strategies that were seldom implimnted and didn't work very well when they were. At one of these meetings, on a bright sunny morning in June, the director of security told us that she had secreted a 'bomb' somewhere in or around the building: we were to find it, all thrity-two of us. I knew we wouldn't succeed. There was one vital piece of equipment that no none had, and with which we would have found the 'bomb' in a matter of minutes: a flashlight.

Yes, a flashlight! It was a bright and sunny morning and folks don't usually need a flashlight on a glorious spring day. But when you're poking around bushes that surround the building on three sides, the sunlight causes deep shadows to form in the inner reaches of the bush - you can't see a thing! But a flashlight can easily penetrate the gloom, highlighting irregular shapes and reflecting light from metallic objects. As it was, thirty-two security officers searching for over an hour couldn't find the "bomb".

Security is not a game for amateurs.