Professional Courtesy

[copelandamuffy]

In an earlier thread I mentioned a poster on thehighroad.org that complained that he was asked to leave a mall in Pennsylvania when he showed up in full uniform to escort his daughter to her car. His contention was that the mall security took exception to the fact that he was armed (legal in Pennsylvania) and asked him to leave because of it. (To clarify he was on his way home from work, he didn't make a special trip to escort his daughter)

The more I read the thread the less it seems to be a “gun” issue to me.

Maybe it’s because of my background but I see it as an issue of professional courtesy and in my experience professional courtesy dictates that I don’t show up on your security company’s site in my security company’s uniform.

The only real experience I’ve had with this is a company that sent one of their guards to escort female employees to their cars in a parking garage that my employer was contracted to guard.
As long as the guard escorted the employees directly to their cars and took no other action I really had no problem with it.

So in the given situation, you are a licensed security guard on duty on client property and a person wearing the uniform of another company shows up on your site acting in what appears to be a professional capacity.
How do you respond?

What if he is just there as a customer?

Would you go on another company’s site (assuming it was open to the public) in your uniform?

Sometimes I read these threads and walk away more confused
Maybe it's me. My doctor told me I'm losing my mind, although like HS I won't miss it much

[TOII]

He didnt say theyd be arrested, he simply stated its a good way to be removed from the property. Legal or not, if I dont want guns on my property, I have every right to have anyone with a firearm removed and trespassed.

What would be the grounds for a trespass. You would have to detain them to trespass them. I think you would run in to legal difficulties and possibly a fist or two. Now if he doesn't leave when asked....

[Condo Guard]

I haven't read the post on the original website, so maybe I'm missing something. If the mall has a "no firearms" policy I can see where mall security might ask him to leave. If they were very politically correct, they might have been afraid the sight of an armed guard might "scare" the customers. (Trust me, I've worked unarmed contracts where the client specifially did not want the armed supervisors on site for that reason, even though they would only be there 10 minutes to spot check the guard.) Hopefully he wasn't removed for being from a "rival" company.

I'm curious as to why the guy picking up his daughter didn't just secure his weapon in his car, or take off his duty belt, but that may have gone against policy.

[Warren14]

What would be the grounds for a trespass. You would have to detain them to trespass them. I think you would run in to legal difficulties and possibly a fist or two. Now if he doesn't leave when asked....

According to South African law, trespass is committed by anyone who enters or is present on a piece of land, a building or part of a building without lawful reason and without the permission of the owner or person who is in charge.
In a public place I would inform the person that he is not allowed on the premises & give him 20 minutes to leave the premises. If he has not left within 20 minutes then I can arrest & charge him for trespassing.
On a private premise, if a perpetrator has surmounted the first line of defence (e.g. a fence) I would detain him immediately & charge him for trespassing with the intention unknown to the Public Prosecutor

[TOII]

Yeah, I agree with you...I may not allow the 20 mins though. In this case the guy did neither and is not ordinarily subject to trespass. Detaining the guy would be unlawful barring any other circumstance.

[Warren14]

In this case the guy did neither and is not ordinarily subject to trespass. Detaining the guy would be unlawful barring any other circumstance.

We don’t know what the Mall’s laws are but you are right, it doe look like the security were acting with their own interests at hand & not the owner’s.

[TOII]

In the U.S. Malls don't make laws, they make policies. They may have a policy against the uniform or the gun...which would be enough to ask the person to leave and advise of the reason. It is NOT enough to trespass or detain a person (barring any actual breach of law or refusal to leave). Doing so would be an unlawful detention and would subject the officer doing the detention to arrest and the mall to a law suit.

[Tuff]

I may not have communicated my concern clearly enough, it was my understanding that the person that was escorting his daughter was asked to leave the mall because he showed up on their site fully uniformed and was essentially performing a security function that he wasn't authorized to perform on that site.

Uniformed security is uniformed for a reason, the uniform communicates to people that you are empowered to act as an agent of the property owner to enforce the property owner’s rules on his property. In Colorado that authority ends at the property owner’s property line. IMO by walking around this mall in uniform this guy was sending a message he wasn’t authorized to send. I think that is why he was asked to leave.

So, the thrust of my question would be more how would you deal w/ a person who wasn't authorized or working in conjunction w/ your company?

As for the open carry thing, in Colorado (out side of Denver) no one would pay the slightest attention.

I'm not trying to be rude, but in all this was ridiculous..


For me and the men that I have worked with over the years what you posed was a clear cut case of a ego driven officer confronting another officer..which in turn is a problem in this business in a overall perspective, it is also a problem we have in the security business as a whole when working with law enforcement officers.

What was described is petty at best and the officer was doing nothing wrong, unless it was a violation of law.

As for how it should have been handled.....Very simply and politely approach the off duty officer and introduce yourself.....

[PolarDeer]

I've worked on a few sites that had more than just one security company posting security guards there. It is quite common, I believe.

I haven't really had any problems with the cooperation generally and co-operating with individual guards from other companies either. The site that I currently work at has two different companies handling different parts of the same building, and I've come to good terms with the guys from our competitor.

I usually inform the guy from the other company about suspicious people and that sort of stuff, so they know if something is going on. This is a fairly slow and quiet site, but occasionally if something does happen, it is usually on the other guy's side

Yep, I have pretty much the same experience from around here. I do a lot of retail, and my sites are often in big or small malls that may have guards from three companies in total on site for different clients, and usually the cooperation works out pretty well. Often if I'm working on a site with people from a rival company we may also work together if either of us needs to detain a more challenging person, and in one retail site inside a mall I always use the mall's holding room (rival company responsible) simply because my site's holding room is a "don't build them like this" example of holding rooms.

It's usually ok to grab food or something from a store in the rival's "area", though I also do a lot of mobile patrol and when I'm driving I usually try to prefer gas stations/stores that have a contract with my employer.

All in all my general experience is that cooperation between people on the field works out pretty well in spite of the uniform color. Those silly "company rivalry" things are for the office people to worry about.

And to dig deeper into the negative stories, I've heard of serious internal strife inside different divisions of certain companies that have had smaller companies bought and thus integrated into them. In these cases, the employees of the former individual companies have formed a strong enclave of their own inside the company and have acted very unprofessionally towards colleagues from the company that had bought their former employer.

Any chance that this refers to one specific company holding the VR (National railway company) contract? Been getting a similar idea.

[HotelSecurity]

Yep, I have pretty much the same experience from around here. I do a lot of retail, and my sites are often in big or small malls that may have guards from three companies in total on site for different clients, and usually the cooperation works out pretty well. Often if I'm working on a site with people from a rival company we may also work together if either of us needs to detain a more challenging person, and in one retail site inside a mall I always use the mall's holding room (rival company responsible) simply because my site's holding room is a "don't build them like this" example of holding rooms.

It's usually ok to grab food or something from a store in the rival's "area", though I also do a lot of mobile patrol and when I'm driving I usually try to prefer gas stations/stores that have a contract with my employer.

All in all my general experience is that cooperation between people on the field works out pretty well in spite of the uniform color. Those silly "company rivalry" things are for the office people to worry about.



Any chance that this refers to one specific company holding the VR (National railway company) contract? Been getting a similar idea.

In my case it is not just something for the office people to worry about. These outside people are taking jobs away from my people.