How Will Your Officers Respond To Incidents And Emergencies?

It’s been several years since I have had the responsibility of managing a security force, but looking back there are things that I would definitely do differently.  One of the main things that I would change would be investing more resources into training our officers on how to properly respond to incidents and emergencies.  Responding to incidents and emergencies is one of the primary functions that your customers would like your officers to get right.

Looking back over the years with my company I can think of several examples of how officers responded improperly when dealing with an incident and/or emergency.  I specifically remember one occasion in which we had a relatively new security officer working a post at a construction site on the evening shift.  The site was not properly secured, so as a result our customer had been having problems with trespassers and copper thieves.  During this particular officer’s shift one night my father, who was president of the company, received a call from the officer’s MOTHER saying that there had been a problem at the site.  Consequently, my father contacted me to alert me to what was happening.  I attempted to contact the officer to ascertain what was going on, but I couldn’t reach her so I immediately called the police to have them respond to the site.  I also met the police officers at the site, but we were unable to locate the officer.  It was a nerve-racking few moments not knowing what happened to the officer, but we received another phone call from the officer’s mother updating us.  She told us that the officer had actually left the site and had taken public transportation home.  It turns out that the officer had been startled by a trespasser that she had seen in the building and was too shaken up to stay on post. Implausibly, instead of calling the field supervisor, she called her mother to let her know what was going on and left.

The following day I was a little upset and embarrassed that I had to tell our customer that the officer had left the site after encountering a trespasser.  After all isn’t that why we were hired???  I was even more upset that the officer had not followed the post orders that we had developed for the site.  But what upset me most is that the officer inserted her mother into the chain of command (It’s actually kind of funny now).  Although the officer was totally out of line in the way that she responded, looking back on the situation I believe that we could have done a better job of preparing her and all of our officers to better respond to incidents and emergencies.

As a manager I believed that by putting together well thought out post orders and walking our officers through those post orders they would know how to respond to incidents.  In an ideal world that might have been true.  But in the world of security guard services very few things are ideal.

Preparing to Respond to Incidents

I believe that every security officer wants to feel like they are prepared to handle any incident that might occur.  But as a manager of a security company you have to ask yourself some serious questions.  If there was a fire would your officers know what to do? Are they familiar with any systems (fire alarms, elevator shut off, etc.) that they would need to use in an emergency? Do they know who to contact in case of an emergency? Do they know who is authorized to speak with the media?  If you aren’t sure that ALL of your security officers are ready to respond to an incident, now is the time to start preparing them.

As part of my coursework in emergency management the importance of conducting exercises was heavily emphasized.   I believe that many of the best practices for emergency personnel and first responders can also be applied to your security force, especially as it pertains to preparing for an incident or emergency.

In emergency management, exercises can be categorized as either discussion-based or operations-based activities.  Discussion based activities include seminars, workshops, and tabletop exercises.

  • Seminars are informal discussions that are held with participants so that they understand their roles and responsibilities.
  • Workshops are like seminars, but they have some product or deliverable that is produced by the end of the workshop (i.e. new response plan, etc.)
  • Tabletop exercises are scenario-based simulations that allow participants to walk through a specific type of incident or emergency.

On the other hand operations-based exercises include drills, functional exercises, and full-scale exercises.

  • Drills test specific functions and procedures that your participants may have to perform during an incident. For security officers examples might include how to use a public address system during an active shooter incident.
  • Functional exercises are used to test the full set of procedures that personnel would follow during an incident.  For security officers this would include activities such as conducting a fire drill.
  • Full scale exercises involve testing and evaluating major emergency plans and may sometime include the participation of outside agencies such as the police and/or fire departments.

Although I am not proposing that all of these activities need to be undertaken at all of your customers’ facilities, I do believe that officers at every facility should be routinely engaging in at least one or two of these activities.  Benjamin Franklin once said “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”  So get your officers involved in some of the discussion-based or operations-based activities mentioned above to ensure that they understand how to respond to incidents and emergencies.

For More: Checkout OfficerReports.com’s Incident Checklist

Do you conduct drills with your officers?  If not, what prevents you from doing so? If so, what lessons have you learned?  We would love to hear from you so please leave your answers below.

 

 

By Courtney Sparkman

 

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