For security officers, the power to arrest is perfect for the private industry.
There is a trespassing document that can be obtained by Arizona property managers to give them the power/authority to arrest, better known by security guards as ATA. What happens is that when there are vagrants or homeless people on someone’s property, the guard calls the police to assess the situation. If the property manager has filled out this form and submitted it to the city, they have the authority to arrest an unwanted individual.
Sean Myer, Phoenix’s Operations Manager, is a pro when it comes to the power to arrest. He says “Allowing the security officer the authority to make that choice on property if they have a consistent problem is a definite necessity.” Being able to delegate and take charge of a situation is a convenience for security guards. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy.
Sean says there are some inevitable complications when it comes to dealing with the homeless. It is a law that in order to be fined and issued a ticket, you must own a home. This is why vagrants are becoming increasingly more of a problem in our area; “We run into a lot of issues with this. They have shut down a lot of homeless shelters so [the homeless] have to find somewhere else to go. It is becoming quite the little epidemic as far as the homeless are concerned.” Yikes! Being a security guard has its advantages, but it can get pretty tricky at times.
VSS Security Services’ employees provide world-class security protection in any type of environment. As security officers, it is their job to step back and monitor the situation. “The drivers are to pay attention to detail. What type of vehicle did they get into? What do you see? What does the individual look like?”
These types of questions are key in assessing the situation and ensuring that any and all problems are taken care of. VSS becomes the 3rd party to the dispatcher on the phone. Our security guards give a play-by-play to what’s going on and where the trespasser is, what they’re doing, where they’re going. One of our dispatchers then calls the police to notify them of the crime that is being committed.
The arrest depends completely on the police officer. If the perpetrator has a gun, the officer will likely raise their level of force to whatever is necessary. If there is a smaller item at hand, such as a knife, the situation is pretty easily deterred.
In order for an officer to make an arrest, there must be a report of a suspicious crime, or a crime has to be committed. For example, if a pedestrian is walking and jumps in front of a moving vehicle, gets up and runs away from the scene, the driver of the vehicle can call 911 and the police can come out, but if there is no victim then there is no crime.
As opposed to police officers, security guards have the same authority as any civilian. As security guards, we must be careful of any citizen’s arrests because there is a lot of liability and risk involved. Our job is to observe, deter, and report.
We work with patrol staff, and it also depends on the property. If we are hired in an area that requires less security (a safe part of town), we make our stops just to keep the status quo on the property. “Eight stops per period to keep a visible presence on property, so vagrants see our car and see us driving around so they will pick up and leave, is usually effective enough,” Sean says. He believes doing so works just as good as having the authority to arrest, because we become a nuisance and it gets the job done; “we become a gnat in their ear and they don’t want to deal with that”.
The authority arrest is vital. Sean says, “It gives us the ability that otherwise we could do nothing with.”
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Tags: Authority, Power to Arrest, security
