Writing a blog post can sometimes slip to the back of the queue because of the amount of work I have to do in my daily routine. For those who enjoy reading what I post, I do apologise. In today’s blog i’m going to tell you what its like to be a security officer on call.
Last night I received a call out at approximately 01:30 to a building site where intruders had been seen on the CCTV. This is a site where we don’t provide static guarding – just a reactive response for the client. As intruders had been confirmed, the police were called on 999. It didn’t take me long to get to site at that time of the night, but I was glad to see the police on site already by the time I arrived. Apparently they had actually been patrolling on the next street, so the timing was perfect.
As a door supervisor, I am fully trained to deal with whatever situation arises. As a director, it is my role to stay calm, focussed and assertive – no matter how scary a situation gets. The senior ranking police officer took charge and dispatched us all across site in pairs – that was great as one of the officers had arrived on his own, so that meant I had someone to pair up with instead of going into the partially built houses on my own. The general type of people who break into building sites on a school night are the homeless and drug addicts – people who have nothing to lose, and so have no second thoughts about assaulting the police or security. During the school holidays, or at a weekend, it’s generally kids. Although that isn’t always the case, it’s a general rule of thumb.
After a good 30 minute search of site, we came to the decision that the intruders (4 adult males according to the CCTV monitoring station) must have left through a gap in the fence at the rear of the site. We had searched every accessible building on the site in addition to every digger and piece of plant equipment. The majority of the police officers left, and I stayed behind with the single manned unit for a while to see if anyone came out of the shadows after it seemed like we had all left. There was nothing – the site was safe and secure once more.
It must have been around 02:40 by the time I got home, and around 03:30 by the time I had managed to fall back to sleep… just in time for my phone to ring again at 03:41 with another call out.
If anyone sees me around today, trying to be an adult and go about my normal day job, please be kind and bring me coffee!
Have a great day and please remember to stay safe.
