Guard Operations

To Guard or Not to Guard

I. To Guard, or Not?

The question of guarding is a difficult one. However, the use of guards is normally a protective variable that is considered by larger banks, which have operations in urban areas. It is usually not a question for community sized banks located in other than urban environments, unless a unique need is identified. However, this is not to say that an objective and individualized threat assessment in either environment, may, or may not justify the use of guards. The purpose of this article is to discuss the base rationalization that is associated with the use of guard services, and to address aspects to be addressed if guards are to be a part of a bank's protective program.

1. Right or Wrong?

In a manner that is similar to the application of camera systems, for the positioning guards, there is usually no totally right or wrong answer. For example, there is a wide variety of camera technology available which can be tailored to any protective need. While a camera system may be right for one bank, and protective application, it may not be right for another. The nature of the risk that is to be deterred, the desired results of the application, operational questions, and initial and ongoing costs of the equipment, are all variables that must be considered. The question of guard services is a similar one.

2. Questions

• Guards are expensive. They are a substantial, and continuing labor cost. There are also the substantial support costs of bonding, licensing, training, uniforms, equipment, management, and administration.

• What are the licensing and training requirements, and standards in your State?

• What does the bank's risk analysis disclose?

• Guards can be a tremendous asset to a bank's protective program. Likewise, and if not designed and managed properly, they can become a significant liability.

  

• Should they be in uniforms, or blazers?

• Should they be armed, or not?

• Do they actually deter crime, or not?

• Perception verses reality: how is their presence viewed by the bank's employees, customers, and visitors, as compared to their true protective value?

• Given their high cost, and liability: what are their duties, and operations going to entail?

• Are they really cost effective?

• Guards are traditionally assigned to high risk branch bank locations. Do they deter robbery, but at what comparative costs? Or, can robbery be effectively deterred, and losses limited, by the use of administrative controls, facility designs, equipment applications, and non-security personnel, instead of depending only upon the presence of an armed guard?

• Should the bank use employee guards, contract, or off-duty police officers in a guard role?

• Are there contracts, or labor unions to be considered?

3. Evaluation Variables

If the question of the addition, or continuation of guard services is to be addressed properly, a systematic study should be conducted that has the objective of identifying, and evaluating the variables, and then presenting a logical decision making report to senior management. There are numbers of questions that must be asked in such a study to include:

1. Why are guards to be used?

• What is the risk that the bank is concerned with?

• What are the total, and other protective options available?

• What are the protective goals and objectives?

• What is the quality of the guard force in general, and of the specific individuals themselves?

• What is their level of employment criteria, training, supervision, and management?

• What are their licensing, bonding, training, requirements?

• Are these requirements mandated by law?

• What is the consequence of error, or omission in the area of guard applications?

• What is their related long-term cost, as compared to other protective options?

2. How is the bank going to utilize their services?

• In a true security role, during both business, and non-business periods, for:

  - Employee, customer, and visitor relations.
  - Foot patrol of bank property, and parking lots.
  - Security patrol by vehicle.
  - Roving patrol of branch locations.
  - ATM service team support.
  - Fixed posts.
  - Access control.
  - First aid.
  - Vehicle traffic duty.
  - Courier of negotiable items, or currency.
  - Escort duties.
  - OSHA and fire safety, inspection duties.
  - Employee training activities.
  - Emergency operations.
  - Facility opening, and closing duties.
  - Dual control, or accountability duties.
  - Report writing.
  - Special events, and assignments.

• Or, in a non-security role of messenger, clerk, janitor, and general gopher to carry boxes, change light bulbs, shovel snow, and etcetera?

4. Evaluation

Generally, if guards are not going to fulfill a viable, dedicated, and a professional security role that has a primary stated mission of protecting life and property: they should not be positioned. If they are, but are then assigned non-protective duties that interfere with their primary mission, their role will have been seriously compromised, and serious negative consequences can result. In the case of guard operations, it is best to do it right, or to not do it at all. If the mission is to be one of support and not security, usher type personnel would be more appropriate.

The cost of guards can be substantial. The liability factor that is related to the use of guards, and especially if they are to be armed, can be tremendous. While the presence of a guard may in fact be justified in some applications, with modern cost-attractive technology in the form of camera, alarm, lighting, access control, and communications systems: the need for guards in total may be eliminated. Or, the necessary numbers may be reduced, therefore allowing for a higher quality of individual. Their efficiency can also be substantially improved by the use of such technology.

The question of whether to guard, or not, deserves close evaluation on the part of senior management, security officer, and the bank's legal representatives.

II. Factors to Consider When Hiring

Once the justification for using guards is made, there are a number of additional points to be considered. Many of these will require the input of the bank's senior management, and legal representative.

1. What Kind of Guards: Contract, Employee, or Off-duty Police?

The decision to contract out the service, or to use employees of the bank, or police officers, will depend upon many factors that will vary from bank to bank, and state to state. Some of these decision factors are:

• If your state licenses and regulates the guard industry very closely, minimum standards of employment, licensing, training, and supervision may be best met by a contract firm who due to their specialization in this area, maintains a professional approach and keen compliance record in this regard.

• Their position of standard may tend to clarify and minimize the bank's burden, expense, and liability regarding the operation.

• From the perspective of cost, contract guards will normally be the most cost-effective of the three options.

• While police officers carry the highest level of authority, and deterrent value, they are the most expensive option.

• Employee guards may be more responsible, as it is simply easier to control your own employees, than someone else's.

• Some loss of control, and quality of personnel may be experienced with a contract guard operation.

• While it may be difficult and time consuming to terminate the problem company guard, the unsatisfactory contract guard can be replaced with a telephone call.

• The use of non-employee guards can result in problems regarding sensitive functions, and limit the role they may have.

• One, or another of the options may involve the questions and needs which surround union labor. The bank may identify a advantage in using one, or the other.

• If extra guards are needed for some reason, a contract relationship may facilitate this need.

In total, there is no simple answer as to which type of guard is the best for any one application. One, or another, or possibly a mixture of all three would work the best.

2. Firearms

The use of deadly force is a very sensitive issue in the American culture. Many states do not apply deadly force in the name of capital punishment, or if they do, it involves a long drawn out process. The Federal Government can apply deadly force, but very seldom does outside of a military context. The public police have the authority and means to apply deadly force, but only within a strict constitutional standard.

In arming guards with firearms, the bank places the authority and means of deadly force, within a free society, into the hands of their representative, the guard. The presence of a firearm on the part of a guard does carry a deterrent value. However, uniformed and armed police officers and private guards are injured and killed every day in combat situations where something went wrong, and the situation was in fact not deterred.

If a guard is to be armed, only those who have high levels of military, law enforcement or private security experience, and are careful screened, physically able to fulfill the function, and have completed high levels of weapons specific training should be placed into this role. If the bank's state regulations set a standard in this regard, the bank's standards should exceed the public requirement. Anything less should not be considered. Another option would be to evaluate the carrying of non-lethal weapons.

A bank can face extreme liability if it errs in setting or complying to standards, choosing either the person, or weapon, failing to train, supervise, or to assure the proper operations which involve the presence of an armed guard.

3. The Scope of the Overall Decision Process

The decision regarding the use of guards is not one to be made based upon only one, or two aspects. Rather, several variables, both potentially positive, and negative, must be evaluated.

• From a risk management perspective, is the presence of guards necessary in the first place?

• If a higher level of protection does appear to be justified, can this be accomplished through the application of non-guard protective measures such as administrative controls, facility designs, or the use of CCTV, access control, and alarm systems, or perhaps bullet-resistant barriers, or by lowering the potential exposure and risk at the location by other means?

• The use of any guard requires high standards of hiring, training, supervision, management, and administration. Guards are normally uniformed, and equipped. Each of these considerations carries with it an element of time, maintenance, and cost.

• Not only is there an element of cost, but some of these variables can pose difficulties in and of themselves. If the guards are to be the bank's employees, one prime concern is the problem of hiring qualified guards from the available employment pool. Simply stated, there is a demand for guard personnel, and the best qualified candidates may already be employed.

• Contract or off-duty police officers can also be used in the guard role. However, there are also problems associated with their application.

• While cost should not be the only factor upon which guard decisions are made, the applications of guards does represent a substantial, and continuing labor cost which does need to be closely evaluated.

III. Guards and Robbery Prevention

The question of whether or not security guards prevent retail branch bank location robbery attacks has no clear answer. Obviously, each of the dozens of variables that would have to be measured to develop a clear perspective, are different for each location.

However, there are several aspects of this question that carry enough independent merit to be considered worthy of consideration. They are:

• Robbery prevention results from efforts, and variables that must be present in combination, and in a systems format to be effective.

• No one of these variables alone will prevent robbery.

• Guards can be a critical element in such a robbery prevention design, but only if applied in the right way, and in combination with other necessary security variables.

• Any protective design requires the presence of effective administrative controls, a proper facility design, and security equipment applications, and the presence of people to act in some degree of security role. Robbery prevention is no exception and requires the presence, and coordination of these variables to effectively deter attacks.

• A bank robber generally has a number of objectives which are to:

  

  • Approach and enter the facility undetected.

  • Commit the robbery as quickly as possible.

  • Obtain as much money as possible.

  • Not be identified.

  • Successfully escape.

  • Avoid apprehension, and prosecution.

• The potential criminal clearly has the motive, and means to commit the act of bank robbery. What he seeks in a target bank is the opportunity to successfully carry out the act from his perspective.

• The key to successful robbery prevention is to counter these objectives, in a very efficient and visible way, with the realization that while the majority of bank robbers do have a logical thought process, others simply, and on an increasing probability basis, do not.

• A properly designed and implemented robbery deterrence program will be effective to a high degree. However, in today's aggressive world, the average protective design that is justified for a branch banking location will simply not deter all of the potential robber population, all of the time.

• Generally, and from the logical robber's perspective, it is easier to rob a bank that does not utilize guards, than it is a bank that does, simply because guards can compromise the robber's objectives in one way or another.

• Generally, the application of guards, and especially armed guards present in uniforms, does deter the threat of robbery to a high degree, if, the guard operation is designed, and then utilized properly. If the guard operation is not designed, nor utilized properly, their presence may not deter the act of robbery, and additionally, it may in fact complicate, and create a more dangerous environment.

• From the robber's perspective, it is simply a better risk judgement on his part to rob a small banking location, that is secluded, has good entry and egress routes, a small number of employees, and no guard present.

• To use guards, or not? One of the prime considerations is found in your own community. If the other banks in your area do not use guards, then your traditional robbery deterrent efforts are as effective as the ones they also use. However, when one or more of the other banks begin to apply armed guards: your bank will be placed at an immediate defensive disadvantage, and will as a result become a more favorable, or "softer" robbery target, once again, from the potential bank robber's perspective. The principle is nearly identical to the arms race that occurred during the Cold War era.

• If armed guards are to be used, of prime necessity from an operational perspective is to apply branch bank guards within a format which assures that the guard is very conspicuous, and visible to anyone who may be casing the bank, while at the same time not being predictable in their methods. The element of surprise is sought by the robber. The element being visible, and unpredictable should be sought by the bank security guard.

• In combination, the guard should not be positioned on a continuing basis at a given location. To do so limits his effectiveness, and makes him an easy target to be disarmed, or neutralized by the attacking robber.

• Rather, the guard should be equipped with an effective communications device, and patrol on foot, on a continuing and random basis between the lobby, internal bank areas, ATM, night deposit, and armored locations, and all customer and employee parking lots. The guard should not sit at a desk in the corner of the lobby reading the newspaper as the consequences can be swift, significant, and negative.

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John W. Kennish, CPP - Security Consultant