Blog Backlog: a thin veneer of faux security.

Dr. Helen: No Gun, No Chance

Are schools just trying to get people killed? School security officer, Russ Kocur, at Halls High School in Knoxville was shot and killed by a fugitive from the law who was sitting in a parking lot at the school. The officer went to check out the car and was shot. One has to wonder why a school security officer who patrols a school at night does not carry a weapon or wear a bullet proof vest…

…I don't know why anyone would take a job as a security guard without a weapon. What are they supposed to do if they see a crime taking place, hide under a desk?

Dave Hardy at Of Arms & the Law commented earlier on another school where an unarmed security guard was killed:

Unarmed security guard sounds a little like a contradiction ... at best a deterrence to the more stupid or minor criminals (don't steal that bike -- there's a guy in uniform), at worst, a man put in an impossible situation, charged with protecting others, but having nothing but a radio to call for help, and maybe his fists.

Dr. Helen's husband, Glenn, looks at a broader pattern:

People hire them, I suspect, because they don't want to pay the premium it would cost to hire someone who can be trusted to carry a gun while dealing with malefactors and non-malefactors. But as with an awful lot of "security" efforts, they're really paying for the appearance of security without its substance. Only someone else, the guard or a victim, sometimes winds up paying the price for the difference between appearance and substance.

Indeed, lots of security efforts are cosmetic, and add very little security, if any.

Some years back, there was a murder of in the parking lot of a Denny's in Portland, Maine. Not long afterwards, they refurbished the restaurant, adding extra lighting to in the parking lot (good idea) and added a security guard to the staff.

The security guard I saw whenever I was there was a joke. He used to be a manager at the same Denny's, a job he was much more suited to, as he was incredibly fat. I look like an athlete by comparison and I've weighed as much as 275 pounds. Compared to this guy, I was Batman.

He was going to be not much more help in a crisis as a security guard as he was as a manager, just that he could sit around doing nothing in the meantime as a guard.