Armed or Unarmed?
It is becoming more and more popular for clients to request unarmed Security officers. While some have legitimate reasons such as CCTV Monitoring posts, or other posts where interaction with the public is not necessary, there are some clients who fear armed personnel due to potential liability.
While it is true that our society has become more and more drawn to litigation and it not uncommon to hear million dollar judgments awarded for petty issues, it is irresponsible to demand unarmed personnel based on potential liability alone.
It is true that an armed Officer could use lethal force and end up in court; however it is more likely that an unarmed officer will be killed with his only line of defense being to “call the police”. If Police could handle the volume of calls that they receive, if they could respond to calls in a reasonable amount of time Security companies would likely not exist, or would at least not have such a huge market. Don’t get me wrong our Public Officers do the best they can and being short on officers, low on budget, etc is not their fault.
When I say unarmed I don’t mean without a firearm, I can see that for some business Officers armed with a firearm may cause more harm than good, when I say unarmed I mean completely unarmed- no pepper spray, no baton, no taser and no handcuffs. When an officer is confronted by a violent subject his only options are to flee or to stand and defend himself with bare knuckles which could result in more damage than an intermediary device such as pepper spray. I believe that every company, HR Manager, and Business owner owes it to themselves to question “Why do we have another unarmed person on site, just to call Police”?
