Shopping malls in the USA employ private security staff to reduce the OWNERS’ liability and exposure to financial loss…PERIOD. Intervention in life and death criminal events is only vaguely part of the job description (and only by voluntary exception…when there is no other choice).
Their day-to-day duties are primarily to implement their corporate management’s Risk Management / Loss Mitigation policies. Believe it or not, their single most important function is fire protection systems monitoring with a commensurate reduction in already extremely high insurance premiums. The insurance companies require 24-hour Security Staff. The bottom line is the $ Bottom Line $.
Security duties include: identifying & correcting OSHA hazards; employee/customer accident prevention (tripping hazards, slips & falls, etc.); parking & traffic control; oversight of physical security locks and doors; FIRE prevention (including monitoring of sprinkler systems and risers); emergency evacuation of the property; defusing tenant/customer disputes; enforcing & reporting Tenant Lease Violations; resolving Lost & Found issues; providing directions & information to customers; serving as proxy management representatives outside 8-5 business hours; acting as corporate interface with local emergency services (Police, Fire, and EMS); coordinating a multitude of public events, displays, and marketing schemes on the mall property; supervising contract maintenance crews at all hours; escorting various local government inspectors (Fire Marshall, Health Inspectors, OSHA, etc.); locating lost children or other parties; monitoring security cameras; providing an effective radio communications network across their property; enforcing rules concerning presence of customer pets or service animals; providing sensing on a wide variety of minute-to-minute informational requirements for Managers, Marketing Directors, and Maintenance Staff; handling disabled vehicles or persons locked out of their cars; filing private property vehicle theft or accident reports; providing visual deterrence against crime; provide guidance to tenants in their filing of arrest warrants for shoplifters; occasionally pursue or detain perpetrators of misdemeanor or non-violent felony theft or larceny (shoplifters, dishonest employees, & burglars); break up fights; deal with belligerent drunks; confront delusional crazies; respond to: fires, births, medical emergencies, animal/child abuse calls, aircraft crashes on the property, ceiling/roof collapses, wind/storm/flood/freeze damage, dumpster fires, monitor and deter gang-bangers; monitor and deter shoplifting gangs; control access to the property, tenants, and patrons by the news media; jockey for Overtime/Holiday Pay; trolling for relationships in an environment which is overwhelmingly populated with young and attractive women (both employees and shoppers); enduring an inordinate amount of verbal abuse from idiots who would never use those words against a police officer (for fear of arrest) or a total stranger (for fear of a butt whipping); and properly calling the POLICE when something serious happens.
Security officers report any situation that is not conducive to the free and uninterrupted flow money via retail commerce. They act as the management’s eyes and ears for these situations and provide the ability and judgment to call for emergency assistance from local authorities or specialized service providers.
Daily, between 20,000 and 100,000 people flow through a typical super-regional shopping mall. They are small towns and the security staff deals with everything that can happen as these numbers of folks interact, work, eat, and shop.
No where in their job description does it say that a private security officer takes 50 yard head shots against armed, violent, and moving targets (who happen to be executing customers).
Providing an armed response to intervene against psychopaths or violent felons is not part of the mandate. Mall Security officers are not duty-bound by oath of office to inject themselves into life threatening situations for $9-$13 per hour. It’s a 40-hour a week job, not the USMC or a police department.
Although there are some malls which employ armed security, the vast majority (owned in chain-like blocs by property management or investment consortiums) choose to employ un-armed, but uniformed security officers in order to provide a high-profile presence (visible to the public). Whether employing in-house security or sub-contracted security company details, Management’s thought process is to provide an overtly visible “presence” which reassures patrons, tenants, and investors. They do not advertise the fact that this presence usually possesses no more law enforcement authority than the Citizens’ Arrest Powers that you or I may exercise. State laws vary widely, but generally do not provide Police powers to Security Officers. The security staff patrolling most malls are normally fairly earnest & dedicated (most people take pride in doing their work well), but are actually just part of a nation-wide Potemkin Village presentation by mall owners. They want you to see some semi-police looking staff (uniforms, duty-rigs, radios, cuffs, and maybe batons or OC spray) and assume that your wives and daughters are well secured.
Not so, but also not the fault of the Security Officers. They are limited by their employers as to capability, training, and (most importantly) coverage. Owners retain a security staff because they must. Security generates no revenue, but protects the mall from financial loss (to a degree)…kind of like a life jacket in a boat. The law firms and insurers retained by corporate headquarters throw up at the idea of fielding an armed quasi-police force. The training, certification, and liability limits are astronomical. At worst, they prefer to hire bonded armed security firms on a limited basis. Honestly, most LEOs are not truly proficiently trained in employing firearms and they have access to budgets and training resources which far exceed those of a security staff. The primary actions which most security officers are expected to take in a deadly force situation is 1) self-preservation 2) observe & report (suspect description, license plate, etc.) and 3) herd the cats (oops…customers) out of harms way if possible. Nothing more. For this they rate job success. If they were to kill anyone (deliberately or accidentally), they will most likely find themselves terminated and involved in a multi-party civil lawsuit where they and the mall are co-defendants, but the mall lawyers aren’t directly defending them…just the mall’s interests.
Security personnel often fall into one of the following BROAD categories (and, like every circumstance in life, there are exceptions):
1. Young men (less often women) who are working their way through college or are preparing for a police career. This often includes some very sharp recently separated military veterans.
2. Middle-aged career workers between jobs who desperately need the medical benefits for their families.
3. Former LEOs, Corrections Officers, etc. - Folks who elected voluntarily or involuntarily not to make full-time certified law enforcement a career.
4. Retirees – augmenting a retirement income and who need the medical benefits
5. Career Security Personnel – usually become the moderately well paid supervisors, chiefs, directors, or heads of security departments. At the top of the corporation ladder, the money is good and a security manager will have a resume good for promotions or change of employer.
6. Police Wannabes, Bullies, and Head Cases…there are always one or two. Mall Ninja or Cretin in all his glory…they do exist. They’ve usually failed the application process for a police academy at some point. These folks are actually a minority and are tolerated about as well in Security as at any other place of employment…not for very long.
7. Current LEOs – it’s a second job with reliable hours, easy indoor work conditions, and beats helping bar bouncers. Very little life and death drama actually takes place at most malls.
A typical large shopping center runs a security staff of 3-7 officers (depending upon peak business hours) for a property that may include hundreds of stores, cavernous wings and halls, and 10-30 acres of parking lot. 1-3 of those officers are always outside (in patrol vehicles) and may be unable to quickly travel to the scene of a crisis. 1-2 of the officers are already busy handling some issue or call at any given time. When the radio blares that “someone is shooting!” the only response may be a security officer who is ¼ mile away, on foot, armed with a baton. Nuts and criminals don’t normally commit their deeds in the visible presence of deterrence. What do you think you would you do in his shoes? More importantly, what can he or she actually do? Not much…except observe and report.
The CURRENT best way for malls to secure their environs is by employing varying levels of Certified Police presence. Actually, many malls already do this. Once again, the deciding factor is money (payroll). A mall can employ 2-3 full time security staff for the price of employing one off-duty police officer. Management’s point of view is that 3 uniformed security officers are much more visible than 1 police officer. Additionally, the police officer is hired to effectively work an additional police patrol shift (outside his normal PD duties). He handles Police matters. He doesn’t do windows (or a lot of those other very important tasks that the security officer undertakes for his employer).
Payroll and benefits being one of the major costs of any business, Mall Security is allocated a small and set percentage of the annual budget for a center. The Mall Security Director or Chief manages his payroll budget (just like any supervisor) and allocates payroll for police augmentation only where he or she can afford to (weekends, Sale Days, holiday shopping season, etc.). If affordable, an extra 1-2 cops can augment the security staff and patrol your local mall as part of an off-duty beat. However, when Bad things happen, that police officer may still be ¼ mile away…
Malls that employ this procedure typically save their payroll for the Thanksgiving thru New Years shopping season, when they may flood the mall with a thick blue line. Malls using this method are actually pretty safe during these shopping days, because having 10-15 additional police officers (plus augmented security staffing) just looking for miscreants and weirdoes (in the crowd or parking lot) is usually pretty effective. They are looking to bump up their arrest records, get to enjoy the kind of immediate backup they normally only get when shots are fired, enjoy generally pleasant and well-paid work, and it’s considered a choice gig. You tend to get a lot of senior and experienced police supervisors and patrol officers who reserve these jobs months in advance and do it year after year…trained staff with full police powers.
The BEST way to provide the level of security which most Americans think (incorrectly) that they already have and are entitled to…is the Israeli model: Controlled security checkpoints at entrances (with searches of persons and belongings) backed up by well trained and armed security teams and police. This must be furthered by armed police patrolling the grounds and interior. Add in complete coverage by surveillance video cameras and profiling training for all personnel.
This is a frightfully expensive proposition and one which retailers and governments will never entertain until something really, really bad happens. The retail world figures that 5, 7, or 20 dead (the result of a once in a blue moon loony) is not “really, really bad”. Their actuaries, accountants, insurers, and lawyers tell them this is so. It’s the occasional (but rare) cost of doing business amortized over the 30-50 year life span of the money engines which are the malls.
The ONLY way to guarantee your personal security at a mall (within the limits of luck and fate) is to provide for it yourself.
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P.S. – Before anyone asks…
Once upon a time I worked in Mall Management for a large center…
Once upon a time we had a similar shooting…
I learned:
1. 200-GRN LRN .38 Special is a lot more lethal than most here could imagine…
2. First Reports are Always B*&%#$*T…we thought we had upwards of twenty people wounded or killed and multiple shooters at multiple locations (gang fight?). Most turned out to be overweight women sprinting like gazelles for the first time in 20 years…heart attacks.
3. A person on a killing spree will part a crowd like Moses parting the Red Sea. Especially if the situation involves a psychotic…he’ll be the only one who appears calm.
4. Crowds fleeing gunfire sprint exactly like antelope breaking from the charge of a lion pride. Watch Animal Planet or Discovery Channel…
5. No police present at the moment of shooting…got there in about 3 minutes though…still too late for the victims.
6. A distraught CCW holder dressed in casual business attire looks just like a psychotic mass killer…especially when he jumps bug-eyed through an office doorway waving a bead blasted SS finish S&W 9mm while shouting “MY WIFE IS SOMEWHERE IN THE MALL!!!”. Yeah buddy, I believed you…and was wishing you’d just take it out on her and not everyone else (I immediately assumed a domestic vengeance attack and that he was the shooter). Before I could shoot HIM (CCW - Colt Government), a co-worker shouted right back at him that the PD would be there any second and he was liable to get shot running through the mall with a gun. Funny…my female co-worker immediately assumed he was there to rescue his spouse…I immediately assumed he was there to kill her.
7. Someone’s unarmed elderly grandfather stopped the shooter by walking right up to him, placing a hand on his gun arm, and calmly asking him to please not hurt anyone else. Some sort of human empathy clicked on in our psycho’s head (he was a clinically diagnosed schizophrenic with homicidal tendencies) and he calmly dropped his snub revolver and reloads into a trash can…lit a cigarette and walked off undisturbed. He was apprehended (unarmed) minutes later by the police. Grandpa rejoined his grandkids and vanished anonymously. The bravest man on planet earth that day...he never sought nor received credit.
8. Fractions of seconds seemed like several seconds; several seconds seemed like a minute.
9. Dozens of brave and dedicated Police, Firemen, and EMS personnel showed up within minutes…and so did a bunch of vipers masquerading as “Journalists”.
10. Everyone thinks that because they can honestly shoot pretty accurately at the range, that they’ll just duplicate the feat when confronted by death. It’s actually not very likely to turn out that way. The very first and biggest hurdle will be to confront your fight or flight reflexes. Not many folks are truly aggressive enough to fight through their biological hard wiring and proceed ALONE, with a handgun, into an unknown situation, against unknown odds, with no definite target or understanding of what the hell is actually happening (other than the known fact of lead being slung by someone you don’t know). Instead, they protect themselves, their loved ones, and nearby strangers by moving everyone quickly and directly away from the threat.
YMMV.
I Hate Malls.