My question is inspired by any number of heist movies and TV, but I’m hoping for a factual answer so GQ. Feel free to move to yo CS if considered more appropriate.
The set up is some security guards whose main job appears to be monitoring the security cameras around the facility they’re guarding. If you believe Hollywood all such guards spend their shifts with their feet up reading magazines and newspapers, and occasionally glancing at the monitors.
I’ve never personally worked in security so I’m hoping to get some insight into the reality.
Are there really security guards who’s entire shift is composed of sitting in front of a bank of monitors looking for issues?
Would any employer tolerate their staff skiving off by reading when meant to be watching the screens? Understand that in a ‘boring’ job you get away with what you can, but I can’t imagine turning a blind eye to that behaviour.
If a former work colleague of mine is to be believed, security guards who “spend their shifts with their feet up reading magazines and newspapers, and occasionally glancing at the monitors” would be considered to be pretty keen. He was working at a large mall and they divided their time between wandering around showing the uniform, eating, sleeping, and playing cards. Watching people shopping gets boring very fast.
I would hope that guards in more sensitive places would be more alert and better supervised, but there is no guarantee.
At last! Another subject about which I know something.
It is absolutely true that security officers cannot effectively watch multiple video camera displays for any length of time. Studies have shown that they lose more than 50% effectiveness after as little as 45 minutes. Video cameras and recording systems are very helpful for providing evidence after an event, coordinating emergency response, traffic management, and similar activities, but they are “not so good” at detecting intrusions or illegal activities. (The exception might be that a security officer would notice suspicious activity by a shoplifter and start “following” the individual on camera around the store.) Casinos realize this and have their personnel change shifts and activities frequently. Casinos also rely heavily on floor personnel to alert them to suspicious activity.
This is one reason that newer video systems have the ability to analyze the video images to detect activity that is suspicious and alert the officer. Examples include detecting motion in specific areas (such as an individual reaching behind a counter), packages that are left behind, groups of two or more individuals, individuals traveling the wrong direction (e.g., individuals coming in through and exit corridor), and so forth.
I used to be a night watchman. It is different from security guard. I watch buildings over night and carry a clock. I have to make rounds every so often and use the keys in various places to punch the clock.
It would be silly to pay a security guard to sit and watch cameras for eight hours. What makes a lot more sense is to say to TWO security guards “Your primary duty is to guard the door, checking ID on anyone who comes in or out. Your secondary duty is to take turns walking around the facility looking for anything out of the ordinary. In between doing those two things, take a glace at the monitors once in a while, just to make sure that the system is recording properly.”
That being said, of course it will be true that people will sometimes slack off on their jobs. More than once when I was a security guard, I would find a coworker sleeping. It’s easy to sit down and tell yourself “Ima just rest my eyes for a minute” and fall asleep.
The camera system at my work is really just for collecting evidence after something happens; it’s motion triggered but not set up to alert anyone if it records any movement. Cameras are many low-security places are a passive monitoring system, not meant to actively catch and alert people to real-time trouble.
A knew a retired security guard who worked at a distillery, and people would actually break in on occasion at night. This place had a security system consisting of several key pads through out the building set on a timer system to trip the alarm if they were not turned off within a certain amount of time. The guard’s job was to walk timed rounds through the building continually disarming the alarm with a code before it went off. If he noticed something/someone to deal with or if he got jumped he’d miss the timing window and the alarm system would go off alerting others. This way the guard didn’t have to intentionally sound the alarm and anything that prevented him from getting to the next station (chasing someone, had heart attack, fell asleep, etc) would trigger an alert.
This place actually needed it’s security guards though, and many other facilities employ guards more for insurance purposes than to actually catch bad guys, so those places tend to have much more lax systems. Reminds me of the Five Nights at Freddy’s game my kid likes where you play a night watchman just sitting in a chair all night watching cameras to see when stuffed animals move.
Where I work is probably somewhat atypical. During normal business hours we are essentially a Front Desk/Concierge type service. Afterhours we function more as a typical security guard. But it is not just sitting at a desk and watching cameras. The location is a major scientific research institution and we remote monitor hundreds of refrigerators and freezers many of which house extremely expensive and/or mission-critical materials. We also monitor building systems etc. If any of these systems act up (and they do) we investigate and notify the appropriate individuals. We also patrol the buildings every few hours, looking for issues that might not appear on our systems.
That said, during afterhours shifts, there is a lot of quiet time.
The company I work for has Rules of Conduct which specify that officers are not to do anything outside of work duties, including listening to music, reading, using a computer or other electronic device etc.
These rules are paid lip service to, but the harsh reality is that as Zoneexandscout stated above, one’s alertness is effectively non-existent after a period of time and, particularly on a graveyard shift, it is essential to do something to stay awake and keep your mind active. So yes, we do read newspapers and magazines and books as well as a variety of other activities. But we also patrol the building every few hours, and pay attention to who comes and goes, as well as watching activity outside the building (you might be surprised how many cameras are watching you when you walk down the street - I could tell you some stories about that).
Where I work, we also have some administrative duties that properly belong to Building Management, but it’s all part of being useful to the client and frankly I am glad for anything which gives me something useful to do at any given moment.
And occasionally, we do handle an honest-to-God emergency.
It’s not always boring. I once had to hang out in a security office for a few minutes. The guard had an exterior camera that he could scan and zoom. It seemed to me he was being very diligent about watching any pretty woman who drove into the lot or walked near the building.
I spent some time as a Surveillance Shift Supervisor in a large Las Vegas casino.
Surveillance and Security are different jobs in different departments. Security are the guards on the floor, Surveillance just observes and reports.
Yes, we spent eight hours just watching monitors. There was no reading, slacking, etc. In fact, most of the time the observers would choose to bring their lunch tray from the cafeteria and eat in front of their monitors (Most people are not aware of who the Surveillance people are, and those who do know do not want to be seen sitting with the snitch). It was very rare for an observer to actually ‘take a break’ … that would usually just be a little walk to the casino floor to stretch their legs a bit while taking a closer look at something or someone from a different angle.
In a casino it is likely a lot easier to maintain attention than it would be watching an empty warehouse or such; there is always something going on, always something or someone to observe, always a scam of some sort going on, and always something new to learn.
Alright, let’s debunk the Hollywood myth about security guards lounging around with their feet up! While it’s true that some guards spend their shifts glued to security monitors, it’s hardly a snooze fest. Imagine staring at screens for hours on end, scanning for any signs of trouble.
Sure, it might seem tempting to sneak in some reading or browsing, but in most cases, that’s a fast track to unemployment. Employers expect their guards to stay sharp and alert, because when it comes to security, there’s no room for slacking off. Plus, in places like banks or high-security facilities, the stakes are sky-high, and any slip-up could spell disaster.
So, next time you watch a heist flick, remember: real-life security guards are anything but chill when it comes to their job.
My security experience was well before video moitoring was a thing, when cameras and monitors were expensive and video recording nonexistant outside of professional studios. Mostly, a human actually on site after hours was a significant insuance savings for things like fires and break-ins. There was a rival company that hired ex-police and they did the heavy lifting like actually detaining people in things like shoplifting. For minimum wage, we were only expected to wtch and report - you don;t want to put yourself in hospital for minimum wage. For anything serious, call the cops. In situations like malls, back then, a uniform actually meant something in discouraging poor behaviour or making people leave.
NIghts got pretty boring. We were expected to patrol regualrly (usually every hour). Sometimes we had a clock, you insert a key tied to each location into a portable timeclock, and the key punched a hole in the paper on a disc that turned in the clock, so time and key were logged. I heard of one enterprising fellow who apparently cut the chain on each key and brought them back to his station, so he didn’t have to do the rounds. (In those days I could work 80 hours a week or more. One fellow was fired because the supervisor knew he worked 16 hours a day for several days straight, but then he pulled up to a service station and the guy was pumping gas. They assumed he did not sleep while pumping gas.) Not every site we did had those watchman timeclocks. Mostly, you were expected to phone in to dispatch every hour too, in solitary assignments, to make sure you were ok (and awake). Fill out paper reports, with carbon paper, indicating when you when on patrol and any incidents. A supervisor drove around to all the sites regularly to collect those reports.
For that sort of night work today - camera systems have motion detection and can alert; even my front door camera alerts me when there’s a person or car in the driveway(and can tell the difference). You map out areas to ignore and areas to monitor. Buildings have door and motion alarms too, to alert security. One of my relatives works for a store chain that has the entry alarms, and some fancy new video that feeds back to central security who monitor a dozen or more locations 24-7. They also get alerts when the alarm is armed and disarmed, so can tell if someone is entering outside of business hours, or forgot to set the alarm when closing, etc. (also fire detection and other issues) The clerks also have “panic buttons” which can tell surveillance to look at the store so they can call police. All video is recorded centrally and available to police on request. Cameras also monitor front and back parking lots.
I assume for a larger mall the same level of surveillance applies nowadays. they would have roving guards who could radio back to the office “watch the fellow with the hoodie in front of Starbiucks…” when they see something of interest.
I’d love to know if they are applying facial recognition to any extent. I’ve read several news items where facial rec has been misapplied by lazy law enforcement, for example issuing warrants for people who were in a different state when the crime happened, but the compuet thought they were a match. (Non-white face matching tech is apparently very poor. )
I had a vague recollection that there was a (very) long term Doper who worked as a security guard nominally watching monitors but who had agreed with his employer that he was allowed to spent most of his time surfing the internet as long as he scanned the monitors from time to time. And that was why he spent so much time on the 'dope.
I’m not going to name names because I’ll probably get it wrong.
I had a quite unique security guard job once. It was at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. I did the midnight to 8:00am shift at the Long Beach marina where the yachting and windsurfing events were held. I think there were 5 or 6 of us that worked for the security company (Wells Fargo maybe?), a manned Coast Guard boat, and once the Games started two uniformed police and their dog. There were several different stations or patrols and we’d swap regularly so as not to get bored.
Bill James developed many of his ideas and articles for his work creating new abstracts that studied baseball statistics while working as a security guard.
We have two police officers, called “School Resource Officers”, and they alternate jobs. One job is to sit at the security desk in the outer lobby. When someone is buzzed in by the receptionist in the main office, they make sure the person passes through the weapons detector, buzzes the second door, and is buzzed into the inner lobby. They also peruse the most important camera locations out of the 75 cameras we have for unacceptable activity.
The second job is to also be in the lobby, but to answer calls for SRO assistance in various locations in the building, mostly classrooms. Our teachers no longer break up fights, investigate suspected drug use in the bathrooms, chase down runaways, etc. They call for SRO assistance for those things.
I worked at a place were I was supposed to be monitoring the parking lot and building cameras. If I checked more than once every 15 minutes I’d be surprised. The screens were so small I couldn’t see much anyway, Nobody ever complained and nothing ever happened, but I was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I could definitely see the security companies that serve in cities would want their guards to be more attentive.
That was a large portion of my experience as a casino security guard as well. We did have someone watching the screens, but he was usually there to inform someone at the door if a person was trying to re-enter another door after being turned away. Inside there was “Sky” who watched everywhere but the bathrooms. We also had State Police on-site just in case. I guess because of all of the money?
Mostly we stood at a door or patrolled, changing every hour. The guy on the monitors was one of our EMTS, and I never got why he was down there all the time.
Any place security-conscious enough to have a whole bank of monitors and a guard – will also have a camera on the guard in the monitor room.
Managers would check the recording from that camera at times, so any guard with their feet up reading or sleeping would be fired quickly.
Also, the bank of monitors are usually small ones (cheaper), hard to see much. So modern monitor rooms often have a much larger monitor for the guard to watch, with computer controls to allow them to switch between camera feeds. Then they’ll have instructions like “once every hour, page thru all the cameras along the back fence line” or “we’ve had problems reported in the loading dock area – check there 2 or 3 times an hour”.
Having to manually switch their monitor feed around avoids the boredom & inattention caused by staring at a whole bank of monitors for hours. (And there are computer reports of when/how often the switching was done, for managers to check. A guard who left their monitor unchanged all shift would soon be asked to explain this!)