Security Guards follow policy and stand by while girl gets beaten.

Great Debates
1

Based on this article and footage on policeone.com:
Wash. guards who saw beating 'followed training'

In summary, three private security guards stood by and watched as a 15 y.o. girl was assaulted at a bus station. As per their company policy, they did not physically intervene but instead just called 911.

As a private security guard by trade, I can sympathize with the guards. We are trained to not get into physical altercations, and are generally not paid nearly enough to justify getting hurt on the job. My company also has a very restrictive physical contact policy. I have been reprimanded several times for going hands-on during a fight because my company fears lawsuits, regardless of whether breaking up the altercation was justifiable or not. Personally I feel it is my civic duty as a person to stop someone getting hurt, but every time that I do I take the risk of losing my job. It isn’t that these security guards didn’t want to get involved, it’s that they can’t without fear of reprimand.

As one user commented on the original story’s page: "If a security guard intervened and anybody got hurt, the security guard would be hung out to dry for violating policy while trying to do the right thing. "

So what say you? Should these guards have stepped in and risked their jobs? Should the policy be changed? If changed, should the new policy require they step in, or should it be at their discretion?

2

What are they keeping secure? The property? Though it pains me to say, I guess I can’t blame them for following orders and ignoring human instinct, watching someone get beat up so they can avoid being fired or sued by one of the little fuckers’ parents. I’d expect more from an untrained by-stander (though they all look like kids).

3

So, why do they need security guards at all? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to install surveillance cameras, and hire one person to watch all the cameras?

4

Policy is based on the realities of the world. You’d need to change the law before they’d change policy.

The problem is that you can’t just make it legal for guards to physically intervene (which, it probably is), because people would still take the guard to court over whether it was justified, and even if he wins, you’re still out tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees.

That can be solved by making the loser pay all legal fees, but for all I know that’s already being done and no one trusts that a regular jury won’t always rule against the Big Bad Corporation.

5

ETA Just noticed this was in GD, so I’ll try to add something more substantial. I looked for cases where security guards were arrested or sued for assaulting people they were trying to subdue, but many of the cases I found were ones where they went way beyond restraining anyone (here,here). Here’s a case of a woman suing after being hit by a security guard at the House of Blues, and here at the HoB again, a girl got roughed up outside a Hanson concert, and it was caught on video. Maybe not directly comparable to the situation in the OP – there’s no indication they were breaking up fights – but there’s also no way to know how events would have been interpreted afterwards.

6

Don’t they have Good Samaritan laws that can cover this?

A few years ago, people were saying the same thing about being afraid to be sued when pulling a guy out of a wrecked car. I think in a few cases, the injured guy even sued! For having his life saved!

Years later I would recall news stories where the law was amended to where if one was doing an act out of altruism, then he cannot be sued even if he were to accidently injure the person (trying to perform CPR, for instance).

They need such laws so that we wouldn’t have these “security guards” standing around. First thing to do is to change the law the story references about bank tellers giving away the money. In my mind, if you think you can get a bank robber and you go for it, no harm whatsoever should come to you through the law or corporate cowardice.

I would rather people try to do good and fail than not try at all to save their own asses.

7

All I can say is that I would have tried to intervene. Policy kiss my ass. If I see some shit like that, somebody’s getting hit in the head with a stick. I’d prefer to be able live with myself than to follow policy.

8

Exactly. They may work as guards, but they’re human beings first.

9

But should they have taken the chance of losing their jobs in the process, potentially losing their homes or being unable to feed their families? (an extreme example sure, but valid none the less)

I would like to add that after seeing many similar situations, there isn’t always what you would call a ‘victim’. In many cases, both subjects involved in the situation are consensually fighting, or at the very least have been provoking each other into it all day. There may be a winner and a loser to the fight, but I can’t always use the term ‘victim’ with a straight face to describe one of them.

That may not be the case in this instance, the article does not give enough detail to be sure. It should be taken into consideration, however, that sometimes two people are just both being stupid and it isn’t worth endangering anyone else’s well being to get between them.

10

Policies or often based on “common knowledge”, perceptions or misconceptions rather than reality. I truly wonder if they made the policy based on actual monetary risk statistics or just because it is “common knowledge” that there is less monetary risk if they don’t intervene.

11

That’s despicable. The assailant was a 15-year-old girl. Three people could easily control her. I can understand not getting involved if a couple of big, scary thugs are fighting, but it’s a teenage girl and she’s outnumbered 3 to 1 by guards, and more by the other bystanders. When she started kicking the girl in the head, I think any decent person had an obligation to stop it. That could kill somebody.

12

The only case I can recall like this was here in California a few years ago where a woman dragged her injured friend out of a car crash, causing some nasty injuries (you never move an injured person unless leaving them in place will result in further harm, and if you’ve got to move them you do it mighty carefully). IIRC the finding was that there was no imminent danger and nothing that a reasonable person could have construed as such - the woman just wigged out and moved an injured person.

In all of my first aid and CPR training they’ve stressed the good samaritan laws that protect you - you’d have to do something pretty reckless to be found at fault.

Oh, and I would certainly have done something in the OP’s case. Then again I have jumped in between two gangs of highschool kids (all much larger than me) who were trying to whomp the stuffing out of someone and broken it up (only later did it occur to me that I could have gotten my butt whipped). Might have been stupid but I’d rather get punched than walk around knowing I let someone get beat up and stood by.

13

Those guard did nothing wrong in that video. Looks like they were trying to convince her to stop and they called the police. That bitch was crazy and they could’ve been hurt.

What did you want them to do?

14

While I think the guards should have intervened under the “they’re human beings first” line of thinking, even if it’s a teenage girl versus 3 or more others there’s still a chance that she might be hurt. What if you were trying to subdue her and she bit you on the hand hard enough to draw blood? Maybe you’d punch her in the face to get her to stop. Maybe her parents sue you and your employers provide no support for you because you disobeyed policy. While I can’t agree with inaction I can certainly understand it.

In the wider scope of things I wonder if we’ve made it too easy for people to duck any kind of moral responsibility when it comes to seeing another human being in danger.

15

I would say yes if it were me. A girl’s safety is more important than a secirty guard job.

16

I do not see how a person can stand by and watch one kid beat the crap out of another. I hope there family, friends and co-workers are makign fun of them for standing by and watching.

17

Remember, guys, this is tolerant, laid-back Seattle we’re talking about here.

Check out this link from 2001 where a 20 year old, during a Mardi Gras celebration down in Pioneer Square, went to the assistance of a girl who was being beaten and was killed by the rioters for his trouble. While the police looked on, under instructions not to intervene. Read about it here

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/mardi02.shtml

It is coming out here now that the victim knew she was in danger and, before going into the tunnel, asked two Seattle policemen for protection. They refused, telling her to “get away from here” and that they “couldn’t be expected to get involved in every incident between teen hoodlums”. And after this, the victim went into the underground bus station to catch a bus away from the area and, seing that she was being followed by the gang of thugs, tried to keep a group of three (3) transit security guards between her and her assailants. This, of course, did her no good and she was subsequently beaten and robbed.

It has also come out today that transit drivers are expressly forbidden to even call 911 to report a crime in progress. The only people they are allowed to call are the transit dispatchers, who will put the call up the chain of command to see what to do about it.

Today I heard a bus driver state that if a woman were being raped on his bus, the only thing he was allowed to do is call the dispatchers. He would not try to intervene in any way. When asked by the somewhat flabbergasted radio host “You mean you would just sit there and watch?!!”, he replied, rather shocked, “Well, no, I wouldn’t WATCH it!” Evidently if he keeps turned the other way all is OK with his bosses.

When involved with Seattle Transit, you’re on your own. Makes concealed/carry look pretty smart.

18

The court system thus I beleive must be reformed. Ridiculous lawsuits of all natures. People who make lawsuits based on false claims and intentionally so should be jailed and sent to forced labour camps (no not gulags more like hard labour camps of the Old Days)…

19

You have any idea how hard it is to prove that a lawsuit is fraudulent or frivolous? Very.

20

I have a way to change the policy (maybe):

The girl’s family should sue the security guards’ company for a policy having them standing by and doing nothing.

IANAL so not sure how that would fly but I would think the security guards have a positive duty to protect the area they are responsible for. I think the public there has a right to expect their intervention. What the hell is security there for anyway?

While I personally think as a human being security should have stepped in I can appreciate that they had in their heads company policy drilled in to them. As such I would not want the individual security guards sued but the company for a patently awful policy designed to protect themselves and nothing else.

Considering how brutal the attack was and that it stopped and restarted with no intervention I am betting a jury would eat this up in favor of the girl who was attacked.

Once you hit the company in the pocket book with something like this I bet you’ll see a policy change.

This assumes of course that there is a case can be made that security is obligated to intervene if possible (and given the attacker was one 15 year old girl and security was three much bigger guys I’d say it was eminently possible for them to stop this).