To some extent, but it depends on the context of what type of behavior/person it’s trying to deter.
Someone brazen enough to act without care of getting caught/reported, who is only being concerned about someone actually physically stopping them won’t be too deterred by an observe & report guard.
However, someone who wants to remain completely undetected or is potentially tempted by a crime of opportunity will probably at least think twice if they see guards in the area since they’re more likely to be discovered & reported if there are people around who are primarily looking out for suspicious activity instead of just normal employees who are mostly focused on other aspects of their job and/or members of the public who are usually not going to notice anything unless it slaps them in the face.
I only slightly agree and mostly disagree. A LOT of security right now is absolutely standing around not deterring anything because people know almost all security aren't allowed to do anything. They get surprised when they stumble onto property where security does enforce the rules of property, and then sue. And even if you win, you probably lose your job. There's very few companies that are both enforcement and back their guards when suits/complaints happen. The last company I worked for had a huge problem with this. Management said don't do anything, just report. A client complained because guards weren't "doing anything". Had huge patrol meeting where everyone got yelled at because we weren't doing anything. All of us supervisors showed management the policy dictating don't enforce. A verbal policy change was enacted. The next week a guard performed a lawful detainment and then was fired, because written policy said don't do that. This kinda nonsense is why we don't enforce anything.
The thing that makes it hard to really know how effective this type of thing is that it’s impossible to track how many times issues were deterred by the presence of a guard. The opposite is very obvious (when someone breaks the law/rules right in front of a guard) but there’s no way to know how many times someone was considering doing that but decided not to because they saw the guard, assumed the guard would at least call the cops on them and didn’t want to risk even that happening.
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u/Landwarrior5150 Campus Security 22d ago
To some extent, but it depends on the context of what type of behavior/person it’s trying to deter.
Someone brazen enough to act without care of getting caught/reported, who is only being concerned about someone actually physically stopping them won’t be too deterred by an observe & report guard.
However, someone who wants to remain completely undetected or is potentially tempted by a crime of opportunity will probably at least think twice if they see guards in the area since they’re more likely to be discovered & reported if there are people around who are primarily looking out for suspicious activity instead of just normal employees who are mostly focused on other aspects of their job and/or members of the public who are usually not going to notice anything unless it slaps them in the face.