A consultant considers the arrest powers or lack of them of a retail security officer.
In winter, on Saturdays, youths hanging around shopping malls can become a security issue – even if they are doing nothing, or nothing that would bother the police on the street. Security staff in a shopping centre need to be armed with knowledge of their powers, argues consultant Derek Maltby. A security guard who seeks to escort a group of youths off the premises and does not know what he is talking about can get told ?you and whose army?? and end up in a slanging match. The same goes for enforcing a mall?s rules against roller-skaters, and cyclists. Once the mall makes a stand, word gets around that the rules are enforced, Derek says. The ambassadorial side of a retail security guard?s job is important, then, as is knowledge of the civilian?s breach of the peace powers. He says: ?This is why training is so essential, so that the security guards know what they can do.? Derek Maltby is a retired police sergeant from the Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Now a Bristol-based consultant, he was the security and services manager at the Galleries Shopping Centre in central Bristol. He was the SITO-trained Training Manager for manned guarding firm Empire Security in Bristol and was an inaugural member of the CCTV User Group Standards Committee in 1997. He says that the CCTV User Group has for three years asked the Home Office to review the powers of arrest a ‘civilian’ security officer has when acting on information about an arrestable offence. The Home Office has replied that it believes civilians? powers are sufficient. Derek argues that security staff are often placed in a dilemma – told of an offence by a control room operator, or shop assistant who (understandably) does not want to challenge a bigger, older shoplifter. In those cases, the security officer does not ?know? an offence has been committed but has had suspicion placed in their mind. If the security officer makes an arrest, he is assuming the powers of a police officer, ?where a constable has reasonable grounds for suspecting that an offence has been committed?. Derek believes such cases are under-reported for insurance reasons. He calls on security officers – who let go a suspect rather than make an unlawful arrest on the say-so of a third person – to come forward. ?Security officers and store detectives are expected to make arrests every day of their working life and often those arrests are based on the information from a CCTV operator. We need the evidence from these people who have experiences of such difficulties in confronting the lawbreaker on the ?say so? of another person, to take to the Home Office to demonstrate the reality of the problems experienced by those attempting to enforce the law. We require their personal examples to take before the sceptical government officers.? Derek wants what he sees as an ambuiguity in the law cleared by giving security officers the power to act on information – ?any person may arrest without warrant, any person who is accused by an apparently credible witness, of having shortly before, committed such an arrestable offence?. You can e-mail Derek on msc4dmaltby@cs.com.
