The question, “Do security guards steal?” Should be alarming. The answer should be no. But sadly, the answer is, “Yes! They do steal!” And not just in general, but sometimes they are the ones stealing from their clients. That sounds crazy, right? Don’t worry, there are measures that security companies (like us) take to prevent inside theft (we will get to that below)!
What items are they stealing?
Perhaps, the better question would be, “What/how does their client, the company in which they were hired to protect, make money?” Oftentimes, when security guards steal, they are taking the product that their client is selling, OR they are taking some of the valuable tools necessary to perform the service that they provide.
Here is an example that one of our clients experienced with their former security company!
This particular company sold precious metals. And they started realizing that some of the product was disappearing. (Being that the price of metals are on an ever-increasing rise, you can imagine that this was a major financial problem).
So, they hired a security company to protect the metal. For a short time, there were no issues, and the metal was not diminishing. Until one day, they started losing metal again. Frustrated, they installed security cameras and quickly discovered that the security guards, hired to protect their metal, were the ones that were now stealing.As we mention above, there are ways for security firms to prevent this! It just takes proactive measures.
How to prevent security guards from stealing.
There are many different measures that a security firm can take to prevent this, and these are our two favorite methods.
- A strict hiring process
- GPS in combination with photographs
A strict hiring process
We talk about this all the time! The reality is, anyone over the age of 18, without a criminal background, and a simple (eerily simple) “certification” can become a security guard. Now, pair that with the fact that, as a whole, the security industry severely under-pays their guards, and you will often find a plethora of lazy security guards that are hurting for money.
So here at BPS Security, not only do we pay a living wage (because we expect the best), we also put every single applicant through a rigorous hiring process. Then, once that is complete, we also put them through additional training (beyond the “certification process”).
GPS in combination with photographs
Now, since here at BPS Security, we too are human, maybe there is a bad apple that sneaks through. Therefore, we have measures in place specifically designed to prevent theft once an individual is hired! One of those measures utilizes a GPS tracking system (that tracks our guards down to their specific location and time) in conjunction with the GPS tracking system’s camera! These cameras take time-stamped photographs that cannot be altered.
When the security guard arrives onsite, multiple times throughout their shift, and once more at the very end, they are required to take time-stamped photographs of our clients’ goods/products from multiple angles. So, if there were any issues, we can easily refer to the photos and quickly get to the bottom of it!