Hey UER friends. I haven't come here in a while, but I still try to take every opportunity I can to get a good explore in. Over the years, I've taken a garden variety of side gigs to help pay the bills and somewhere along the line I stumbled into a security guard job. Since I'm a shit photographer, I figured maybe I could still give back to the UER community by potentially giving a little insight into how security operates.

That being said, I'll just throw a few things out there to get 'er started:

1) I worked in New England at multiple different locations. Malls, plazas, parking lots, gates, and even a couple abandonments. I pretty much floated around where places needed me.

2) I can't give you any site specific info. This should be a no-brainer, though. I have wide latitude to discuss all different kinds of things about being a security guard. Some things I just gotta leave out. If you're unsure if I can answer something, just ask anyway and I'll let you know.

3) While I feel reasonably comfortable in knowing how the industry works, I definitely do not speak on behalf of any or all security guards, just talking about my understanding and opinions.

Security is honestly not a bad gig, despite all the stereotypes. It pays decent and depending on where you're working, every day has something interesting bound to happen and time just kinda flies by.

I'll bite and start with a few wide latitude questions. Be as vague as you want.

1) Following normal SOPs, what kind of things would warrant a check in on an area? AKA motion detectors triggering a certain amount of times, or noises.

2) Are there certain times when enforcement of no trespass on a site is more lax than others or the reaction less severe with caught trespassers?

Posted by Desertify Urbex I'll bite and start with a few wide latitude questions. Be as vague as you want. 1) Following normal SOPs, what kind of things would warrant a check in on an area? AKA motion detectors triggering a certain amount of times, or noises. 2) Are there certain times when enforcement of no trespass on a site is more lax than others or the reaction less severe with caught trespassers?

The answer to both sort of is that it depends on site policy. Security is typically a contract business, so guards are looking to cater to the property owner's wishes when it comes to how thorough their procedures are because the site owner is the one writing our checks. Typically, a security director will sit with a property manager and draft a comprehensive management plan that includes lots of maps, diagrams, pictures, etc. and they'll use that as the basis for techniques.

If it's a property with alarms, in my experience an alarm is an alarm. You check it out, if it's false/you don't find anything, whatever, write that in your log book or however you make reports and move on.

In terms of a no trespass, again ultimately it depends on how the site owner wishes to handle them. At a public venue, they might let whoever is shift supervisor make a judgment call on whether or not to trespass someone because at the end of the day, that person is still a customer/visitor and they don't want to alienate a customer. In terms of abandoned properties, most of them are seeking to avoid liability for insurance purposes, so they have to go through the police every time just as a fact of life.

Are you usually familiar with the internal layout of an abandoned building? Is it common for security to enter the building or is it mostly just watching the perimeter?

ps this is a way more interesting thread than just another person posting pictures.

Tip: stop bothering with us please ;)

Did you explore any of the abandonments you worked at? Did you take pictures?

Posted by NotQuiteHuman Are you usually familiar with the internal layout of an abandoned building? Is it common for security to enter the building or is it mostly just watching the perimeter? ps this is a way more interesting thread than just another person posting pictures.

We typically know the entire site plan for a location because we need to be able to give accurate and precise information to the police when it becomes necessary to call them. The more you know about a building/location, the better information you can relay to dispatch, the quicker police can come and do what they gotta do. And of course, you have to be familiar with the perimeter, because you need to be investigating possible points of entry and securing them (or calling the maintenance guy to do something about it)

Posted by DonPictures Tip: stop bothering with us please ;)

Hahaha, if you were lucky enough to end up somewhere the same day as me, there's a good chance 1) I found evidence of your arrival and 2) I intentionally gave you guys a blatant head start to GTFO before the cops came. I was very good at doing patrols but I also tried to be as obvious as possible when I was coming - though to an explorer hearing footsteps, you can't really tell the difference anyway.

Posted by Baldran Did you explore any of the abandonments you worked at? Did you take pictures?

The nature of doing foot patrols often meant exploring certain areas of abandonments in order to do my job! Depending on the place, there are some areas that are a hard off-limits because of safety concerns, but yeah, easily the best part of being a security guard to me is being able to have that insider access to a location. It's pretty fuckin' cool. I've taken pictures for my own collection, none of which I can share publicly. They're not very good either, mostly just taken with the camera on my phone.

Ha! I used to be a security guard as well. I'd say 70% or better give near 0 fucks about abandonment duty. When I did literally don't set it on fire or wake me up and I'll leave you alone. Also at least try to be sneaky (talking to you car full of teens who parked infront of the guard shack and started climbing the fence 15 ft from me. I mean come on, go around back. I can't pretend to not see you when we are both in the same shot on camera).

Posted by jeepdave Ha! I used to be a security guard as well. I'd say 70% or better give near 0 fucks about abandonment duty. When I did literally don't set it on fire or wake me up and I'll leave you alone. Also at least try to be sneaky (talking to you car full of teens who parked infront of the guard shack and started climbing the fence 15 ft from me. I mean come on, go around back. I can't pretend to not see you when we are both in the same shot on camera).

Hey, high five fellow security! Yup, I've been on "warm body duty", but I've also worked a couple sites where the property owners demanded vigilance and nearly constant patrolling. I typically used a service smartphone to scan tags that proved where I had been over the course of my shift, and I had a couple supervisors who routinely audited those logs to make sure we weren't sitting in the shack or the vehicle playing Angry Birds or whatever. Definitely the best spots were the ones where I could give that lenience to explorers.

The quote that always stuck with me was Steve Duncan, "In Paris, they seemed to understand the value of urban infrastructure. The police told us, 'The Notre Dame is a beautiful thing and we understand why you would want to climb to the top, we just have to arrest you for it.' When in America, nobody understands why we want to see these structures."

I relished the fact that other people wanted to see these things and that's why I appreciated doing the job that I did, because I knew I had a little control over whether or not people got arrested for seeing these awesome things.

Did you ever work on a site that had bluff security systems(i.e signs warning of surveillance when there were no actual cameras)? Also, if your company was ever contracted by the state you were in, where you expected to do more than with a private building owner? Thanks in advance!

Posted by S&J Adventures Did you ever work on a site that had bluff security systems(i.e signs warning of surveillance when there were no actual cameras)? Also, if your company was ever contracted by the state you were in, where you expected to do more than with a private building owner? Thanks in advance!

1) All the time. I was an unarmed guard. My supervisors liked to say my uniform and my security vehicle did 95% of my job. Security's job is to deter you from going in, not to provide the consequences. Making people think they are constantly under surveillance or on camera turns out to be a really, really effective deterrent.

2) I don't really understand your second question. I'm not going to distinguish between companies or agencies that I worked for and whether or not they were publicly or privately contracted, sorry about that. Did I ever get assigned to a site where I expected to do a lot of work and only had to do a little work? Not really. When you change your site around, you basically have to apply for it like you're applying for a new job, sort of. I typically knew the amount of work I would have to do before I signed on the dotted line.

I will say that state contracted security services are really not much different than your average mall cop services. The instances where the state needs to be hypervigilant/have different security standards are typically when you'll see real police presence rather than a simple security guard.

Hello, would you take cash to show me around as I took photos?
How much would be the minimum ?

Posted by selectedgrub Hello, would you take cash to show me around as I took photos? How much would be the minimum ?

This is a good way to get arrested, I'm not even joking or exaggerating for comedic effect. Depending on the location, security guards are actually legally speaking "upholding and performing a public duty" and bribery is a fast lane to the courthouse - mostly for the guard, but depending on the context, the explorer too. No security guard wants to know that you got in. If you got in, cool, we can always have the plausible deniability that we didn't actually know you were there despite our patrols. Or even if we knew you were there, we didn't catch you. People have lost their jobs over much less in this field.

The people you would want to contact and offer money to are the property owners. Even most part-time security guards won't touch bribes with a ten foot pole, though I know a few that may have been tempted to take one. There's a whole team of people auditing logs or cameras and checking in on a site at any given time. It would be fairly difficult, in my experience and at the places I've worked, to give someone a tour because visitors or contractors to a site have shitloads of paperwork to fill out and schedule their visits usually multiple weeks if not months in advance. Visitors or contractors are ALWAYS escorted by a supervisor on-site and off-site, and the hours that they schedule to be there are strictly enforced.

Posted by FFStudios I will say that state contracted security services are really not much different than your average mall cop services. The instances where the state needs to be hypervigilant/have different security standards are typically when you'll see real police presence rather than a simple security guard.

This answers my second question perfectly, thanks for the reply!

I was reading you could get a pass from the mayor or the city or town as long as you follow their directions of the citys or property owners property etc stay out of places they tell you not to go, have your heard of such a thing

Do you regret leaving school at such a young age?

Jk ;)

How often have you been patrolling inside of a building, well aware that someone was inside, only to play coy and let them be? Based on your interactions with explorers, scrappers, homeless, etc., can you get a good read on the intent of someone inside a building?

Posted by JFonda I was reading you could get a pass from the mayor or the city or town as long as you follow their directions of the citys or property owners property etc stay out of places they tell you not to go, have your heard of such a thing

Whether or not a property owner lets you into a location is entirely up to their discretion. I highly doubt that the mayor of a city could/would spend their time worrying about some random schmuck trying to walk around an abandoned building, and typically that job is dedicated to a facilities manager for state-owned properties.

That being said, I can tell you first-hand that I have gotten access to a condemned, abandoned building by contacting a town facilities director. Furthermore, when the scheduled day to explore came, he simply showed up and unlocked the door and told us to give him a call when we were done so he'd know to come back and lock it up. We had pretty much untethered access to the entire building for a whole day. It's not very common, but controlled access to a property does happen.

As with my previous post, this has never happened at a place I have worked. That was probably a really rare opportunity. I think the only place you could do that is somewhere that doesn't actually have a security presence other than alarms and maybe local police drive-bys every so often.

Posted by Doug Do you regret leaving school at such a young age? Jk ;)

I'm still in school! This is just a side gig. Beats what any of my friends are doing part-time by a longshot.

Posted by DundahMifflin How often have you been patrolling inside of a building, well aware that someone was inside, only to play coy and let them be? Based on your interactions with explorers, scrappers, homeless, etc., can you get a good read on the intent of someone inside a building?

I can't say I ever 100% fully let explorers be. I just couldn't do it as a function of the job. You'd be surprised how often liability for injuries or damages to an abandonment falls on the security guards. That's why you see a lot of hardass, angry security dudes out there - they just can't afford to have people trying to get in. I would try to give you as much time as my patrol could possibly allow before I had to make it obvious I was coming. The idea is that your patrol is supposed to be changed up every so often, you can pick your own route to get all the areas or scans you gotta grab.

Scrappers are honestly pretty stupid and come with tools. I haven't really caught a bunch of scrappers, most nights are pretty boring, but the people that I have caught scrapping weren't very subtle, so anyone with ears and a little training could tell what was going on and roughly where it was happening. That's pretty much an instant call to the po-po. Some departments love to nab scrappers. Whatever floats their boat, I guess, I get paid to oblige.

Hey fellow security guard, did you work black Friday at the mall? And if so how much of a hell of earth was it for you?

Hola!

I'm an female explorer and have a lot on the line career wise, so I don't do the breaking and entering thing. I always ask permission. I know...some think that's uber lame and maybe not even real exploring. But, for me, if its not way out in the country and clearly abandoned - I ask permission.

My question to you is:

Is there any way that I should NOT approach you while asking for access permission?

My approach has always just been honest and forthright. " Hey, this is my hobby, I love history, I have a waiver of liability (and I do) its notarized (and it is), do you mind if I look around a bit or could you show me around a little bit?"