Study Shows Hours When Security Officers Are Most Often Attacked
Charlotte NC November 11 2019
A new study released on Friday, clearly outlines the hours of when uniform security, loss prevention and campus officers are most likely to be assaulted, injured and killed.
Using statistics from news reports, law enforcement incident reports, private agency injury reports, US workplace violence data and our own inhouse database curated and analyzed during the past sixteen years, our team has mapped out the hours and days that an officer is most likely to be harmed.
The news staff of Private Officer International definitively and conclusively identified two blocks of time each day when private officers and loss prevention were assaulted, injured and killed most often.
We have also isolated three days of the week when these attacks occurred the most frequent.
Our data, clearly indicates that between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and on Friday, loss prevention, school security officers, and security officers assigned to business complexes, offices and manufacturing and distribution facilities reported being assaulted and injured 41% more often than during other times or days.
During the study, we found that many retail security staff including mall uniformed officers and loss prevention agents made most of their organized retail theft and felony apprehensions during these times and that during these hours, robberies of jewelry stores and boutique shops often occurred.
During the first few days of the week when there are no sales ads running or special event scheduled, retailers including big box stores, sparsely staff stores during the early morning hours when foot traffic is the lowest, leaving much of the store wide open for shoplifters, especially professional shoplifters who easily move about gathering large amounts of merchandise with few interruptions from employees or customers.
During these hours, LP agents who challenge these large scale theft suspects, often alone, outnumbered and unarmed, are injured when struggling to take the suspects into custody.
We have also found that since 2007, shoplifters are 23.4 percent more likely to be armed with a knife, firearm, pepper spray or a Taser.
This percentage was almost eleven percent higher during security interactions at apartments, nightclubs and during property mobile patrol assignments.
On an elementary or high school campus, the first few hours of the weekday bring a level of structure and organization, in the form of reporting to a home room, being someplace for attendance, getting new assignments, turning in homework and being part of an expected routine.
But as those early morning hours begin to fade into “business as usual”, students are flowing between classes, reporting for different events, lunch periods and sometimes floating wherever they want to go.
This flow, can sometimes generate disciplinary issues, fights, disobedience and negative interactions between students and school security.
It’s here, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. that security officers are injured breaking up fights, escorting students to the principal’s office, challenging trespassers who enter the campus and in accidents on school property.
Security officers assigned to business complexes, offices and manufacturing and distribution facilities also interact with most employees, vendors and violations on the property during normal business hours while only occasionally do they have to challenge a trespasser or a person committing a crime during the hours when the business is closed.
Our study also clearly identified the weekend including Thursday, between the hours of 11 pm. and 4 a.m. to be the most dangerous for private security officers working in apartment complexes, nightclubs, hotels, and gambling establishments.
While we know that there is always a threat for those working in any area of private security, regardless of the time of day or the day of the week, some environments and types of businesses have shown themselves to be much more dangerous for officers because of the very nature of their client base, levels of staffing and their locations.
