The Fall in the North Lot
You are the guard on a 06:00–18:00 mall shift. At 14:22 a woman in her seventies trips on the curb ramp in the north lot, hits her head on the concrete, and is bleeding and confused. You keep her still, call 911, and paramedics take her at 14:41. You jot rough notes in your memo book at 14:55, then write the incident report at 18:30 from memory. Reviewing it later, you see your notebook says 14:20 while the CCTV timestamp says 14:22, and your note records her saying she had been dizzy "since breakfast." A colleague advises you to "just fix the times so they match" and leave the dizziness out because "that's medical, not security." At 19:00 the mall's risk manager calls asking for a copy of the report.
1. What must be in this report, and what must stay out?
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In: who (the woman as she identified herself, plus what she was wearing), what happened, when (with the source of the time), where (north lot, curb ramp, nearest entrance), what I observed (bleeding, confusion, position on the ground), what she said, in quotation marks - including the dizziness comment - what I did (kept her still, did not move her, called 911 at the time noted, kept bystanders back), when paramedics arrived and left, which service and unit if known, whether she was transported, witnesses and how to reach them, and notification of the mall's duty manager.
Out: any diagnosis, any statement that the dizziness "caused" the fall, any opinion about the ramp's design or the mall's liability, any adjectives about the woman, and any speculation about how badly she was hurt.
The dizziness line is not "medical" in the sense of being off-limits - it is a direct observation of what she said, and it may be exactly what an insurer or a court later needs. What you must not do is interpret it. Report the words; let a clinician interpret them.
2. How do you handle the time discrepancy between your notebook and the CCTV?
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You never overwrite the original. An altered record plus an intact original is worse than a discrepancy.
Steps:
- Keep the memo book page exactly as written, with the entry time of 14:55 visible. That entry time is the explanation: the 14:20 was written 33 minutes after the event and is an estimate.
- Write a supplementary note or addendum dated and timed, referencing the original report, stating that CCTV shows 14:22, that the notebook entry was made at 14:55 and was an approximation, and that the CCTV timestamp is the more reliable source.
- Do not edit the body of the original report silently. If the report system allows corrections, mark them as corrections with the date and reason.
- Tell your supervisor what you found and what you did, before the risk manager or anyone else finds it.
The reasoning: the report's value is that it can be trusted. A guard who tidies a timestamp to "make it match" has made every other line in the file arguable.
3. The risk manager asks for a copy of the report at 19:00. What do you do?
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The report is my employer's record, produced for the client under contract - but I do not unilaterally release it, and I do not refuse outright either.
- Take the request and the caller's details, and tell them I will have it actioned through my company's process. Do not read the report aloud over the phone and do not send it from a personal phone or email.
- Notify my supervisor immediately, since the request is coming from the client and the file may go to an insurer. My supervisor or account manager makes the release decision under company policy.
- Preserve everything: memo book, original report, addendum, any notes about the CCTV pull and who has it. Do not discard drafts.
- Expect to be asked later by others. If police, an insurer, or a court asks, the answer is the same: the record goes through my employer, and I keep my notes intact. A guard who can be shown to have kept clean, unaltered records is an asset to the file; one who handed out copies informally is a liability.