Night Patrol: Propped Fire Door and an Unexpected Courier
You are the only guard on duty at a four-storey office building on a commercial street. At 02:30 during your round you find the rear fire door on the ground floor propped open with a brick. The door’s alarm contact has been taped over. Ten metres inside, a desk drawer is open and papers are scattered across the floor. You hear movement on the first floor and see a man in a courier uniform coming down the stairs carrying a laptop bag. He says he is ‘delivering a parcel’ and shows a paper slip with no address on it. Your radio battery is flat, your mobile has no signal in the stairwell, and the building’s CCTV recorder is in a locked room; its monitor shows ‘no signal’ on cameras 3 and 4. The main entrance is 40 metres behind you.
1. Do you physically stop the man? Set out your decision and your next actions.
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No. I do not physically stop him, and I do not stand in the only stairwell he can use.
Reasoning: I am alone, unarmed, out of communication, and 40 metres from the main entrance. He may have accomplices outside the propped door, and he may be armed. A struggle in a stairwell risks injury to both of us, creates a claim against the company, and destroys the physical scene. Property is insured or replaceable; the guard is not. The law allows reasonable force in self-defence and in a citizen’s arrest, but ‘reasonable’ is judged afterwards, and a lone guard with no radio is rarely in a good position to justify it.
Actions: keep distance and do not block the stairs. Note the description in a structured way - height, build, clothing, the courier company logo, footwear, the bag, which hand he carries it in, direction of travel. Let him leave if he chooses. Move to the gatehouse or the nearest landline, call 15 or 1122 with the address, the description and the direction taken, then call the on-call building manager. If a vehicle is visible, note the make, colour and registration from the window, not from the street. Then secure the rear door and wait for police outside the building, not inside with an unknown number of people.
2. How do you preserve the scene until police arrive, and what do you avoid doing?
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The scene is evidence. The first rule is: do not add your fingerprints, footprints or explanations to it.
Do not touch the drawer, the scattered papers, the brick or the tape over the contact. Do not close the door on the brick and do not ‘tidy up’. Do not let staff or cleaners into the area. Photograph the door, the tape, the brick and the drawer from the doorway before anything is moved, using your phone with the time visible if the camera works. Cordon the area with tape, chairs or a rope and put a written notice on it.
Secure the rest of the building without disturbing the scene: check that no one else is inside, lock the main entrance, and keep the rear door watched rather than handled. Start a scene log - time, name, reason for entry - for anyone who has to pass, including the manager and police. When police arrive, hand over the log, the photographs and the notebook entries, and let them decide what to move.
The reasoning: the propped door and taped contact show method, the drawer shows what was targeted, and the papers may carry prints or DNA. A guard who ‘secures’ the scene by closing the door and picking up papers has destroyed the only evidence that the entry was forced.
3. Write the substance of your incident report and explain what follow-up it must trigger.
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Report in 24-hour time, factual, no speculation about guilt.
02:30 - during the ground-floor round, rear fire door found open, held by a brick; alarm contact covered with tape. 02:31 - desk drawer open, papers on the floor, no one visible on the ground floor. 02:32 - male, approximately 175 cm, courier uniform, carrying laptop bag, seen descending the first-floor stairs; stated he was delivering a parcel; slip shown had no address. 02:33 - male left through the rear door. 02:35 - called 15 from the gatehouse; reference noted; call to building manager at 02:38. 02:40 - scene cordoned; photographs taken.
The report must trigger four follow-ups: (1) a written request to preserve and export CCTV from cameras 1, 2, 3 and 4 for 01:30–03:00, and a fault report for cameras 3 and 4; (2) a maintenance job for the rear door contact and the door closer; (3) a review of why the rear door was propped and who holds the key; (4) a written statement from the guard to the building manager and the security company. Without these, the report is just a story with a time on it.