Help with night guard

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Police aren't allowed to lie where you live?

In their personal lives, sure.

Invoking their official powers to induce someone to commit an act which would be illegal under circumstances other than those which they state are in existence? Nope, not even a little.

The question of whether police are allowed to lie at all in the course of their official duties is an interesting one. The tendency in Iceland has been to say that deliberate deception as an enforcement strategy is not desirable except as the result of a court order, which obviously limits undercover work considerably.

It would be too much to say that Icelandic courts forbid police from using untruths in the course of their duties, but I could not advice a police officer to rely on any such authority in court, if his untruths had caused someone harm. It's to a great extent unresolved in Icelandic law whether a policeman who lies to suspects or other civilians at the scene of an incident would be be perceived as having been carrying out his duties or to have deviated from them to such an extent as to be personally responsible for any harm that resulted. I'd lean toward 'no', but it's not completely certain. In some extreme cases, the officer may also be criminally liable.

I'm fairly sure that the state would be financially liable in any case and the officer would be administratively punished, probably discharged, if his untruths were designed to induce citizens to break the law or act contrary to their own safety or significant legal interests.

[Flyndaran]

That is really fascinating. I can see how that would make their job much tougher, but have the benefit of making the badge far more trustworthy.
I guess I'm still too amerocentric and forget that even my most basic assumptions about law don't apply to even very similar nations.

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I guess I'm still too amerocentric and forget that even my most basic assumptions about law don't apply to even very similar nations.

For example, in my state if a prosecutor reduced the charges against an accused person in exchange for testimony against someone else, that would be a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. If it were discovered the testimony would be considered to have been suborned. I think the prosecutor would probably be disbarred and perhaps even gaoled.

To an American that probably seems freakish.

[Johan Larson]

Originally Posted by Icelander

In fact, the night desk had so little to do that a hardnosed middle-manager of the cleaning staff had successfully convinced the upper managment to make us do a couple of machines of laundry and to lay out the morning buffet before we left, just so we had to do something for our wages.

I have heard of various devices, rather like time-card punches, for verifying that nightwatchmen actually patrol rather than just sitting around. These devices would be located along the patrol route, and the records they kept would be verified by the supervisor.

Today, I expect anyone setting up something similar would use key-cards of some sort.

Of course, I suspect a modern security system would make heavy use of video rather than physical patrol, raising the question of how to ensure that the watchman is actually paying attention to the monitors.

[Ed the Coastie]

Originally Posted by Grouchy Chris

Here's something that's not from my personal experience, but perhaps relevant. In Dark Conspiracy game I played in, we needed to get into an office building at night. Our plan was to get security guard uniforms, show up at shift change, and say, "Hey, we were told we're supposed to be here." Then, while they were trying to figure out who was supposed to be on shift, we would overpower the guards and tie them up.

Instead, our GM ruled that real guards just shrugged and said, "Okay, it's your shift," and left us alone in the building. He justified this by saying that in his experience working as a security guard, this was perfectly plausible, because no one ever told them what was supposed to be going on.

I actually had a couple of guys try that once when I was doing mall security. They showed up just before midnight, properly attired in uniform shirts complete with the correct badges (both of which were readily available at the local uniform shop), claiming that they had been dispatched as the reliefs for me and my partner.

Unfortunately for them, they had missed one TINY detail -- Big Mike (my partner) and I had just come on duty less than an hour before.

[rust]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

I have heard of various devices, rather like time-card punches, for verifying that nightwatchmen actually patrol rather than just sitting around. These devices would be located along the patrol route, and the records they kept would be verified by the supervisor.

Yep, in our case they looked somewhat like clocks, and we had keys we had
to enter and turn during each visit to the business in question. However, we
did not have to keep any kind of record, only to write a report in the case of
an "event".

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

Of course, I suspect a modern security system would make heavy use of video rather than physical patrol, raising the question of how to ensure that the watchman is actually paying attention to the monitors.

Every now and then a small and easily overlooked symbol appears somewhere
on the monitor, and the guard has to type in his code when he spots it. The
bigger the delay between the moment the symbol appeared and the moment
the guard entered his code, the greater the likelihood that he will be fired ...

[Irish Wolf]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Recently in one state supreme court it was ruled that a citizen must obey an order given by a police officer even if that order is illegal.

Which state was that? It's certainly not the case here in Washington - if, for instance, an officer of the law orders you to reveal certain information not available to the general public, he'd best have a warrant specifying what he's looking for, or the next thing he's liable to find himself looking for is another job. Our courts, and our state constitution, are quite fond of the right to privacy...

GrouchyChris, that incident sounds like it might work best with Pinkerton Security. One of my jobs was at an answering service; Pinkerton was a client, and we often took calls from their agents. They were rather infamous in the area for ineptitude, to the point that when someone screwed up at the service, our usual response was, "Well, Pinkerton's hiring!"

[Flyndaran]

I can't remember which state. But it didn't make the illegal order legal. The court determined that it wasn't the right of the citizen to determine the legality of an officer's order, but the courts.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Johan Larson

I have heard of various devices, rather like time-card punches, for verifying that nightwatchmen actually patrol rather than just sitting around. These devices would be located along the patrol route, and the records they kept would be verified by the supervisor.

Today, I expect anyone setting up something similar would use key-cards of some sort.

I have heard of suck systems too, perhaps in the past involving physical keys and locks with clock-timers on them.

Nowadays, I think maybe RFID or some sort of short-range wi-fi check may be more likely. Or even just GPS if the "circuit" the security guard has to walk is long enough to be visible on a GPS map.

[Luke Bunyip]

Used* to work for what is now called City Rail, in the NSW SRA, as a station assistant at Wynyard Station in Sydney. The 10:30pm to 6:30am shift was different.

We would make announcements that the last train for each line was leaving, and that the station would then be locked up. Normally this resulted in an exodus from the station of our population of itinerant street people, but not always.

One of the head station assistants used to run the station after hours as a defacto refuge. When she was on, we would get this stream of very odd people into the station. So you'd end up with this mix of very tired and emotional middle class folk on their way back to Sydney's North Shore, and society's demographic detritus.

Once we had cleared the station of the transitory moneyed riff raff, my colleague would make the following announcement:

Ladies and gentlemen, we will be turning the lights out on Platforms Three and Four in fifteen minutes. Can you please assist by straightening your share of the benches**, and then temporarily vacating down to the concourse.

Meanwhile, I had been cleaning down on Platforms Five and Six, and this would be my cue to zip upstairs and help my colleague hose down the platform. She would then announce:

Lights out in fifteen minutes.

There would be a rush for the toilets, and then our menagerie would bed down for the night.

The best bit, was my colleague's final announcement, usually around 5:15am ( a wee bit before the first train of the morn):

Ladies and gentlemen..... ladies and gentlemen... the lights will be coming back on in five minutes. The first train will be coming into the platform in fifteen minutes. I am next roistered on for back shift for the following days...

The other head station assistants were either indifferent or hostile to street people. But my colleague never had a safety issue with these folk***, and if memory serves correct, a couple of times a bunch of drunk teenagers discovered that they were not dealing with a lone frumpy looking middle aged woman, but a horde of street folk and a now grumpy middle aged female figure of authority.

Played a lot of acoustic guitar. Read a lot of Runequest and Call of Cthulhu on that job. Miss working with my colleague, she was a good egg. Taught the younger me a lot about stress management and the gentle arts of respect and hospitality.

*Like 30 years ago
** This was before they were fixed to the ground with retaining bolts. In retrospect, I am surprised that we did not get more thrown on the tracks by yobbos.

*** Which was invariably caused, not by them, but by the more monied folk from across the bridge