Level Up Your Welfare Checks

It’s a dangerous job, being a security officer on patrol, especially if they’re working alone, in the dark, sometimes at freezing temperatures, sometimes in a remote location. If you stopped to think of all the ways it could go very wrong for an officer on any given shift, it would send chills down the spine of the average person, and give a decent headache to the Head of Compliance and Safety of any workplace, let alone a private security company.

Put your feet into the safety boots of an officer out on a night patrol, and imagine they’ve run into an unforeseeable patrol incident. Maybe they’ve been attacked by an intruder, or been bitten by a snake. Perhaps they have been forced to do something under duress. Or they could have been overly tired (it is night-time after all) and had a collision in their car, en-route to the next site. Maybe they’ve simply tripped over a log that wasn’t visible in the moonlight, or had a health issue like an asthma attack. If they are working alone some of these situations are downright life-or-death emergencies.

When things go wrong it’s up to the lone patrol officer to advise their supervisor in the control room, and request assistance if they need it. But what happens if the officer has fallen unconscious or if the officer is under duress? They cannot contact the control room but help must be sent urgently to their last known location. This is where the welfare check comes in.

Call On Me… Frequently

Staying in regular contact with on-duty patrol officers is one of many ways a supervisor can oversee the safety of their crew. There are all kinds of technologies and hacks to assist a control room with welfare checks. Some companies set a series of clock alarms to ring at certain intervals, to remind supervisors to contact each of their patrol officers. Other companies put the onus on the officer and set a workplace rule that officers must call into the control room at least once an hour.?

But an hour might be too long if an officer is in real danger.

Here at CONSEC we take lone patrol officer safety very seriously, so when we were designing a security operations suite to improve our company’s outcomes, we took the opportunity to include some very high-tech safety features for our crew. No longer do welfare checks rely on a human to remember to undertake them. The ROGR Welfare module is programmed with officer safety in mind.

What’s ‘Appening?

ROGR is downloaded as an app on the phone of each patrol officer. The control room has already set up rules for the app, such as when a welfare check should be done. The app can sense when an officer hasn’t moved for, say, two minutes, and a welfare check box will appear on their screen. If the officer has simply been standing still for too long, he or she can deactivate the welfare check box by responding that they are okay.

But if an officer does not respond within thirty seconds, this triggers an alert to be sent to the control room. This reduces the time that an officer may be in serious danger, as help can be sent much faster than if the company relies on human interval checks only.

Location, Location, Location

It’s all good and well to send help, such as an ambulance, but where exactly do you send it? The patrol officer’s last known location could be a GPS signal sent from their patrol car, which is great if they are actually in the car. But there’s every chance the officer has walked around a site and run into an issue in a darkened area not visible from the road. How can emergency services locate them?

ROGR sends pings of the location of the phone, which is usually on the officer’s person or very close by. Just as we have discussed geofencing before (see here), ROGR can pinpoint an officer’s location with stunning accuracy, which could potentially save the life of your most important asset: your workforce.

Does your private security company have a system in place for when a lone patrol officer becomes inactive? And can you quickly locate your officer if they’re in need of assistance?

ROGR will be released for public use in late March. If you’re interested in beta testing this software, or wish to register for pre-release,? visit ROGR’s website here.

Copywriting:?@Ascha Saraswat