Security Guard Training Overview

Perhaps one of the biggest questions many aspiring security guards have involves the type of training curriculum they must learn. Much like any other professional-level career, in order to excel as a security guard you must not only successfully graduate from a security guard training program, but truly understand the various topics and procedures these professionals encounter on a daily basis. Although security guard training requirements are often overseen by the employing state, the following curriculum topics are considered universal throughout the United States.

Public Relations – A Fight Against Discrimination and Stereotyping

Being a security guard doesn’t always mean reacting to an obvious threat. Many times, security guards must use their psychological know-how to identify potential threats before they actually become a threat. However, as many studies have found, this opens the door to unfair discrimination and stereotyping – two major issues that could result in a lawsuit, or worse, termination of your employment. Therefore, one of the cornerstone courses for many security guard training programs is learning how to accurately identify threats based upon physical actions and not upon perceived threats. You must learn how to ignore your own discrimination and stereotypes and see all individuals around your client as a potential threat. Throughout this course, you’ll learn how to recognize physical and behavioral indicators that hint at physical aggression, psychological illness and reactions based upon substance abuse.

Power to Arrest – Your Legal Grounds on “Arresting” Threats

it’s important to realize you are not a police office. While you may come hand-in-hand with a viable threat, which requires restraining, you cannot go around behaving as a police officer. Thousands of former security guards learned this lesson the hard way, which is incorrectly restraining a potential threat only to realize what they did was illegal. Therefore, throughout this course you’ll learn how to properly detain and subdue a threat until the legal authorities arrive. You’ll learn how to de-escalate a serious situation, remove the active threat and legally detain a suspected threat until the police arrive.

Effective Documentation – Reporting Techniques

Regardless of the industry you choose to work in, you’ll be required to write detailed reports regarding incidents – either real or perceived. In order to sustain a legal backing to your actions, you must learn how to accurately observe and document activities that directly influence your client and actions. Failure to accurately document can lead to serious legal ramifications.

Legalities of Being a Security Guard or Bodyguard

As a security guard, you are in a way, acting as part of the legal system. Although you are not a police officer – and should never behave as such – it’s important to understand what you can and cannot do in terms of the law. Themes within this coursework generally involve employer and personal liability and entry-level understanding of the criminal justice system and how this system pertains to your work as a security guard.