Armed Guards in Your Lobby Are a Bad Choice. Make a Good One.

Some security companies are shamelessly using the recent shooting at 345 Park Avenue in New York City as a sales pitch to post plainclothes, off-duty, or retired cops as armed guards in the lobbies of commercial office buildings. It’s a reactionary move that may sound reassuring—but it’s far from a strategic one. It’s a bad idea. An overly expensive and distracting from real, long-term solutions.

Effective security requires layered measures: a methodical threat and vulnerability assessment, appropriate for the site type and purpose, threat detection, supporting technologies, access control, policies, procedures, controls, and training. Also, polished, well-trained, and reliable armed guards are hard to find and keep, often leaving organizations with “knuckle-draggers” with guns as a last resort – Not an effective short or long-term solution.

While a uniformed law enforcement officer may be necessary depending on the perceived or assessed risk, a continuous stream of armed guards in your lobby is dangerous security theater—designed to make people feel safer, while increasing risk.

Plain clothes ones are the worst option in a commercial environment. They are always conspicuous and, while they may have law enforcement experience, that doesn’t necessarily translate into effective private security. They are generally not trained in customer service, corporate culture, or the nuanced threat profiles of commercial real estate, making them more of a distraction than additional protection. In a crisis, they add confusion, not clarity.

Those security companies that push armed guards as a solution to almost every security problem know this. Yet they continue to offer “free security assessments” that (surprise!) almost always conclude with a recommendation for armed guards. Why? Armed guards yield a high margin, among the highest of all products or services in the security industry.

And, the faster they can scare you into taking them in (the “copycats” are out there!) and the longer they can keep them there, the better, maximizing billed hours. It’s not about what’s best for your building or your tenants—it’s about what’s best for their bottom line, and they’ll never waste a crisis, no matter how horrific it is.

Smart security is about understanding your threats and vulnerabilities and managing the variables that make up that risk. Much of the security industry is still lagging, sometimes far behind, in understanding and applying real security risk management and life-saving protection solutions for the private sector. Be wary of what you're buying and who you’re buying it from.