Week in review part 2

Next was this shift just gone, at one of the venues which is a quieter bar. It has a smaller capacity, thus fewer guards. It also has an exceptionally lazy door policy, considering the area it's in. Here, 'knowing' door security is even more liberally interpreted!

Towards the end of the evening, I was stood in the beer garden when a guy, clearly intoxicated, jumped up on the ledge behind me and started shouting for his mate. I asked him to get down, give me a description of his mate and I'd go find him - wouldn't require much effort on my part and I wouldn't have to leave the fixie. He seemed to ignore me and kept on shouting. A colleague rounded the corner, approached the guy and asked him to get down. The guy got down, then squared up to my colleague, who pushed him back and advised him to stay back.

Sensing imminent trouble, I radioed for backup, opened the door to the rear of the garden, behind the venue, and joined my colleague. He again shoved the guy back with the complementary verbal instruction, and the male squared up to him again. Another shove, and this time the male swung at my colleague. I charged the male from the side into the wall, whilst my colleague grabbed him from the front. Struggling. Grappling. Yelling. Knee strikes to his side. Eventually we get him down. An old school security officer attends from front door, shoves my colleague back inside the venue and tries to calm the male down, after standing him up. The male calms down slightly but is still clearly aggressive. The police, summonsed by management whilst this was happening, are cancelled, as my colleague did not wish to press charges and the male no longer presented an immediate threat, although I disagreed with this.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, he's back, jumping up onto the ledge again and ignoring requests to get down. The mate he's after finally appears, with another mate, and I motion them out the venue to speak to the male. My colleague comes past on his rounds, the guy spots him and tries to charge him. My colleague retreats, the police are called again and the door supervisor tries to fob the job off. We all retreat inside the venue, and for some reason the two friends of the aggressive male are let back in, when they should have been advised to stay with the aggressive male, calm him down and get him home. Or, at the very least, kicked out with the aggressive male to send the message that this sort of behaviour will not be tolerated and that we will take decisive action to ensure such undesirables are no longer welcome.

Sure enough, a couple of minutes later, aggressive male reappears out the front, wanting his mates again. He tries to enter the venue and is held back by another security officer. Now aggressive male starts to square up to him. I seriously consider knocking him unconscious and turning him over to police, when two patrol officers arrive just at that moment. They take the male down a street, and much to my dismay he is not arrested. Instead, his details are taken and he is released. The two officers wait a short while, then follow the male, who goes to another venue to try and get in!

The whole thing was handled badly. For a start, my colleague should have pressed charges for the threats and behaviour of this male towards him. Failing that, the police should not have been cancelled the first time around and he should have been arrested as soon as the police arrived, as it was clear he was a continuing threat, was aggressive and physically violent and wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon whilst his mates were still inside. Finally, the door supervisor should not have let the aggressivemale's two friends back in the venue - it only caused an incentive for aggressive male to keep hanging around.

Upshot of it all - the next security officer to deal with this male has been set up, since both supervision and the police did not take decisive action against the male, he'll have it in (what passes for) his mind that he can do it again to someone else and pretty much get away with it!