Can security guards patrol in a vehicle?

When a vehicle is the right post

A vehicle is the answer when the ground is too big for feet: a garden apartment community on twenty acres, a truck yard with a mile of fence, a business park with six buildings, a solar farm, or three vacant properties along one corridor. An officer on foot covers one corner of that an hour; a vehicle covers all of it several times a shift and reaches a call on the far side in a minute. The marked vehicle is also the part of the post that people outside the property see, and for many lots that visibility is most of the deterrent.

How the patrol is run

The route is written into the post orders from a walk-through with the client: the checkpoints, the interval and the order, which varies round to round so the patrol cannot be timed. At each checkpoint the officer stops and gets out where the check requires it: a pool gate to test, a padlock to pull, a stair door to latch, a fuel tank to inspect, a dark corner to walk. Rounds are logged with times, and where the client has a guard tour system the checkpoints are scanned. Vehicle patrol is priced by the hour like any other post, with the vehicle included.

What it is not

It is not a drive-by that never stops, and it is not a response service that waits somewhere else for a call. An officer who never leaves the vehicle has not checked the pool gate, and our daily performance reviews look for exactly that. Where a property needs one point staffed at all times, a vehicle patrol is paired with a fixed post rather than substituted for it.

Combining vehicle and foot

Most patrol posts are both. On a courtesy patrol at an apartment community the officer drives the lots and the perimeter and walks the breezeways and the amenity areas. On a yard the officer drives the trailer rows and walks the dock face. The post orders say which is which, and the report shows both.

Starting a vehicle patrol

Tell dispatch the addresses, the hours, what has been happening and what access the officer will need, and a supervisor drives the route with you. The vehicle patrol services page describes the post in detail, and the routes article explains how checkpoints are chosen.