How fast can you get a security guard on site?

What “within hours” means

It is the company’s own claim for unarmed posts, made on the old site and repeated here because it is true for most sites most of the time: a call to dispatch in the afternoon puts an officer on a property that evening; a call at night puts one there before morning. It is not a promise measured in minutes. Weather, the distance from the officers already on shift and the specifics of the post all move it. What dispatch does promise is to tell you a start time when it calls back, and to keep it.

What makes it faster

An address and a contact who answers the phone. A clear description of what has happened and what you want the officer to do tonight. Access: keys, codes, a gate that opens, a place to park. A decision on armed or unarmed, which for an emergency start is almost always unarmed. With those, dispatch assigns an officer while a supervisor drafts the post orders, and the officer walks the property with you on arrival.

Armed and fire watch

Armed coverage needs a Level III commissioned officer and benefits from more notice, though emergency armed coverage is available. Fire watch is staffed on the same short notice as an unarmed post, with the log opened when the officer arrives and the round interval set with the fire marshal or the coordinator. The emergency fire watch page lists what dispatch needs for that case.

Scheduled posts

For a post that starts next week, the drive from Sugar Land is irrelevant: officers are assigned by the side of the region they work, the walk-through happens before the first shift and the post orders are complete when the officer arrives. The emergency security guards page describes the fast case and the temporary security guards page the planned one.