Security Guards for Convenience Stores and Gas Stations

The post is the door and the pumps together

A convenience store is two properties on one lot: a small sales floor where the money is, and a forecourt the size of a parking lot where anyone can pull in at any hour. The clerk sees the first and almost none of the second. We set the post so the officer covers both. Inside, the position is beside the door, facing the floor with the counter to one side and the glass to the other, so the officer sees a customer walk in and a car pull up to a pump in the same glance. Every round goes out through the door, across the islands, along the side of the building where the ice merchandiser and the propane cage sit, and back through the lot.

Post orders are written with the owner or the district manager before the first night. They name the store’s trespass policy and who is already barred, the hours the beer cave and the lottery counter close, what to do when a fuel tanker or a beer truck arrives, how the store wants drive-offs recorded, and who to call at the store and at the fuel brand after hours.

Overnight is a different job from daytime

Between six in the evening and midnight the officer’s work is crowd work: a full lot, a line at the register, teenagers at the fountain, people in and out of the restroom. The officer is at the door and on the floor, visible, and the value is in what does not happen. After midnight the store empties, the lot goes dark at the edges, and the risk becomes a single car and a single person. The officer spends more of each hour outside, keeps the clerk in sight from the forecourt, and pays attention to a vehicle that arrives without going to a pump. The post orders can set the armed or unarmed status by those hours: an unarmed officer in the evening and a commissioned officer overnight, if the store runs both.

Working with a brand and a district manager

Most Houston convenience stores carry a fuel brand’s name and the brand’s standards for the lot, and most are run by an operator with several locations and a district manager who is not on site at night. The daily report is written for that manager. It arrives with the overnight sales numbers and reads store by store, so a pattern at one location, such as the same car in the lot three nights running, shows up before it becomes an incident. Where the operator wants cameras watched, the officer watches the store’s own system from behind the counter and notes anything the recording should be pulled for.

What changes on a 24-hour corridor

Stores on the feeder roads of the Gulf Freeway, the North Freeway and the Southwest Freeway, and on the long commercial stretches of Bissonnet, Westheimer and FM 1960, never see the street go quiet. Trucks, shift workers and people leaving the bars keep the forecourt busy until dawn, which is good for sales and hard on a lone clerk. On those sites the post is usually armed overnight, the officer spends more time on the islands than at the door, and the marked patrol vehicle, where the operator uses one, is parked where the feeder traffic can see it.

Starting a store post

Dispatch needs the address, the hours the store is open and the hours the owner wants covered, whether the post should be armed, the trespass policy and the current barred list, and a contact who can walk the officer through the store the first night. For a store that has just had a robbery, an unarmed officer can typically be on site within hours and an armed officer follows as soon as the schedule allows. From there the post orders are adjusted through the first week as the officer learns the lot.