What If

While you're getting your lunch out of the Fridge you look down and realize your coworker left his backpack open on the table and there's a handgun in it.
What do you do?
1st thing I'd do it zip the backpack closed and tell the co-worker to be more careful.
 
I take the co worker aside asap, and say "I don't have a problem with you breaking the rules, BUT I don't appreciate being set up for a violation if the package is discovered when you are not in possession." In other words, someone might be able to say it is mine when it is not.
 
Didn't read all posts but it could be a test a trap or the guy feels comfortable around you.

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OK, this is nit picking, but I note a basic flaw in the situation. It would appear from the description that the "secure" facility has no armed security. I guess it's possible that the hypothetical workers in the control center are unarmed members of security, but if security isn't armed, it's not a secure facility as I understand the term.

Semantics aside, the Sgt Schultz is appropriate: I see nothing. I would however, keep a very close eye on said co-worker and review the policy on knives.

I once worked at a manufacturing facility in a uh, challenged area that had an interesting policy: no illegal weapons.
 
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First off: I hate integrity questions. This is right up there with "What if you stopped your mother for speeding, would you write her a ticket?"

This is simple (easy for me to say, I'm retired.) The rules are there, reason for them is not my concern. They exist. What's security's job? "Observe and report." That's not just a line from Mall Cop.

What's your job, security or protecting co-workers from their own stupidity? What happens when some other person, like one from management, sees this guy's armed and says to you, "Why didn't you report this?" and won't accept an answer like "I didn't know" which, of course, means now you've not only covered for this guy, but you've lied about it, too?

As was mentioned, what if he IS waiting for the right opportunity to open up on a few people that he wants to get even with? Maybe his ex-wife's new boyfriend works there... or some other scenario. And you facilitated it by not stopping his plan before he got a chance to carry it out.

It's all well and good to have this fancy badge system, and a fancy locked-up secure office and all sorts of "hard and fast rules," but if the very people who are supposed to be an integral part of securing this place are the ones ignoring the rules, then the place might as well not have security at all.

Sometimes, the job sucks when people you work with are not doing their job and it falls on you to do something about it. If you can't handle that, then maybe you ought to work somewhere else.

Sorry to be harsh, but you asked - and sometimes life is harsh. Good luck.
 
If memory serves me correctly…

…the OP is a security employee.

If memory did serve me correctly and OP is employed as security personnel, I agree with GerSan69.

Incident should be documented/reported.

Be safe.
 
I would just tell him to do a better job of securing his bag! YRS.ago I was working in the co.office at 5am!I was showing a Forman a print for the job to be done that day.He Tapped me on the shoulder & I know you came in with little or no sleep but....you have your gun showing! I said ,thanks I'll be right back....went & put it in m,y car.FIREABLE OFFENCE...I said thanks gun is taken care of!!He smiled & said GUN!!!What gun!!
 
Sorry to be harsh, but you asked - and sometimes life is harsh. Good luck.

You can be as harsh as you want man, I don't really care.

The question is a hypothetical. It may or may not have happened. There may or may not have been a gun in the pack. There may have only be what looked like a cloth checker board in the bottom of the pack. I looked in the pack while I was getting my lunch and asked myself "What if?"

Having said all that, I've been carrying a gun at work against company policy for three years so I'm the last person to get butt hurt over someone else doing it (and I really don't care what anyone thinks about that either).

If there WAS a gun in the pack I wouldn't have thought twice about it and I wouldn't have said anything about it. If he gets caught, he gets caught. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.
 
I worked for a company that had zero tolerance regarding firearms. It was laid out plainly when I hired on, and repeated several times annually over the course of my career. Leaving it in the car was not an option, the parking garage was considered an "extension of the workplace." Point is, your co-worker has, no doubt, been made aware of the company's edict, so if he gets tipped over, it's on him. Meanwhile, you didn't know and he never told you.
 
My worry about workplace shooters starts with ill-conceived "no firearms at work" policies.

Mine starts with the crazy guy with the ignored gun loving tendencies and anger management problems who storms a factory, whose employees might be armed or unarmed. Regardless, somebody is gonna die, and it should have been dealt with much earlier . . .
 
I work for the Fed on a military installation. Firearms are strictly prohibited. This very thing happened to me a couple months ago.

A coworker sitting close by at her desk opened her backpack. I saw her gun. She didn't notice me looking. Later that day we rode together to do some work. I brought up the subject of guns. She replied that she went to the range after work the night before and forgot to take the gun out of her backpack. So I told her I saw it and we were both in trouble if she was caught with it. She agreed. As far as I know it never happened again.

And as you guys know, I do security for a living. The only true security is armed guards.
 
You can be as harsh as you want man, I don't really care.

The question is a hypothetical. It may or may not have happened. There may or may not have been a gun in the pack. There may have only be what looked like a cloth checker board in the bottom of the pack. I looked in the pack while I was getting my lunch and asked myself "What if?"

Having said all that, I've been carrying a gun at work against company policy for three years so I'm the last person to get butt hurt over someone else doing it (and I really don't care what anyone thinks about that either).

If there WAS a gun in the pack I wouldn't have thought twice about it and I wouldn't have said anything about it. If he gets caught, he gets caught. Not my circus. Not my monkeys.

So you're violating a major rule, and you're the security guard?
Wow. So you wasted our time, getting us to put forth an opinion and now it's only "hypothetical." I'll leave out the "integrity" part since, as you say, you "really don't care what anyone thinks about that..."
Sheesh.
 
I was in a similar situation a couple of times while working for the Federal Gov't after my retirement from local LE in 1997. Knowing and trusting the people I just calmed up.
 
As you guys know, I do security for a living. The only true security is armed guards.

The only TRUE security is a total lock down and a physical search of everyone entering the facility.

That's the first reality, the second reality is that no one (or very few) is willing to enforce that. The third reality is that no one (or very few) is willing to work under those conditions.

I've been a guard for about 12 years. You have no idea how many times I've found a door that was NEVER supposed to be unlocked unlocked and reported it and been told to just lock it and continue my rounds.

When I was on the utilities contract there was a train gate that HAD to be checked every round ABSOLUTELY NO EXCEPTIONS. The fence ENDED twenty feet past the gate. As in walk around the fence and you're on site.

Same site, the utility put a VEHICLE GATE in the perimeter fence of Fort Carson so they could go check some utilities infrastructure on post. It took the Army TWO YEARS to find the gate.
ETA I want to be really clear about what I'm saying here. Colorado Springs Utilities cut a hole in the Army's fence big enough to drive a truck through. They put their own gate in the fence. They graded a dirt road right to whatever infrastructure they were going to check on and it took the Army TWO FULL YEARS to figure it out. Now THAT is some high speed, low drag security on the Army's part. /ETA
As for me carrying a gun at work. I'm not at the warehouse anymore. The client company finally sold it. I don't carry at my new gig because I'd get caught the very first time I had to go into the clean room and I'm much more likely to have a run in with a bear (already happened once) than a crackhead.

At the Warehouse I was on my own. I had ZERO back up. On Thanksgiving morning of 2019 a methed up truck driver attacked me at work because I wasn't allowed to sign for his load and no client employees were on site. His co driver watched it happen and did nothing to intervene. They called the client to complain and I was told to let him in to drop his load. When I told the client I wasn't comfortable with that because he'd already taken a swing at me they said they didn't care, let him in. I've been carrying a gun at work ever day since and I really don't care what anybody else thinks about it.


ETA I worked as an Armed Guard for G4S for 3 years. Then one night two guys tried to rob me outside my front door and I stopped them with my company issued gun. I was fired because of it (standard practice). Had I submitted and they took the gun I would have been fired for that too assuming I wasn't shot with my own gun.
 
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I would start packing at work as well.

Urban Carry G3 is a nice deep concealment holster.
 
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