Recently Artus Group founder Elton Rangi, was quoted in the New Zealand Herald, in relation to invasive personal contact searches, security personnel were conducting, on students entering a school ball event.
It’s important that security personnel understand, conducting an invasive search in this manner is not recommended.
Security guards have no more powers than any other normal person.
It’s common, that security guards working in the areas of loss prevention or providing a presence at an entry point to a venue (sports, concert or an event) might be instructed to carry out duties as:
- A bag check.
- Simple light pat down – with a focus on the pocket areas.
- Ask an individual to remove items from a pocket or found to have been concealed on one’s person.
These duties might be at the request of a client under the terms and conditions of entry, or a security provider, operating under clear written guidelines, policy and procedures, via Standard Operating Procedures (SOP).
This protects individual security personnel from any liability, as they are the individuals carrying out these duties as instructed by a client or the security provider, they work for.
Security guards under The Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Act 2010, are not protected under the act, in relation to conducting any type of a search of an individual.
It’s important that security providers, security personnel, clients and the general public have some form of knowledge and an understanding of the laws (The Act) security providers and security personnel operate under. Please see below a link to view The Private Security Personnel and Private Investigators Act 2010.
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2010/0115/latest/DLM1594432.html