Assignments & duties
What is a search?
A search is an examination of a person, their belongings or a vehicle at a site. Security officers have no power to search: it is carried out with consent, on conditions the site has set.
The absence of any power is the essential point. A search happens because someone agrees to it, usually as a condition of entry or of employment, and refusal is answered by refusing entry rather than by searching anyway.
How a search is conducted matters legally and practically — who conducts it, whether a witness is present, and how a person of a different sex is handled are all matters for the site's procedure rather than the officer's judgement.
Records of searches, including refusals, protect officers as much as sites, because an allegation about a search is answered by a contemporaneous record and by very little else.
What goes wrong in practice
- Officers behaving as though they have a power they do not have.
- No written procedure, leaving each officer to decide how to conduct one.
- Searches and refusals not recorded, so allegations cannot be answered.