Most “Patrol” companies are actually Guard Service companies with a patrol “Division” that just does roving spot-checks on their guards. Your patrol account is secondary and just subsidizes their actual core business.

Quick Definition: Guard vs Patrol

Guard Companies offer security officers at a location for set hours and charge an hourly rate. A Patrol Service on the other hand has a vehicle that drives between client locations, checking on the facility and then moving on to another location.  They are similar but different businesses.  

See an Article about that: Guard or Patrol

So where’s the issue? Guard Service accounts bill thousands of dollars a month because of the many man-hours involved.  Patrol services are a few hundred dollars a month.  Guard Services are overwhelmingly concerned only with Guard accounts, because they bill so much money.  That is their business. That is their profit center. THAT IS THEIR FOCUS. They smartly use “Patrol” as a roving spot-check to go around to their guard accounts and check on their poorly paid and otherwise unsupervised guards, or most often to fill in when there’s an issue.

They sell patrol accounts to try to help subsidize the operational cost of the supervision because they can’t bill for a roving supervisor.  But their focus is the guard accounts.  Your patrol is secondary to them, at best.

The moment there’s an issue at any one of their dozens of $20-30,000/month posts, any thought of your humble patrol account goes out the window.

We ONLY do patrol.  It IS our business.  YOUR account is our core business.

Additionally, we’ve found that when a patrol company offers 24/7 day and night patrol the natural focus slowly over time shifts to the day-time hours and the nights suffer. The best officers, the most attention, the operational resources all just gravitate towards the day shift. It makes sense, that’s when the public is around, that’s when your officers are constantly interacting with people, your tenants, customers, and bosses are all there watching. So it becomes the most important focus.

Yet, the night-time is when most of the core issues that Patrol is hired to (and best suited to) assist with actually occur. We found long ago that if we wanted to provide the best service over nights we had to FOCUS on nights, and not be dilluted with multiple shifts.

We pay close attention to new techniques, equipment, technology and tactics that make securing your property more effective.

But NOTHING compares to actually being there.

Nothing replaces the need for someone to have detailed first-hand knowledge of every shadow, late working employee car, lighting situation, nearby activity and homeless encampment. And you can’t get that remotely.

We’re happy to work with remote monitoring companies. But they’re at best a tertiary assistance and extra set of eyes.  They never understand what’s happening, they never use the workflow they sold the client on, they can’t do anything about an issue when it does occur, and they rarely know the difference between that issue and a routine happening despite “always watching”.

90% of the calls we get from them on our properties are things that are obviously routine and not noteworthy if you know the property. And most of the time they don’t call for things that clearly warranted attention.

Homeless and troublemakers pay no attention to cameras, don’t listen to warnings given over speakers or flashing lights, and learn very quickly that the people monitoring can’t do anything to them (if they’ve even heard the warnings).

Remote options do not replace Boots on the Ground

We tried to replace ourselves several times over the years with technology, and we ran into the same issues.  We didn’t know exactly what we were seeing.  You have to be there every night, and then if you saw it you would be able to recognize something out of the ordinary.  But only because you have been there every night for years.

Let’s be clear though, it’s not their fault.  They try.  It’s a good idea, and in a perfect world you’d be able to remotely monitor sites and handle issues. It’s clean and tidy and simple. But in reality unfortunately it just doesn’t work that way. The world is not clean and tidy and simple.

Security companies in Dallas don’t put spotlights on their cars. Why? Because there’s no ROI (Return on Investment) on lighting.  It’s expensive and it makes them no direct money. There’s no line item on the bill for lighting.

It’s indespensible for actually doing the job.  But the people making the decision don’t ever ride along and see what the job is like.

And if you DO see any form of light it’s a blinking yellow light. Because that’s how they normally come from the cheapest companies that sell them.

What a patrol officer actualy needs for work is pure white bright light that throws lumens at distance. You need to light up dark properties, penetrate bushes, blow out shadows, and cast a visible arc at great distance to actually see what’s there. That is if you actually care about doing the job.

Our patrol lighting is far and away the best in Dallas, likely in the country.  It’s custom designed and installed and costs 10 times what the closest competitor we’ve ever seen uses.  But when the people making the decisions are the ones who actually do the work you get tools, not toys.

Our light extends 300 yards.

We actually often (seriously) see patrol officers in Dallas driving along their property hanging a flashlight out of the window to try and see. And if they do have any lighting it’s a flashing light that does nothing but disorient the person trying to look out for a broken window.

One manager at another company actually said at the security conference “All that light isn’t going to get you one client”.  We told him “We didn’t do it to get clients, we did it to do the job better”.

It might be hard to believe, but despite being known as a premier first class service, and handling each of our accounts with a custom tailored approach, with the best staff and the best equipment, we are almost always still cheaper than our competitors.

Perhaps, it’s because we focus on a single focused niche and don’t have costs spread over several models, wide geography or work shifts. Or maybe it could be that we don’t have the corporate overhead that others do, or that we aren’t trying to subsidize expensive other businesses that have little to do with Patrols. We’ve never been able to figure out exactly why competitors charge more.  But we’re happy to be where we are and to provide better service for less money.

It’s been a good steady business model for 25 years. And it’s surely one reason clients stay with us.