Most “Patrol” companies in Dallas 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 company
Guard Companies offer security officers at a location for set hours and charge an hourly rate.
Patrol service
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: Guards 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.
Why nights
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 night security patrol in Dallas we had to FOCUS on nights, and not be diluted with multiple shifts.
Related Pages:
Learn more about the difference between Patrol and Guard Service: