Security & Laser Pens

[themadhippy]

There are half a dozen pubs in my little town. The former manager of the biggest was strict on drugs

But alcohol is a drug,was he refusing to serve it?

[ramdram]

The difference HAS to be that HMG derive an income from alcohol before it is sold (duty) and derive an income from "class X" drugs after it is sold (fines).

 

And no, lasers and security in nightclubs do not mix for all the reasons above. I recall, in other posts, we spoke of the accident potential thing, so waving a laser about, no matter if it is sanctioned, is a recipe for disaster.

 

Plus, as has been alluded to already, some security guards might not unjustly be labelled feeble minded.

 

How long does it take, anyway, to illuminate a dodgy character bopping around in a possibly chemical induced frenzy? How long would it take for some other bright sparks to bring their own lasers (as mentioned above) and start illuminating everyone, just for "badness"?

 

An utterly, utterly impracticable idea open to abuse at every turn.

 

(As for weapons in bars/hotels, not so farfetched...I have seen that in the then Rhodesia, women with a little .38 stuck in the top of their skirts' waistband, even in the supermarket, and stacks of FN SLRs in the hotel bars/saloons....while their owners got steadily more and more lashed. If anything kicked off there...)

[cfmonk]

I would have a right old whine if the security at any of the venues I run events for promoters in started doing this. I can't see how it's justified, at Brixton Academy (one of the biggest clubs in London) the security use the following method to get people's attention:

Waving.

 

Seems to work...

[the kid]

I was on the north bank for new years and saw 10 green lasers, hitting the shell building and at least one hitting a police helicopter, those were not THAT much bigger than a pen. Those in the hands of anyone is worrying.

 

We were doing a band gig at my old school AGES ago (almost 10 years I guess now) and for various reasons we had some security guys, a couple of people were being idiots in the crowd, the security guys jumped the fence and gave the kid (16) a few words and it never happened again.

 

What is wrong with "spotters" and a few hit men to work in the crowd to pull out the trouble makers / have a word, I would think that would be FAR preferential than some bloke shining a light in my eyes.

[Jivemaster]

Knowing for certain that 1watt lasers are in the country from Russia I think that any venue that allows "security" to use lasers nmeeds it's licence permanently revoking. It's insurance would almost certainly not cover permanent blindness from a laser weapon.

[paulears]

I think I'm in the minority of one here. I think we should extend the practice and use the cheap key chain ones by giving them to FOH staff and then they can actually catch the attention of people using cameras and videos in the audience. It's fine to sell people alcohol until they have enough to fall over, but not to shine something at them that is frequently sold as a toy to children. Something a bit strange here!

[kerry davies]

Bit of a conundrum Paul, how does one ensure that "security" haven't been on Ebay and bought one specifically advertised as security tools? Many of those are Class 3 and 5mW and not exactly the kiddies toys that would, indeed, be acceptable... until someone just in from Helmand saw it aimed at his mate's head.

 

And there, friends, is the elephant in the room. The reaction of those 'spotted' is totally unpredictable.

[OllieDuff]

I've certainly heard of venues where bouncers "tag" troublemakers with a laser on the chest or back to pick them out from the crowd, but realistically I don't think you can say you won't hit people in the eyes. Taking the aversion reflex to be around a quarter of a second (which is standard for working out safety distances for display lasers), then at the kind of distances we're talking about you'd need a laser less powerful than 1mW (plus or minus the errors inherent in the back of an envelope) to satisfy HS(G) 95 and AORIW. Even then, you're not mitigating the risk of cheap lasers with no IR filtering described above.

 

One solution would be to issue bouncers with standard-compliant "safe" lasers (I use quotation marks advisedly) for their shift, but eventually one of them will decide they need something more powerful. You could prevent Joe Public from bringing a laser in by doing thorough searches, but it's logistically tricky to thoroughly search every punter for something that basically looks like a pen. I'd advocate a procedural way of doing it, dividing each room up into sectors which can easily be communicated. If you can give the location of an incident to within ten feet or so, you can solve two cases:

 

- Non-violent or non-urgent incident e.g. intoxicated person, spotted drug use: with this kind of situation, spending a couple of seconds giving a description on radio won't do any harm

 

- Violent incident or first aid situation: if you get within ten feet of a fight or someone collapsed on the floor, you're going to be able to find them pretty much instantaneously without a laser pointer. If the situation is such that you really can't afford the extra few seconds, you've probably reached the limit of what bouncers can mitigate against - the only examples I could think of would be if someone pulled a gun, or was wearing a suicide vest., at which point you're pretty screwed whether you have a laser or not, and indeed seeing a laser dot on his chest or being dazzled by one might provoke a jumpy shooter or bomber to blindly open fire or push the button.

 

I'm not sure I have the right solution, but I'm reasonably convinced as to some of the wrong solutions

[smalljoshua]

As an update to this, I have just received an email from the manager of the venue informing me that the external security company have been banned from using lasers of any form and that all venue staff have been briefed to ensure that no lasers are used within the club.

 

Sounds like a good result to me!

 

Josh