How To Audit Your Current Security Provider: A 30-Day Field Test

If you already have a security vendor, you do not need a new bid to find out whether you're getting what you pay for. You need thirty days and this checklist. Run it on your incumbent — and run it on us if we're the incumbent. Everything here is verifiable by an owner, board member, or property manager without special access.

Week one: audit the paperwork

1. Read your own contract. Specifically: hours committed, no-show remedy, supervision cadence, reporting deliverables, insurance limits and additional-insured status, and termination notice. Most owners have never read past the rate.

2. Verify the license, don't accept the claim. Every legitimate California operator holds a Private Patrol Operator license from BSIS. Get the PPO number in writing and check it against the Department of Consumer Affairs license lookup for status and expiration. Ours is PPO #122730. Confirm officers assigned to your site hold current, active guard card registrations.

3. Pull the last 30 days of Daily Activity Reports. Then grade them:

• Do entries carry specific times, locations, and observations — or is it forty repetitions of "all clear"?
• Are negative findings specific enough to be falsifiable ("north gate chain intact, 0214") or generic?
• Do the patrol times vary, or do they land at suspiciously identical intervals?
• Are incidents followed by an action, a notification, and an outcome?

Identical timestamps across nights is the classic signature of reports written in advance.

4. Request the supervisor visit log. Names, dates, times of field supervision at your property. Absence of a log usually means absence of supervision.

Week two: audit the coverage

5. Cross-check reports against your own cameras. Pick three random nights from the DARs and pull footage for the claimed patrol times. This single test resolves most disputes permanently. If claimed checks don't appear on camera, you have your answer.

6. Check the gate, the lot, and the lights yourself. Drive your own property unannounced at 1 a.m. once. Note where the officer is, whether they're moving, whether the lighting works, and whether you were challenged as an unknown vehicle. Being challenged is a good sign.

7. Count the officers. Ask for a roster of every distinct officer who covered your post in 90 days. More than three on a single-post schedule means you're paying for repeated onboarding.

Week three: audit the response

8. Run a documented escalation drill. Coordinate with the vendor's management: place a non-emergency call to the on-duty line at 2 a.m. and time the answer and the supervisor callback. Log it. Repeat once mid-shift on a weekend.

9. Measure real response radius. Ask where the nearest supervisor is dispatched from at 3 a.m. and how long it takes to reach your address. National providers often win on procurement and lose on this number.

10. Test the reporting loop. Report a minor issue — a broken light, a suspicious vehicle — through the normal channel and see whether it appears in that night's DAR and whether anyone follows up.

Week four: audit the outcomes

11. Chart your incidents before and after the contract started. Direction and clustering matter more than raw counts. If losses cluster at times your coverage doesn't run, that's a scope problem, not a vendor problem — fix the scope before you fire anyone.

12. Compare cost to your actual vulnerability window. Paying for 24/7 coverage when your losses happen in a six-hour band is a budgeting error. So is buying two nightly drive-throughs for a large yard.

13. Ask your tenants and staff. Do they see the officer? Do they know how to reach them? Perceived safety is part of the product, especially in retail and residential.

Scoring it

Count how many of the thirteen produce a specific, documented answer.

• 11-13: You have a real vendor. Keep them and fix scope instead.
• 7-10: Fixable. Bring the gaps to a formal account review in writing with a 60-day correction window.
• 6 or fewer: You are buying an invoice. Re-bid, and put the DAR sample, supervision log, PPO verification, and no-show remedy in the RFP so the next vendor is selected on the things that actually failed.

Put it in the next contract

Whatever you find, convert it into contract language:

1. 1.Written, property-specific post orders as an exhibit — not a template.
2. 2.DAR delivery daily, with defined minimum content standards.
3. 3.Documented supervisor visits at a stated frequency.
4. 4.Maximum distinct officers per quarter, to protect site knowledge.
5. 5.Stated escalation response time to your address.
6. 6.Financial remedy for a no-show shift.
7. 7.Current PPO and guard card verification on demand.

Our standing offer

We'll run this audit on your current provider with you, free, whether or not you hire us — because the seven questions that expose a weak vendor are the same seven we want asked about our own posts. If the audit says your incumbent is doing the job, we'll tell you that too.

Summit Force Security Group — California PPO #122730, BSIS/DCA licensed, Sacramento headquartered, covering the greater Sacramento region, Placer County, Solano County, and the East Bay.