Security Woes or Wins?

Posted: September 22, 2014 | the scene | security, shows | 0 Comments

It’s sort of a love/hate relationship. They can be your personal hero or the bane of your existence for the night and it’s tough to tell which version you’ll get. Security guards at shows have a job to do and 99.9% of the time they do it smashingly but, as anyone who has ever been to a shot can attest to, things don’t always go as planned.

At a recent Citizen show in San Diego, the band cut their set short after having to intervene when a security guard began getting rough with the crowd. It was a similar scene at Warped this year when The Story So Far got involved when a security guard threw a kid to the ground. Back in 2010, a group of fans got maced at an All Time Low show.

As previously mentioned, though, the overwhelming majority of the time, security does a great job and keeps everyone safe. These instances of bad security or power trips or whatever you want to call it are very isolated incidents. We need to keep in mind that these security guards are putting themselves at risk too, as was the case when a female guard was trampled by fans a festival in Miami. When a show gets rough, for whatever reason, we rely on the guards to keep things under control and that can sometimes mean that they need to bet physical to keep the crowd safe.

The point we’re trying to drive home here is that you always need to be aware of your surroundings. Shows are supposed to be fun and there’s nothing worse than that one idiot who ruins it for everyone else. Perhaps most importantly, if you see (or know) that aforementioned idiot who might ruin it for everyone – tell someone. Stop it before it becomes a problem. Every incident at a show is caused by someone and (lets be honest) more often than not, that person isn’t wearing the black or yellow security windbreaker.