Use of Force Theory for Private Security Professionals

What Will You Learn?

• Define force, deadly force, reasonable belief, immediately necessary, seizure, arrest, restraint, and legitimate professional objective in operational terms.
• Distinguish a private security professional’s authority from the authority of a Texas peace officer.
• Identify the Texas statutory conditions that govern self-defense, defense of others, protection of property, arrest, and prevention of escape.
• Explain how objective reasonableness and the totality of the circumstances inform review of a force decision while recognizing the limits of applying constitutional police cases to private actors.
• Classify subject behavior without treating resistance labels or a force continuum as automatic authorization.
• Select, communicate, apply, stop, and reassess force according to the objective, threat, proportionality, feasibility, training, and policy.
• Recognize stress, attention, perception, time pressure, and memory limits that influence force decisions and later reporting.
• Prepare a clear force account that separates observations, perceptions, decisions, actions, reassessment, evidence, and unresolved facts.