In this interview, host Renee speaks with attorney Joe Osborne about negligent security. Osborne defines negligent security as the failure of property owners, businesses, or individuals to implement adequate protective measures, exposing invitees to criminal risk. He outlines typical security components—armed or unarmed guards, boundary protocols, proper lighting, and police presence—and explains why they matter for different venues. Osborne describes common incidents that generate negligent security claims, including parking‑lot robberies, shootings and robberies in apartment complexes, assaults in bars and restaurants, and mass‑shooting threats at public gatherings. He introduces the “crime grid,” a police tool that provides a ten‑year history of crimes at a specific address, and advises owners to use it to gauge required security staffing and protocols. He stresses the importance of thorough employee background checks to prevent insider‑related harm. For victims, Osborne recommends immediate actions: contact a lawyer promptly, secure surveillance footage before the typical 72‑hour loop erases it, identify and interview witnesses, cooperate with police while building rapport, and obtain medical treatment and counseling to document injuries. The conversation emphasizes that timely evidence preservation and proactive security planning are essential for both preventing negligent‑security incidents and pursuing successful legal claims.
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Today's show will be on the importance of security for all types of public premises, and more the lack of. Our guest today will be respected attorney Joe Osborne. Joe, it's great to have you back on the show, and how are you feeling today?
Great, thank you for having me.
Great, so let's get right to it. Maybe you can help the audience understand what constitutes negligent security and why it's important for property owners to maintain proper security measures?
Sure, this is a great topic, Renee, uh, as we all are exposed to certain risks and harm when businesses and corporations and even individuals don't take the necessary steps to make sure that people are safe and institute the proper security measures. These cases really begin where business owners or corporations or individuals take inadequate or insufficient steps to implement security, which results in a lack of protection for the public, invitees on the property, and exposes them to the risk of increased criminal activity that can result in harm. Now, security measures can be different depending upon the businesses that we're talking about and the situations involved, but typically security measures include Guards, either armed or unarmed guards, or— well, let me say it this way. Security guards who can be armed or unarmed depending upon the level of threat. Boundary protocols where, depending upon the event or the type of situation that's happening, where entrance to the event and exit from the event is being monitored and by proper security personnel. Proper lighting, depending upon whether it's a parking lot, certainly in the evening, and depending upon the location around the event, lighting can be a big issue and is important for the public in order to safely, again, enter and exit a particular event. And then, of course, there is actual police presence, which can serve as a deterrent. to criminal activity and to things that may expose people to harm. So the idea is for businesses, corporations, and even individuals to protect the patrons, their guests, and invitees that, that, you know, attend those events.
What are some of the common types of incidents that lead to negligent security claims?
So we've seen a number of cases that involve parking lot issues where robberies and assaults occur in parking lots where people are leaving a business, especially shopping plazas, malls, situations where criminals recognize that people are coming and going with either merchandise or money. So that can be a situation where we see a lot of bad things potentially happen.
Apartment complexes.
Shootings at apartment complexes where guests are going to visit friends or family, and robberies occur in apartment complexes where there's a big criminal history that the guests might not know about, that the owners have ignored, and then people go to visit loved ones and become the victims of crimes. Assaults at bars and restaurants where alcohol is involved or there's a lot of people gathered. incidents can arise where either patrons or guests either end up in confrontations with each other or with the employees of the establishment. And we've seen many of those situations that aren't diffused and people get hurt because of a lack of security. And then in this day and age, we've got to talk about mass shootings where people are attending, you know, cinemas, they're going to bars and restaurants, they're going to outdoor events and You know, there are certain threats and certain risk factors that can be in place, especially through notice, that sometimes you have to be really cognizant of. And also, you know, as a business owner and corporation, think about and have security measures in place like boundary protocols and things of that nature to make sure your guests are protected. Is there a clear way to determine if a property owner is liable for Well, the best thing to look at and where we always start is with something called a crime grid. So the police, depending upon the location of the property where the incident occurs, will maintain a crime grid. So we can put in a business address, the type of business, we can put in a private residence, and we can pull a 10-year history of all the crime and police calls that have occurred in that area. that have occurred at that property. And from the perspective of the business owner, it's really important that they understand, even before, let's say, the business even went into place. Let's say they, a property owner or business owners, own that property for 2 years or so. My— I suggest going back at least 10 years to recognize what other crimes have been committed on the property, what other threats have there been, And understand from the, from the history what kind of security presence may be required. And that can tell you whether you may need 1 guard, whether you need 3 guards, whether you need somebody at night, whether you need somebody at day or during the day. But the crime grid a lot of times helps guide, should guide the business owner about, you know, what kind of threat may be imposed by their location and what activities they're doing. It just makes common sense that if I own a business and for 10 years I look back and there's been no crime at my business and there's been no issues, that the risk of a problem for one of my patrons is much lower than if I take a different business owner and look at his business and his property and I pull the crime grid and there's been 100 crimes or 100 police calls to that property over a period of 10 years. The risk to patrons that go to those 2 businesses is much different, and therefore the business owner needs to react and make sure the safety protocols are reactive to the history of what's happened at the property and make sure there's enough there to act as a deterrent for any criminal activity. The other thing would be important is my employees. I would need to make sure that I do solid background checks and making sure that I don't have any employees that have a criminal history. Because oftentimes if, if that's not done, then employees are being put in place to where they're dealing with business invitees, they're dealing with customers, and that can also increase the risk that without proper supervision or the wrong time or someone leaves the business, someone follows them out and you have a bad person who never should have been hired, who ultimately now the business is responsible for exposing the public to that risk. And then someone gets hurt from, you know, hurt by an employee who probably never should have been there to begin with.
Well, that makes a lot of common sense business owners should be using when assessing their premises. What steps should a victim take immediately after experiencing an incident due to a negligent security issue?
Well, it's extremely important to contact me. A lawyer immediately. One of the big issues from an evidentiary standpoint that we deal with this, you know, we deal with in these cases is surveillance footage. Oftentimes surveillance footage will capture an assault. It will capture if someone's pulled into a car. It will capture a shooting. It will capture a mugging, whatever it may be. But the business often has what's called a 72-hour loop. Meaning that the surveillance video plays all the time, but unless it's captured within 72 hours of the event, it's eliminated. Because again, you know, it becomes irrelevant material. So if you don't get to the business within 72 hours, then sometimes you can lose the surveillance footage of exactly what happened during the time of the attack or the assault. Now, these are criminal things that we typically deal with. So sometimes the police will help with that, meaning they will They will get notice to the property owner and/or the business owner within the relevant timeframe so that the surveillance footage can be captured. But you can't rely on the police. If something has happened to you and you feel like there's been a potential situation where you weren't protected, contact us right away because we will make sure that any surveillance footage of the incident is captured in a timely manner. We don't want to be in a position where we've waited a week or 2 weeks and then we go and the surveillance footage is no longer available because It was on a 72-hour loop. The other thing is, is oftentimes there's witnesses involved and we want to be able to track down and talk to those witnesses, you know, as soon as possible. For instance, in a bar or restaurant situation, you know, if there's an assault that takes place within the restaurant, we want to talk to people that were there and can kind of document and give us eyewitnesses to exactly what happened. And given the extent of the criminal activity activity that's typically involved, the police will get involved pretty quickly in a typical fashion. And we want to build a rapport with the police that are involved in the criminal investigation. Sometimes police are not so friendly in terms of cooperating with civil lawyers in terms of what their criminal investigation may show. But we've seen and had experience where if we're involved early and, you know, our victim is really a victim, we can build a rapport with the police so that such they'll share, you know, information with us, they'll work with us, and then, uh, and we can work together to make sure that whoever is responsible, the criminal and the, and the business entity, are held responsible accordingly. Uh, and then we obviously We want people to seek medical treatment for their injuries. It's really important that they do that. We've seen in rape situations, for example, women are really reluctant to do that. They're really reluctant to seek medical treatment and it takes a long time. But we want to provide counseling and help so that all the injuries get documented and of course our clients receive the medical treatment they need.
Time is of the essence, it sounds like.
Yes, absolutely.
Can you describe a recent case you've handled and what was the outcome?
Sure. And this is a recent case. I'll keep the names out of it. We represented a lovely lady who was in her late 50s, 2 college-aged daughters, who was leaving. She was at one of the big malls in South Florida. Uh, she was leaving, um, leaving the mall at around 5:30 in the afternoon. She was in the crosswalk, uh, and she was on her way to her vehicle, uh, and going home, uh, for the evening. It was still light out and she had on a purse, uh, a little hard to describe, but it was a very nice purse with one of these high-end chains and she was wearing it across her body as kind of a body purse. And as she was in the crosswalk, a car sped up next to her, and someone reached out the window and grabbed the chain in an effort or in an attempt to pull the purse off her body and just snatch it off of her, and then obviously drive away with the purse. Unfortunately for her, this was one of those chains that was very thick. It was a high-end purse, and even though the criminal grabbed the chain. And was trying to pull it away, the car kept going, the chain didn't break. And she was dragged, she fell down and she was dragged and the criminal held onto the chain and drug her over 20 feet in a speeding vehicle to where the tire just missed running over her head. And thank God for her, her life was saved when the chain broke. She suffered catastrophic injuries, broken bones. As you can imagine, being dragged by a car for 20 feet at a high rate of speed, It was it was an extremely traumatic event, and she suffered significant physical injuries. When we looked at the case, this mall had a history of crime that would just knock your socks off. The the types of things that this mall has that has gone on at this mall, we we wouldn't have enough time to go over it. But at the end of the day, there were no security guards. There were no security stands. The paramedics actually came to take care of her, and no one from the mall even knew this happened. No one responded to it. We determined that through the course of the case, their sole security measure is they would have one security cop who would drive around in the parking lot every 60 minutes and then would go back inside. So there was, there was literal, there was Literally zero security and/or police deterrent to crime for all the people that were leaving this mall, which obviously is hundreds, if not thousands of people a day. And when we got the crime grid, it was like an encyclopedia of the amount of crime that had gone on at the mall, and just a lack of security presence was astonishing. Anyway, uh, we brought that case and we, we recently resolved it successfully for our client. We're happy to do so. She required extensive psychological counseling after that, which we were able to help her get, and also required significant medical treatment.
