BOLO alerts for security guards
Put a known shoplifter, a banned customer or a suspect vehicle in front of every guard who needs to see it, with photos, flags and a push notification, instead of a printout on the control room wall.
Availability: Included on TacStarter, TacPro and TacCommand
BOLO Alerts are on every paid plan from TacStarter up. They aren't on TacFree.
A man was thrown out of the shopping centre on Saturday for threatening staff. On Tuesday he walks back in past a guard who wasn't on shift at the weekend, has never seen his face, and has no idea he's barred.
What most firms do today
A photo printed out and pinned up in the control room. A description passed on at handover, if handover happens. A picture dropped into the site WhatsApp group, where it sits between a rota swap and a meme and scrolls out of sight by Thursday.
None of that is wrong, exactly. The problem is reach. The printout only helps the guard standing in that room. The WhatsApp message only helps the guards in that group who happened to scroll up. Relief staff and anyone covering from another site see neither. And when the person has been dealt with, nobody takes the photo down, so the wall fills up with faces from two years ago and the current ones get lost among them.
How TacDesk does it
A BOLO is a record, not a message. Each one is either a person or a vehicle. You give it a name or short description, a physical description, a vehicle registration if there is one, where and when the subject was last seen, notes, and up to five photos. You tag it with one or more flags: Banned, Violent Warning, Missing Person, Wanted by Police, or Other with your own label. The flags are colour-coded, so a guard can tell a banned shoplifter from a violent warning at a glance.
It goes to the right guards. A BOLO is either tied to one site or set as global across all your sites. If you tick "Notify guards via push notification" when you save it, TacDesk sends a push to every guard with an upcoming shift at that site (or at any site, for a global BOLO). That includes the relief guard who starts tomorrow night and has never worked there before.
Guards see it where they already look. When a guard is clocked in, the home screen of their app shows a swipeable card for each active BOLO at their current site, with the photo, the vehicle registration and the flags. Tap a card for the full detail and every photo. There's also a dedicated BOLOs tab listing every active alert, with a filter for person or vehicle and a search that checks names, descriptions and registrations. A guard with a plate half remembered can type the part they've got.
The guard on the ground can raise one. Anyone signed in can raise a BOLO from their phone, because the guard who has just seen something is usually the first to know. A guard raising a BOLO can only scope it to a site they're rostered on or have clocked into. Global alerts across every site are kept for management. Editing and archiving existing BOLOs needs the BOLO management permission, so a guard can add to the picture but can't quietly remove somebody else's alert.
Old alerts come down. When the situation is over, a manager archives the BOLO and it drops out of guards' lists. It isn't deleted: the management view has an archived filter alongside filters for type, flag and site, and a count of active persons, active vehicles and archived entries across the top.
Why it matters
Contracts get lost over repeat incidents. A retail or venue client remembers the second time a barred person got in far longer than the first. A BOLO that reached every guard rostered to that site is something you can point to.
It covers the gaps in your staffing. Relief guards, new starters and staff borrowed from another site are exactly the people who miss the printout. A push to everyone with an upcoming shift at the site doesn't depend on who was in the control room when the photo went up.
It keeps the board current. Archiving means guards look at what's live, not a wall of faces from last year.
A BOLO tells guards who to look out for. What they do when they spot someone still belongs in an incident report, so there's a timestamped record of what happened next.
Where it sits
BOLO Alerts are included on every paid plan: TacStarter, TacPro and TacCommand. They aren't part of TacFree. There's no separate add-on charge, and the pricing page has the current plan prices.
If your clients want to see the reports your guards file at their site, that's the client portal, which also starts at TacStarter.
You can start free to try the core app with your team, or book a demo and we'll show you BOLOs working on a live site.
See it on your own sites
Sign up free and have a look yourself, or book half an hour and we'll walk you through it.