Preface

Of every law a security officer is positioned to enforce, trespass is the one you will use most. It is the legal foundation under "you can't be here" — the authority that lets you keep a stranger out of a back-of-house hallway, clear a closed parking lot, or ask a hostile visitor to leave a lobby. Get trespass right and most of your shift's problems resolve with a few calm words. Get it wrong — eject the wrong person, the wrong way — and you create a false-imprisonment claim, a battery, or a lawsuit against your client and yourself.

This is a 4-hour Continuing Education module in California's 32-hour mandatory skills training for security guards. It is delivered fully online and counts toward the hours you must complete after your guard card is issued.

How this module is built

The course is organized into five chapters that follow the way a trespass actually unfolds on post. The first two build the foundation — what trespass is, where your authority comes from, and how the law treats the different kinds of property you stand on. The middle chapter teaches the single most important skill: the posted notice and the lawful order to leave. The last two are about action — when to remove versus arrest, and the hard, gray-area situations where the safest legal move and the most humane move are the same one.

Learning Objectives

After completing this module you will be able to recognize a trespass under California law, apply the right rule for the kind of property you are protecting, issue a lawful order to leave, choose correctly between removal and a citizen's arrest, and handle the gray-area situations without creating liability — all while keeping your default of observe, document, report.

Course Outline

The five chapters of Trespass move from the foundation — what the offense is and where your authority comes from — through the kind of property you protect and the lawful order to leave, to the action that ends the encounter: removal, arrest, or a careful judgment call. Each chapter ends with field-ready takeaways and is tested on the assessment.

Trespass is the unauthorized entry onto, or refusal to leave, the property of another. In plain field terms it is the offense that answers the question every security officer asks a hundred times a shift: does this person have a right to be here? When the answer is no — and the law's conditions are met — you have a trespass.

In California, trespass is governed primarily by Penal Code §602, a long statute that lists more than two dozen specific acts that each count as a misdemeanor trespass. A handful of related sections fill in the edges — §602.5 for entry of an occupied residence, §602.8 for entering posted or cultivated land. You do not need to memorize every subsection. You need to understand the shape of the offense and know which rule applies to the property you stand on.

The Two Ways a Trespass Happens

Almost every trespass you will see falls into one of two patterns:

The distinction matters because it controls what you must prove. For an entry trespass, the unauthorized entry is the offense. For a refusal trespass, mere presence is not enough — the offense only exists once a lawful order to leave has been given and ignored.

Where Your Authority Comes From

This is the single most important idea in the module, so be clear on it: a security officer's authority to enforce trespass does not come from the uniform or the badge. It comes from two places, and only two:

1. The property owner. You stand on the property as the owner's agent — you act on their behalf and within the scope they grant you. The owner's right to exclude others is the right you are exercising. When you tell a person to leave, you are speaking for the owner, not for the state.
2. The statute. Penal Code §602 is what makes the conduct a crime and §837 is what lets a private person make an arrest for a misdemeanor committed in their presence. Outside what the statute allows, you have no more power than any other citizen.

A security guard is not a peace officer and has no general police powers. You cannot detain someone for "investigation," demand identification by force, or punish a trespasser. You can deter, you can ask, you can document, and — when the conditions are met — you can make a citizen's arrest and hold the person briefly for police. That is the full extent of it.

The Security Officer's Default: Deter, Detect, Report

Trespass enforcement is not about catching people. It is about keeping property secure, and the most effective tool for that is presence. Your default mode, in order, is:

• Deter. A visible, professional officer prevents most trespass before it starts. People who would slip into an unlocked side door don't when someone is watching the door.
• Detect. Patrol with intent, know your post's baseline, and notice the person who doesn't belong — the open gate, the propped door, the figure in a closed area after hours.
• Report. Document what you observe accurately and completely. The report is the product. A clean, timestamped account of who, what, where, and when protects the client, supports any later prosecution, and protects you.

Arrest is the exception, not the goal. A shift where you deterred every problem and made no arrests is a successful shift. The chapters that follow give you the specific rules — by property type, by the order to leave, by removal versus arrest — but they all sit on this foundation: you are the owner's agent, your power comes from statute, and your job is to observe, document, and report.

The trespass rule is not one rule — it changes with the kind of property you are protecting. A fenced field, a locked warehouse, a county building, and a grocery store are all governed by Penal Code §602, but the conditions that turn presence into a crime are different for each. BSIS organizes trespass around five property categories, and knowing which one you are standing on tells you which rule to apply.

The Five BSIS Property Categories

The practical lesson is that the same person can be lawfully present in one part of your post and trespassing in another. A shopper is welcome in the sales floor of an open store and trespassing the moment they push through the "Employees Only" door into the stockroom. The category isn't the whole building — it's the area and the moment.

Posted vs. Unposted Land

Open land is where posting matters most, because there is no door to close and no obvious line between welcome and unwelcome. California law treats posted and cultivated land more strictly than bare, unposted ground.

On unposted, unenclosed open land, your enforcement options are thin. With no fence, no cultivation, and no signs, a person walking across the ground may not be committing any crime by mere presence — the law usually requires that you give a lawful order to leave (the §602(o) refusal path) before a refusal becomes a trespass. The fix is operational: walk the perimeter at shift start, confirm the signage is current, legible, and oriented toward approach traffic, and photograph it for your report. Good posting turns a weak open-land trespass into a strong one.

Why the Category Drives Your Response

Before you act on any "they shouldn't be here," settle the property question first: What category is this, and what does that category require? On public-accommodation property during open hours, you almost always start with an order to leave — presence alone is lawful. On a posted field or behind a locked door, the unauthorized entry may itself be the offense. Misreading the category is how officers eject lawful customers (a discrimination and false-imprisonment risk) or, the opposite, hesitate to act on a genuine after-hours intruder. Name the category, apply its rule, then move to the order to leave — the subject of the next chapter.

For most of the trespass you will handle, the offense does not exist until notice has been given and ignored. A person standing in an open lobby is not a criminal; a person who refuses to leave that lobby after a lawful order is. The "order to leave" is the act that converts lawful presence into a §602(o) trespass — and giving it correctly is the most important enforcement skill in this module.

Posted Notice

Notice can come from a sign before you ever speak. A clearly posted property tells the world it is closed or restricted, and that posting can supply the notice an §602 subsection requires — most directly for posted or cultivated land under §602.8, but also for closed areas, after-hours restrictions, and "no trespassing" zones throughout a post.

For a posting to do its job it must be visible, legible, and oriented toward the people it's meant to warn. A "No Trespassing" sign facing a brick wall warns no one. The Whitestar practice: walk every entrance on your first patrol, confirm the signs are present and readable, photograph them at shift start, and attach the photos to your daily activity report. If signage is missing or unreadable, note it — that gap can be the difference between a provable trespass and a dismissed case.

The Lawful Order to Leave

When notice must be personal, you give it. Under §602(o), the request to leave land or structures not open to the public may be made by the owner, the owner's agent (that's you), or a peace officer acting at the owner's request. As the agent on post, you have the authority to order a person to leave — and your order, given clearly, starts the clock on the offense.

The Refusal-to-Leave Standard

The trespass under §602(o) is complete only when the person refuses or fails to leave after the lawful order. Two things satisfy that standard:

• Express refusal — the person says some version of "no, I'm not leaving." This is the strongest evidence and the cleanest case.
• Failure to leave — the person says nothing but stays put, or makes no genuine effort to go, after a clear order and a reasonable chance to comply. Silence plus continued presence can be enough, but it is weaker than a spoken refusal, so document the surrounding conduct carefully.

What does not count: a person who is actively gathering their things and moving toward the exit. That person is complying, even if slowly. Pulling the trigger on an arrest while someone is in the act of leaving is a classic, avoidable mistake — they have not refused; they are obeying.

Closed Public Buildings

Public property has its own notice rule. A public agency building is open to the public during posted hours and closed outside them. §602(o) also reaches a person who refuses to leave a public building, real property, or structure during hours it is closed to the public after being asked to leave by a peace officer or a designated security officer. If your post is a courthouse, library, or county office after closing, your order to leave carries the same statutory weight there as on private property.

Aggravated Trespass — Entry of a Residence

Some trespass is serious enough that the law does not wait for an order to leave. §602.5 governs trespass into a residence (a noncommercial dwelling):

The through-line: notice is what makes most trespass enforceable. Confirm the postings, give the order clearly, allow time to comply, and document every word and timestamp. When the person obeys, you are done. When they refuse, you have a provable offense — and a clean decision to make about removal versus arrest, which the next chapter covers.

Once a trespass is established, you have a decision to make — and it is almost always a simpler decision than officers expect. The overwhelming majority of trespass encounters end with the person leaving when ordered. That is the goal. Arrest is the rare exception, reserved for the person who refuses to leave and whose conduct you have observed firsthand. Knowing the difference between lawful removal and a lawful citizen's arrest — and the narrow force the law allows in each — keeps you out of court.

Two Outcomes

There is no lawful third option. You may not physically drag, shove, or "escort" a person off the property without making an arrest. Laying hands on someone outside a lawful arrest is a battery, and even inside a lawful arrest, force on a person who is not resisting is excessive. If you want hands-on removal, the legal vehicle is an arrest — or it is law enforcement, not you.

The §837 Citizen's Arrest

California Penal Code §837 lets a private person arrest another for a public offense (a misdemeanor) committed or attempted in their presence. Trespass under §602 is a misdemeanor, so the "in your presence" requirement is absolute: you must have personally observed every element — the lawful order, the reasonable chance to comply, and the refusal — not heard about it secondhand. If a coworker saw the refusal and you did not, you cannot make the arrest.

If you do arrest, §841 requires that you inform the person of your intent to arrest, the cause, and your authority — unless they are caught in the act or pursued immediately after. Then your job is narrow and brief: hold the person only as long as reasonably necessary and deliver them to a peace officer without delay. A security officer does not transport, interrogate, or detain a trespasser for their own purposes. You are holding for police, nothing more.

Reasonable Force Only

If force is ever used, the standard is only what is reasonable and necessary to make and maintain the arrest — no more. A non-resisting trespasser requires no force at all. A passively non-compliant trespasser is best left to police, not wrestled. Force is a last resort, it is proportional, and it stops the instant the person stops resisting. Pain compliance, strikes, or "teaching a lesson" on a trespasser are not enforcement; they are criminal assault and a guaranteed lawsuit against you and your client.

When to Disengage and Call

Plenty of trespass situations are above your pay grade, and recognizing them is its own skill. Disengage and call law enforcement when:

• The person is armed, violent, or threatening, or there are more of them than you can safely manage.
• A weapon, a felony, or an aggravated residential trespass (§602.5(b)) is involved.
• The person is in mental-health or medical crisis and cannot comply with a lawful order.
• You cannot make the arrest safely, or making it would put you, the subject, or bystanders at unreasonable risk.

There is no post and no trespasser worth your safety or a wrongful-arrest claim. When the situation exceeds your authority or your margin of safety, the right move is the one this whole program returns to: create distance, get on the radio, and let the police handle it. Observe, document, report.

The trespass statute is straightforward. The situations it lands in are not. The hardest calls a security officer makes are the gray ones — the person sleeping in a doorway, the customer who "looks like trouble," the protester on a public sidewalk, the visitor in crisis. Handle these well and you protect the client, the public, and yourself. Handle them badly and you trade a minor nuisance for a discrimination complaint, a false-imprisonment suit, or a headline. This chapter is about judgment, not new statutes.

Public-Accessible Spaces

On property held open to the public — a store, a mall, a hotel lobby, a parking lot during business hours — mere presence is not a trespass. A person walking through an open store's parking lot toward the entrance is doing exactly what the property invites. The offense only arises when the property withdraws permission for a lawful reason and the person refuses to leave. Treat the public areas of your post as open until a real fact — a clear order ignored, an after-hours presence, entry into a closed area — changes that. Ejecting a lawful customer because they made you uneasy is not enforcement; it is the start of a complaint.

People Experiencing Homelessness

The trespass statute applies the same regardless of a person's housing status — but operational discretion and basic humanity weigh heavily here, and so does litigation risk. Whitestar's standard guidance:

• Give a clear, respectful verbal order to leave before anything else.
• Allow a generous opportunity to gather belongings and go.
• Call for social services or police only when the person refuses or the conduct creates an immediate safety issue.
• Never confiscate, discard, or damage a person's property. Doing so is its own civil liability.

Arrest is the last resort, not the opening move. Most of these situations resolve with a calm order and patience, and your report should reflect that you gave both.

Mental-Health Crises

A person in psychiatric crisis may be physically unable to comply with a lawful order — and a citizen's arrest does nothing but escalate a situation that needs care, not custody. When you recognize crisis, shift the goal from compliance to safety:

Protected and Expressive Activity

Some "trespassers" are exercising rights. Peaceful leafleting, picketing, or expressive activity — especially on a public sidewalk or in a space that functions as a public forum — can be constitutionally protected, and California's Liberty of Speech clause (Cal. Const., Art. I, §2) has been read to protect some expressive activity even in privately-owned public spaces like large shopping centers. The line between a trespass and protected speech is genuinely difficult and is not yours to draw on the spot. When expressive or political activity is involved, do not eject or arrest on your own judgment: document, notify your supervisor and the client, and involve law enforcement if a real disturbance or safety issue develops. Getting this wrong turns a security officer into the defendant in a civil-rights case.

ADA, Discrimination, and Service Animals

Trespass enforcement must be evenhanded. Ejecting people because of race, disability, religion, or any other protected characteristic is unlawful discrimination, full stop — and it is exactly the kind of conduct that becomes a lawsuit and a headline. A specific trap: a service animal is not a pet, and a person cannot be trespassed for bringing a legitimate service animal into a place of public accommodation under the ADA. Enforce trespass on conduct, never on identity or appearance, and make sure your reports show that you did.

False-Imprisonment Exposure and Documentation

Every gray-area encounter carries false-imprisonment risk — the moment you hold, block, or "won't let" a person leave without a lawful arrest, you are exposed. The protection is the same one that closes every chapter of this program: observe, document, report.

Trespass is a tool, not a default. Most of the time the right move is a calm order, a little patience, and a clear report — not an arrest. When you do enforce, enforce on conduct, within your authority, with reasonable force or none at all, and with a record that shows you did it right.