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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Not what I was talking about. There are several issues, whether these trespassers committed a crime is just one. This is an on-the-job injury of an employee. Whether anything went wrong on the employer/employee side to contribute to this is a totally different evaluation. Whether these guards had the authority to seize the vehicle is another. The insurance companies that have to pay for the medical care will look into these questions. Note that Tesla is not describing these employees as heroes. Tesla (or whatever company trains/deploys these guards) might be on the hook for substantial costs.

No doubt this incident will result in new training and/or a serious rethink of how security guards are deployed in such situations.

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> whether these trespassers committed a crime is just one.

Isn't trespassing already a crime all by itself?

Trespassing is tricky. Entering property without permission is illegal, but "permission" is not simple.

A pizza delivery person who goes to the wrong address is not trespassing, even if he walked past all manner of signs. But he certainly cannot jump over barbed wire or pick locks to gain entry. These reporters are not delivery men, but we need lots more facts before we can make any decision about whether or not they were trespassing prior to the confrontation with the security guards.

They were certainly trespassing after they refused to leave. We don't know whether they are being charged for trespass prior to or after the guards got involved. It is probably moot given what happened, but criminal trespass does have all sorts of fine points.

From the article:

    They also denied that they were trespassing even
    though they had climbed through a fence designated
    with "private property" signs.

That's not as tricky as a pizza man at the wrong address.

I agree they certainly aren't the wayward pizza guy, but it is still far from simple.

"Private Property" signs are something different than "No Public Admitted". Any mall has a private property sign, that doesn't mean people aren't allowed in.

I'm a unsure about the location of the Jeep. It sounds like they drove into Tesla's parking lot, then proceeded on foot towards the factory. If the lot was open to the public (no gate) then the initial trespass is far from clear. Climbing a fence weights towards trespass, but I want to see more about this fence. If it was the sort of barb-wire fence normally found around factories, how did they do this? Or was it a small sort of fence meant to direct foot traffic around grassy areas.

If they instead parked on the street it gets even more complex. If they walked in on foot and were asked to leave, they appear to have done so. So they were not trespassing after being confronted by guards. And that would place the physical altercation off of tesla property, totally complicating the liability issues. If you seek to detain someone you don't normally allow them to leave the proper, let alone them access their vehicle.

Dude, the Tesla employees just asked them to wait for the sheriff to arrive. It's not like they jumped on the hood of the car. Writing down the license plate number should not get you run over.

It's not a matter of who is better or more justified than the other person. A hurt employee is never a good thing. It is rarely justified. When you employee security guards, the absolutely last thing you want is them being hurt. This isn't the wild west. They are not to put their lives on the line to defend your factory. Sometime that means not doing the justified thing. Sometimes that means backing off and letting the police handle things. If that means retreating if and when a trespasser enters a vehicle, so be it. If that isn't in the manual now, it will be soon.

( I do know that retail security guards are regularly trained not to peruse thieves into parking lots precisely because of dangers created once vehicles are involved. )

But what part of standing behind a vehicle in order to write down the license plate is "pursuing a vehicle? What action is left that would be acceptable in your manual...duck and cover?

That is pretty much the manual. Watch a cop after pulling someone over. They never stand in front or behind the car. They stand beside, and even then only if the driver turns off the engine. A security guard dealing with a trespasser in a vehicle should probably act much the same. If the trespasser is in a vehicle, it might be time for them to retreat or at least get into their own vehicles if available.

If they are not trained in how to approach and deal with suspected wrongdoers driving cars, something that is not uncommon in large facilities, that lack of training is a serious issue for their employers.

Upvoted. While the guilty party is obviously the one driving over the other, it may be so that the security personel Tesla employs, or at least the particular one here lack the training to handle situations like this without getting hurt. I say "may be so", not "is true", because we don't really know how the encounter played itself, but if indeed the guard was standing directly behind the car it suggests less than best practice. It's not really unexpected - most security guards aren't properly trained to handle actual danger, not in the way police is. This suggests potential area of improvement.

Still, my heart goes to those hurt and I wish them quick recovery and no permanent damage.

I'm not sure who is downvoting you, but you're right. It's a really bad idea to pursue people as a security guard precisely because you may get hurt and I thought pretty much all of them were trained very strictly not to do this. No employer wants their employees to get injured over this kind of thing. There is good evidence that the guards here were not well-trained.

I think the uncontested parts of the story say that the driver is in big trouble here for using lethal force against them, but I also think the guards should be trained not to put themselves in harm's way.

Downvoting is an emotional act. It is the easiest thing to do when you cannot or are unwilling articulate a response. In my experience people get most angry when they are forced to revisit their own views. I choose to see the occasional spat of quick downvotes only as an indication that I have touched a nerve. But thanks for the upvote all the same.

Yeah, I'm not even a security guard and yet I know that part of the training. It has come up many times when some guard gets injured while chasing a shoplifter or whatever and the story makes the news.

We don't know the situation of the vehicle. Maybe backing up was the only reasonable way to escape from what the journalist thought was a dangerous situation. No Idea if this is true, just playing devils advocate in the interest of preventing a digital lynch mob.

Sorry, I can appreciate some devil's advocacy, but I'm just not buying it here. Assuming the Tesla employee was unarmed (which I think is a safe assumption), then there's nothing potentially dangerous enough to justify running someone over rather than wait the few minutes for law enforcement to arrive. Even if you think you are being falsely imprisoned, I don't think you are justified in running someone over rather than wait a few minutes for law enforcement if you are not in immediate danger.

You are assuming that the 'running someone over' was deliberate. We don't have enough information for such determinations. It may have been accidental, or more likely criminally negligent, but we shouldn't assume deliberate attack without all the facts.

We do have them hitting two different people on two different occasions. That's not iron-clad by any means, but it is evidence that weighs against the accident theory.

One detail is that Tesla alleges that they 'accelerated' in reverse. This is completely abnormal and if it can be corroborated by the physical evidence, it will be very troublesome for the driver.

Further, I have to believe that Tesla has no shortage of people who know about accident reconstruction and who can determine the idle speed & mass of the jeep and compare that with the force needed to cause skid marks or to have knocked the employee whatever distance. If they were to do that, it would be very interesting because we all know just how skilled their engineers are, from Elon on down.

The escape re trespassing is an interesting point. If a guard tells someone to leave, fleeing is a form of leaving. I could see a defense attorney argue that they were not trespassing post-confrontation as they attempted to leave as soon as they were told so to do. It's a vicious argument, but that's what they are for.

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