The Banality of Mall Security

I turn 24 years old in a little over a month. This afternoon, I was asked by a security guard at the St. Louis Galleria mall for a government-issued identification card because I appeared to be under 25. (This is fair, because clean-shaven I look like I’m a slightly doughy college sophomore. With stubble I look like a college sophomore with prodigious testosterone output.)

The Galleria has instituted a policy they call PGR (parental guidance required), a kind of curfew enforced after 3 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays according to which children 16 and younger must be accompanied by an adult aged 21 or older. This policy was likely put in place to prevent… what? To prevent teenagers from hanging out at the mall, which has been “a thing” since the 80s? Or is it to prevent the kind of flash mob that can cause damage and injuries, like this one?

Anyways, I was at the mall with my family. I forgot my wallet (and by proxy my ID) at the hotel.

Security Guard: “Excuse me sir, I’m going to need to see some ID.”

Me: “Uh, excuse me? For what?”

Security Guard explains PGR policy.

Me: “Well, I’ve never heard of such a policy at any mall I have ever visited. Besides, I’m 23, and I forgot my wallet at the hotel. I’m just walking around the mall while my sister picks up a graduation gift for my other sister. I was looking for a bookstore.”

SG: “There is no bookstore here. Are you here with an adult?”

Me: “I am an adult, sir.”

SG: “You have no way to prove that you are. You’re going to have to call an adult to accompany you as you walk around the mall.”

Me: “Sir, can I ask you a question?”

SG: “Yes.”

Me: “What if I had a fake ID that said I was 18? Or what if I was a 17 year old who was a very heavy methamphetamine user and had prematurely aged such that I looked over 25?”

SG: “I don’t engage in hypotheticals, sir. But, if they fly under the radar, they fly under the radar.”

Me: “Fair enough. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go.”

And so I left, without showing the ID I didn’t have on my person. I could see him calling for backup in his radio. I found my mother in front of a store, and revisited the security guard with her.

He instructed my mother that I was to be in her vicinity for the rest of my visit to The Galleria because I failed to prove I was over 16 years of age.

I could have been arrested for criminal trespass for not carrying my ID on me to a mall.

My mother and I were dumbfounded, so we walked over to the Customer Service desk, where we explained the situation. The attendant, who looked to be no older than 25 said he was 42 and that he was frequently carded on his way into his job. When I asked if it bothered him, he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Rules are rules.”

I say, “This sounds a heck of a lot like age discrimination to me.”

He shrugged his shoulders again, and gave my mom and I some VIP shopping coupons to placate us.

Now, I understand that The Galleria is private property, and that it’s their prerogative to do whatever they want with their security policy. So while I think this policy is odious, and could lose in court under the argument that it’s discriminatory, that’s not what bothers me about this incident.

What we see here is the origins of totalitarianism writ small. Just because some individual, or group of individuals perpetrated a bad act or acts at some point in the past, a blanket policy was instituted within the system that effects a wide swath of the population who engages with the system.

The Galleria staff’s reasoning, that they were “just doing their job” and that “rules are rules”, is a case in point for Hannah Arendt’s arguments in Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, chief among them being that:

• they aren’t bad people
• they’re just carrying out orders
• they hide behind “Clichés, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct” which “have the socially recognized function of protecting [them] against reality.”

Reactionary policies and thought-terminating clichés like “rules are rules” blinded these people to reality: that I’m an innocent 23 year-old man who was just walking around the mall in search of a bookstore while his sister and mom picked out a graduation present. These policies and cliches framed me as a guilty man who had to prove his compliance with a policy, and thus my innocence.

But back to my other point about slippery slopes for a second; this kind of fear-driven overreaction and institution of blanket policies in response to an incident or series of incidents is the fundament of any over-reaching security policy, from what happened to me in the mall, to the internment of Japanese Americans in the wake of Pearl Harbor, to the creation of the TSA and their overweening and largely ineffective security policies after September 11th.

Call me crazy for making these comparisons, but I contend it’s the same idea, just played out at different scales.

Next time, I’m going to just shop online instead of the mall. At least I can still buy physical books on the Internet.