playing devils advocate...security guards are employees of private companies and have no official law enforcing capacity...even if they acted as a concerned citizen as long as they wear the uniform of the company they represent they would be liable for any actions through lawsuits regardless of intent. In other words if the security guards had acted and the situation escalated chances are they’d be sued into oblivion. Their “observe and report” policy is most likey the result of past circumstances where security officers got involved in a situation outside of their duties when they shouldn’t have. In a world of pc and frivolous lawsuits they had to play it safe.
I think the case against the security guards would be more problematic than the one against the police. You would have to argue that by presenting themselves as security, they invited the girl to come near them and then did not do what they falsely implied that they would do: to protect her. This would be far from a slam-dunk case.
Sadly, I think you’re correct. It’s easy to Monday morning quarterback from the comfort of our computers, but none of us had a job (I doubt they get paid much) on the line if we didn’t follow orders. Certainly many of us probably would have thrown caution to the wind and intervened, however I suspect that some will say they would, but faced with the same circumstance would act like the security guards did. BTW it did look to me as if one of the guards was conflicted about stopping the assault, but I can’t tell if he’s saying anything etc.