Private Security Guards Are Homeland Defense’s Weak Link

Private Security Guards – Security Guard Officers – Security Guard Services 

They are the first line of defense against terrorists. But more often than not, private security guards who protect millions of lives and billions of dollars in real estate offer a false sense of security.

Most of the nation’s 1 million-plus guards are unlicensed, untrained and not subject to background checks. Their burgeoning, $12 billion-a-year industry is marked by high turnover, low pay, few benefits and scant oversight. And according to government officials and industry experts, little has changed since Sept. 11, 2001.

As the demand for guards increases, security companies “find someone on the street and put him in a uniform, and before he’s finished buttoning up, they put him on a post,” says Henry Nocella, vice president of Professional Security Bureau, a private company based in New Jersey that employs about 4,000 guards. Thus the name: “rent-a-cops.”

For 16 months since terrorists toppled the World Trade Center towers and destroyed part of the Pentagon, government officials have worked to secure the homeland. But there are no federal laws governing the private security industry. Efforts in Congress to mandate training and background checks nationwide failed last year; sponsors expect better results this year.

State laws remain spotty. While the tiny fraction of guards who carry guns go through training and background checks, most of those who patrol office buildings, apartment complexes, shopping malls, sports arenas, warehouses and cargo terminals are unarmed. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia do not require training for unarmed guards. In 22 states, they don’t have to be licensed. In 16, the people who hold the keys, have access to the ventilation systems and know the escape routes are not put through background checks.

Private Security guards themselves say they have seen few improvements since the 2001 attacks. A poll of 1,200 guards in California, Texas and Florida last spring for the Service Employees International Union found lax security persisted. Four in 10 guards said their buildings had no new security procedures. Seven in 10 said no bomb-threat or natural-disaster drills were conducted. A majority said they received no training on evacuation or other emergency procedures before being hired.

“Post-9/11 training is non-existent in certain parts of the country,” says Bruce Gelting of Allied Security, the largest American-owned and operated security company with 19,000 guards.

Many large companies hire top-flight security firms. They teach guards how to spot suspicious packages, monitor security cameras and evacuate buildings. But there are at least 11,000 security firms nationwide. Experts say many are fly-by-night operations that invest little or nothing in training and don’t check backgrounds.

Many Fortune 500 companies “are just putting bodies in uniforms,” Gelting says.

Not trained for terrorism

Raynard Williams is an $8.40-an-hour guard at ABC Entertainment Center, an entertainment complex in Los Angeles. To get his job with Universal Protection Service, he sat through a generic four-hour training video. “Something to put you to sleep,” he says.

Like most guards, Williams, 39, gets no health insurance through work, no paid vacation and no sick days. “It’s a thankless job,” he says.

In 2000, the most recent year for which figures exist, private security guards earned an average of $17,570. For many, it’s a second job; most leave within months.

Williams says he and his fellow security guards feel vulnerable without proper training. But private employers, he says, know that “if they give us training, we’ll want more money.”

That’s a big reason for the long-standing opposition to government regulation. In an industry in which contracts are awarded to the low bidder, private security companies oppose government mandates that would increase operating costs. The businesses that hire them for protection don’t want those costs passed along.

“The security guard industry is a very competitive industry, and their contracts are won and lost based on pennies per hour,” says Jeff Schlanger of the risk consulting company Kroll, based in New York. “It’s all about the money.”

Even after the horror of Sept. 11, analysts say, most companies are reluctant to pay more for security. In a tight economy, companies are looking “right down the gun barrel of some tough economic issues: What does it cost, and what do we get for it?” says Philip LaRiviere, a security consultant based in Chicago. Companies are buying more security, but they still hire the low bidder.

It’s hard for private security companies to prove their value. Gail Simonton of the National Association of Security Companies, which represents the nation’s largest outfits, says they can’t prove that hiring guards will avert disasters. “You’re trying to prove a negative,” she says.

Experts say if the government doesn’t demand higher standards, the industry will continue to provide a dangerous opportunity for terrorists. Some could slip by untrained guards. In other cases, would-be terrorists could infiltrate the system by getting work as guards themselves.

Over the years, criminals have landed jobs as security guards. Some didn’t go through background checks. Others were subject only to one state’s checks, which didn’t find criminal records in other states. Stories of guards beating, raping and robbing the people they were hired to protect have hurt the industry’s image.

Those problems persist. The New York Daily News reported last summer that private security companies hired by the state to protect the Statue of Liberty and other state and military facilities employed hundreds of unlicensed guards, including former convicts.

In Atlanta last spring, federal investigators found that private security guards employed by the federal government to protect four federal buildings were easily duped by undercover investigators. The investigators were able to talk their way through security without identification and slip weapons into the buildings. In one security breach, an investigator who entered a building with no ID persuaded a security guard to give him a pass and a special access code to enter the building at night.

Janet Boston knows firsthand the chaos that can ensue when untrained guards face an emergency.

A guard at the World Trade Center for 26 years, she was on the 78th floor when terrorists set off a bomb in the garage in 1993. She and other security officers were as clueless about what to do as the workers they were hired to protect. They didn’t know whether to evacuate the building. They didn’t know where to tell panicked people to go. As a result, workers rushed down stairwells and were blocked by locked fire doors.

“People were hollering and screaming all over the place,” Boston recalls. “Nobody knew what to do, not even security. It took almost the whole day for us to figure out what was going on. People were hysterical.”

After the 1993 incident, the Trade Center‘s guards were given extensive training. It included a 40-hour course that taught them which floors were blocked by fire doors and how to evacuate thousands of workers in orderly fashion. Training updates and drills continued monthly.

Experts say the guards at the World Trade Center became the best trained in the country. And on Sept. 11, “that training saved thousands of lives,” Schlanger says. Security guards helped guide thousands of workers to safety before the towers fell.

Since Sept. 11, there have been no catastrophic events in the United States to test the quality of the private security force. But government officials warn that terrorists will strike again, and experts say the private security industry’s lack of standards leaves millions vulnerable. Security guards “are the ones who are going to notice that something’s out of place,” Nocella says. “If they don’t know what steps to take, it’s not going to matter how many firefighters or police or first responders you have because it’s going to be over.”

In countries such as England and Israel, where terrorist attacks have been a way of life for decades, security is treated more seriously. But in the United States, with the exception of the armed and highly trained guards who protect federally regulated nuclear plants, “we run much more a hotel concierge version of security,” says Andrew Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union.

‘Congress ought to act’

Among unions, employers and elected officials in both political parties, there is a growing movement to improve standards and regulate the fast-growing private security industry.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., is pushing a bill that would give states easy access to the FBI’s database for criminal background checks of potential guards. That’s intended to make sure terrorists don’t slip into the system. “It’s a real vulnerability that we put such heavy reliance on the private guard service but do not have guards who are well-trained or put through checks,” Levin says. He notes that Congress has passed laws giving nursing homes, day care centers and banks access to the database.

A similar bill in the House of Representatives also would give states financial incentives to require 40 hours of training before putting guards on posts. Last year, the bill was co-sponsored by a liberal Democrat, Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, and a conservative Republican, Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, who has since left Congress. Supporters say they will push for passage again this year. “Congress ought to act because the private security forces … are part of the homeland security strategy of the future,” says Robert McCrie, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Some states have started to act. California Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation in September requiring guards to get 40 hours of training — eight before being put on a post and 32 more within six months. California also is among 22 states that require each guard be put through a federal background check. It would pick up a criminal record anywhere in the country, not just in the state where the guard applies for work.

Most industry experts agree that federal background checks should be conducted for guards nationwide. But they disagree about whether the federal government should mandate a certain number of training hours.

Allied’s Gelting says his company’s guards receive site-specific training tailored to their posts. He opposes a federal mandate for 40 hours of training because “someone guarding a warehouse in the middle of Iowa is a lot different from someone at a New York City warehouse.” Many industry experts share that concern.

Meanwhile, the industry continues to grow with the demand for more guards. The Labor Department predicts that employment of security guards is likely to grow faster than average for all occupations through 2010. The main reason: concerns about terrorism.

Experts say that’s all the more reason for better standards and training. “If history proves itself out, we will have some day a huge disaster at a building again,” Stern says. “And as opposed to the World Trade Center, where we saw the value of a well-trained force, we will have excessive deaths.” by Mimi hall

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