Private Firms : On Patrol: Security Is Big Business

In a decade of patrolling the Hollywood Hills, John Spates and Higginbottom, his Staffordshire bull terrier, have corralled a handful of burglars and a runaway horse.

In that time, the former Marine and owner of Hollywoodland Patrol has logged 165,000 miles while maneuvering his 1975 Volvo along the steep roads winding up to the city’s landmark Hollywood sign.

Across town, late-model fleets of cars operated by Bel-Air Patrol and Westec Security roll through Bel-Air, Hancock Park, Century City--neighborhoods filled with the kind of old and new money that attracts burglars.

Spates’ Hollywoodland Patrol, which he runs with his two daughters, is a “mom-and-pop” operation. Bel-Air, the city’s oldest private patrol with roots going back about 60 years, and Westec, whose warning signs are becoming as common as weeds on Southland lawns, are big firms that dominate Los Angeles’ residential security market.

Firms Proliferate

Such firms have proliferated here and nationally in the last five years as residents appear to be relying more and more on the use of private cops to protect their homes and neighborhoods against crime.

“Despite the expanded role of the police in crime prevention in recent years, it appears that the private sector will bear an increased prevention role while law enforcement concentrates more heavily on violent crimes and crime response,” said a recent report for the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Private security is taking on a bigger role, doing a lot of things cops used to do,” said Robert McCrie, owner of New York-based Security Letter, an industry publication.

And, he added in a telephone interview, “it’s not just the affluent neighborhoods” that are laying out big bucks for private protection. “All neighborhoods are providing for their own private security.”

$500-Million Market

The result, McCrie said, is that in the United States about 6,500 security firms are competing this year in a $500-million private patrol market. Homeowners are expected to spend additional $125 million on residential alarm systems this year.

In California alone since 1980, there has been a 58% increase in the number of private patrol companies, to 1,787 firms, including 794 companies in Los Angeles and Orange counties, according to the California Department of Consumer Affairs.

In the city of Los Angeles, there are 39 private security firms, a 56% jump from a decade ago, according to City Hall registration records.

Most of these firms are small, and several of them concentrate on what can be the highly profitable industrial security end of the business.

In Los Angeles and Orange counties, Bel-Air and Westec say they each employ about 100 private patrolmen to keep an eye on Southland homes.

Westec says its patrol and burglar alarm services cover about 20,000 homes in 38 neighborhoods; Bel-Air patrols about 6,000 homes in 12 neighborhoods in a more concentrated West Los Angeles area.

Varied Services

For the services, residents can pay a one-time cost of anywhere from $1,000 for a relatively simple alarm system to up to 3% of the cost of the home, according to McCrie.

Additionally, the package cost of both patrolling a residence and monitoring an alarm can run more than $50 a month. For the bargain-hunter, many mom-and-pop firms like Spates’ Hollywoodland, which does not sell alarm systems, offer patrol-only services for about $15 a month.

Protecting property against potential thieves is not the only service offered in this increasingly competitive field. Most firms say they will put mail in a safe place and pick up newspapers while a client is on vacation, check to make sure that the baby sitter is OK and even escort clients to their doors when they return from the theater.

One firm went so far as to claim that it checked the thermostat in a customer’s wine cellar while he was out of town. Another said its guards have driven home clients who have had too much to drink. Another private patrolman recalled helping pluck a distressed owl from a tree.

“There’s a fine line between being an officer and a maid,” grumbled one guard critical of the lengths to which his firm had gone to attract customers.

Police Aware

The effect of the growth of private patrols has not been lost on police officials here. Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates recently held his first staff meeting that concentrated on studying the degree of cooperation between his forces and private police.

For their part, private patrol officials say their personnel are trained to quickly alert local police when they spot a suspicious situation or confront a suspect.

Among some of Gates’ colleagues on the force there is a feeling that no matter how much private patrols brag about their efficiency, the public’s money would be better spent on financing more officers for the Police Department.

But both Bel-Air, owned by Baker Industries Inc., a New Jersey-based security conglomerate, and Westec, controlled by Secom Co. Ltd., a big Japanese burglar alarm producer, claim that they are a major deterrent to residential thievery.

Both companies say they have conducted surveys pointing to significant declines in the crime rate in neighborhoods they patrol. For example, Bel-Air Patrol points to a recent report published by the Bel-Air Assn. that shows big drops in that affluent community in burglaries from both autos and homes between 1982 and 1984.

Confirmation Difficult

Confirming such claims with the official figures of the Los Angeles Police Department is difficult, however, because police figures break down the local crime rate by U.S. Census tracts, or districts. Even these relatively small districts cover areas larger than specific neighborhoods served by private security firms, thus making it difficult to precisely evaluate their anti-crime efficiency.

That does not daunt Brian F. O’Connor, Bel-Air’s general manager and a former Scotland Yard detective chief, who said “there’s no question” that the presence of private patrols has been a prime factor in a recent reduction in the city’s burglary rate.

“I’ll debate anyone on it,” he said in an interview in his company’s West Los Angeles headquarters, referring to police figures showing that residential burglaries citywide were down 23% in 1984 against 1980.

Police say the sharp burglary drop is largely the result of the increasing success of Neighborhood Watch programs and the fact that in recent years there has been a crackdown on drug users. The vast majority of burglaries are motivated by the need to finance expensive drug habits, police contend.

“I get irritated at a public that spends a fortune on private patrols and then turns down more money” to expand the Los Angeles police force, said Dan Sullivan, San Fernando Valley deputy police chief.

Voters Reject Plan

In 1981, Los Angeles voters rejected a plan that would have raised property taxes to hire 1,300 more officers. A similar proposal on the June ballot calls for a property tax hike of about $60 a year so that 1,000 more policemen can be recruited over five years.

Mike Bragg, vice president of Blue Shield Protection Services, which patrols the Mt. Washington area, said, “We don’t care how many police” the city puts on its payroll.

“They’ll never be able to provide the personal service a private patrol can,” he said. “We’re like a small-town constable.”

Blue Shield patrolman Jim Parker, 35, takes down the license tag of every strange car he sees along the back roads of Mt. Washington. “I know every dog, every kid, every car,” he boasted as he bounced along a dirt road high above the city.

“Very strange,” he suddenly muttered, taking down the license number of sedan into which a man in a bathrobe had just jumped after chasing a dog down the street.

Several local police officials gave high marks to private patrolmen in terms of competency and cooperation with police officers. But other officials called the companies “fear merchants” who are more interested in profits than in catching burglars.

The officials were referring to sales techniques used by some firms in which they either suggest or blatantly state that police are simply stretched too thin to adequately patrol neighborhoods and that private security fills this gap.

Jerry A. Usher, a Westec branch manager and former law enforcement college instructor, said that that assessment is correct, to a point.

“We’re a business, not a law enforcement agency,” Usher said in an interview in his Santa Monica office, part of Westec’s 41-city nationwide network.

By this, Usher said, he meant that private patrols “have very limited jurisdiction”--that is, their specific mission is to protect a customer’s property and not the streets beyond. Unlike the police, he added, “if we saw two kids smoking a joint on a street corner, it’s none of our business.”

Defend Competency

On the other hand, Usher and Bel-Air’s O’Connor said, that does not mean that their personnel are not competent by the time they are allowed to solo in a private patrol car.

Many of their patrolmen, they said, not only have some police background but also must take state-mandated training, plus a couple of weeks of classroom and field training with their firms.

For a California license, for example, the state Department of Consumer Affairs requires that guard applicants who plan to carry a gun go through 14 hours of state-approved instruction, followed by a written examination and testing on a firing range. A check of fingerprint records also is required at both state and federal levels.

State licensing fees, including weapons permits, can cost close to $100 for each applicant, a Consumer Affairs spokesperson said.

Few Applications Denied

In the current fiscal year ending June 30, about 736 security guard applications out of 41,710 submitted--fewer than 2%--have been denied for various reasons, including criminal activities revealed by fingerprint checks, according to Sacramento records. “A speeding ticket, a couple of drunk-driving (arrests), minor drugs wouldn’t wash you out,” said Shirley Thomas, assistant chief of the state consumer agency.

In Los Angeles, the city Police Commission further screens potential guards, going back five years to see if an applicant has any “violent tendencies” or a criminal record, according to the agency’s Lt. John Ferguson.

Such checks, of course, are far less thorough than those performed on Los Angeles Police Department applicants. Nevertheless, said Detective Charles Hart, another commission staffer, “the Police Commission’s screening (process) is exemplary.”

Beyond official training requirements, Westec and Bel-Air say they give their applicants at least two weeks of training that includes classroom work on how to operate within the law, jurisdiction of guards on and off homeowners’ property, how to patrol a neighborhood and weapons know-how.

Need for More Training

Still, some police and other critics complain that tougher training and examination legislation is needed for patrolmen who carry weapons. It is not enough, they say, to put a $7-an-hour, revolver-packing patrolman on the street after only a few weeks of formal training. (Los Angeles Police Academy recruits go through six months of training.)

But security firm officials usually do not pretend that their men are cops on the beat. In fact, their guards actually catch only a small fraction of the number of burglars collared by Los Angeles police.

One reason is that the legal leverage of private security personnel is hardly different from that of the average citizen in terms of authority to detain and arrest suspects.

Like anyone else, they can make a citizen’s arrest. And they can arrest and handcuff a suspected burglar caught on a client’s turf and then turn the individual over to the police. But otherwise, they can only make their sometimes intimidating presence known to a suspect on the street and take down descriptions and license numbers.

Added Police Power

In contrast, the police can detain, interrogate and arrest suspects on the “probable cause” that they are connected with a crime.

What is more, private security firms generally do not engage in “hot pursuit” of a suspected burglar. Their guards will take down a license number and report it to the police, but they won’t rocket down a freeway even if they are sure that they have caught a burglar in the act. They leave the heroics to the real police.

“The role of security guards is to observe and report,” said a state spokesperson reflecting on Sacramento’s guidelines. “They are not equal to a policeman.”

Instead, security firm executives Usher and O’Connor see their highly visible services--made more so by ubiquitous patrol warning signs posted on customers’ lawns (yellow for Westec and red, white and blue for Bel-Air)--as a major crime deterrent rather than a police-type operation. (This has even led some homeowners who eschew paying for patrol services to put phony warning signs on their lawns, police say.)

Detective David Evans of the Police Department’s West Los Angeles Division supports their views. Just last month in Pacific Palisades, he said, a juvenile and an adult responsible for 40 burglaries in a six-week period admitted that they hit only homes that didn’t have security signs on their front lawns.

LOOKING FOR SECURITY

Shopping for a private patrol to protect your house? Here are some consumer hints from Robert McCrie, who since 1970 has published a security industry newsletter in New York and who has, in that role, been an industry watchdog.

Shop around. Get three or four bids.

Request a copy of the firm’s insurance policy. A burglary suspect could sue both the private patrol and the homeowner for alleged false arrest. The minimum insurance required by the state Department of Consumer Affairs is $500,000 for each incident if armed guards are employed. McCrie recommends at least $2 million for each incident.

Ask for interviews with the guards. Ask how they are trained and get personal and company references.

Ask how long the company has been patrolling the neighborhood. “Bear in mind that security officers are most effective when they know the residents,” McCrie said.

Ask about the firm’s equipment. “You need good two-way communication,” McCrie said.

Also, the public can call the Los Angeles Police Commission at 213-485-2102 or the state Department of Consumer Affairs at 916-739-2938 to check whether a particular firm has had any complaints or actions lodged against it.