Assaults Tied to Security Guards Prompt Concern

For thousands of Californians, private security guard firms offer both physical and psychological security, particularly in affluent neighborhoods where police are spread thin.

But several recent incidents involving guards have raised unsettling questions--even within the burgeoning industry--about how such companies screen out the dangerous and train the suitable before issuing them a badge and uniform.

Last month, a Pacific Palisades security guard on night patrol was charged with the kidnap, rape, robbery and murder of an 18-year-old girl. Two days later, a security guard in Contra Costa County, apparently despondent over his “crummy” job, opened fire in the Northern California industrial park where he worked, killing two and wounding four. He was not authorized to carry a gun.

“In too many instances private security guards have become predators who attack, rather than guardians who protect,” said industry leader, Ira A. Lipman, president of Guardsmark, a Memphis-based security firm. “Standards are low. All is not well in the private security guard business.”

The recent California cases are hardly the only such incidents involving surrogate policemen:

- A 25-year-old San Jose guard for Young Patrol Service was sentenced to death earlier this year for luring two teen-age girls into a vacant mansion he was protecting and killing one of them after hours of rape and torture.

- Two International Telephone and Telegraph Security Services guards were convicted in 1983 of stabbing and raping a Valencia woman and beating her 16-year-old companion to death in the hills above Sylmar while on duty.

- Thirteen private security guards at the San Onofre nuclear generating station were fired in 1983 after tests confirmed they were using drugs.

- Convicted Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi, rejected by both the Los Angeles Police Department and Sheriff’s Department, worked for several private security firms and was an enthusiastic reserve deputy sheriff in Bellingham, Wash., at the time of his arrest in 1979. He and his accomplice cousin frequently posed as police officers to trap their victims.

“I see a steady stream of these incidents happening all the time across the country, which suggests negligent hiring and negligent standards,” said Robert McCrie, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. These should force the industry to better train and select its people, but it hasn’t happened.”

Even though guards sometimes wear guns and have important responsibilities, they do not have to undergo training anywhere as rigorous as that required for police officers. Not a single state requires psychological or drug screening of applicants for the nation’s estimated 1.1 million guard jobs.

California has made some progress in weeding out unsuitable applicants and has one of the strictest licensing laws in the country. Yet critics consider that more a commentary on the paucity of licensing regulations elsewhere.

Background Checks

To become a security guard in California, the state Department of Consumer affairs requires that applicants obtain a perfect score on a two-hour open-book “Powers to Arrest” exam, which tests whether a guard understands his legal authority.

If the guard carries a gun, 14 hours of state-approved firearms instruction, a written exam and a firing range test are required. And state and federal checks of fingerprint records are also required. Of 30,000 applicants in the last half of 1987, there were 799 denials, mainly because of past criminal records.

During the background check, which can take up to four months, applicants can work as guards.

Claudia Foutz, deputy chief of the state Department of Consumer Affairs, called the Contra Costa and Pacific Palisades tragedies “aberrations.”

“We are very satisfied with the level of protection afforded by the regulations,” she said, adding that Department of Justice officers investigate serious complaints of inappropriate behavior by guards. During fiscal year 1986-87, the Consumer Affairs Department received 614 complaints against guards and companies. They revoked the licenses of 249 guards, compared to eight revocations in 1985-86. A streamlining of office procedures accounted for the big jump, officials said.

Many in the industry note that given the size of the security guard business, the track record is good. There are nearly 1,800 private security guard firms in California, 700 of them in Los Angeles County. At the same time, many believe that regulations and training could be beefed up.

Getting Some Help

The Powers to Arrest test is “perfunctory,” said Tom Wathen, chief executive officer of Los Angeles-based CPP/Pinkerton Inc., one of the largest guard companies in the country. “The state test is designed to demonstrate if the guards can shoot, “ he added. “I think it’s more important to know when not to shoot.”

Guard company consultant Robert Rockwell of Walnut Creek also criticized the test. “What happens,” he said, “is that a new hire comes in, is handed a booklet and told to read it and do the test. If he only gets 75%, we sit him down for a while and prompt him until he understands enough to get 100%.”

Since requiring the 14-hour firearms course, shootings have dropped from 400 to 36 a year, state figures indicate. Security guard companies are required to report to the state a discharge of firearms by their personnel and are subject to fines. However, the guards are not bound to report such instances, and legislation is now pending in Sacramento to change that. Many companies have solved the problem by insisting that guards not carry weapons except in cases of dangerous work. Nationwide, less than 10% of all guards carry firearms.

In criminal justice classes, McCrie said, he shows his students how easily official records can be altered so that felony arrests and military court martials can be hidden from scrutiny. “Getting an OK from Sacramento is no assurance for guard companies. They should be doing expensive background checks themselves,” he said. “But most don’t.”

Los Angeles patrol guards (those who don’t man stationary posts) undergo additional checks by the Los Angeles Police Commission.

Unlike security guards, law enforcement trainees undergo exhaustive background checks, including polygraph tests, medical exams and psychological evaluations required by the state. Lt. Susan Tyler of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s pre-employment unit says investigators comb through driving records, school transcripts and even interview childhood friends to determine the suitability of candidates.

“Even with all this,” she says, “we sometimes get a bad apple. There’s no kind of procedure dealing with human beings that is infallible.”

Mark Kroeker, deputy chief in charge of personnel and training for the Los Angeles Police Department, says the LAPD runs similar checks to weed out those unsuitable for police work.

“The psychiatric tests and interview methods we use are specifically designed to predict which applicants might have trouble dealing with a badge,” he said. “We label such a person a ‘badge-heavy candidate,’ by which we mean someone with potential for overstepping the authority given by the badge, a person who throws his weight around, usually out of a sense of insecurity.”

The LAPD hired 752 police officers from a pool of 11,000 applicants last year, Kroeker said; the Sheriff’s Department selected 554 deputies from 23,000 candidates.

Lipman and others in the industry believe that what is needed is a model regulatory code which all states could adopt. Peer review, like that done by certified public accountants, would help upgrade the industry, he said. Among the minimum standards suggested are: a check of criminal records for 10 years prior to employment; psychological testing; a minimum age of 25 for security guards; alcohol and drug tests; pre-assignment and ongoing job training and pre-employment polygraph tests.

No Complaints

Accused killer Rodney Garmanian met all the current licensing requirements for guards, and had no complaints lodged against him or any previous criminal record, state officials said. He was certified to carry the firearm that police allege he used to kill 18-year-old Teak Dyer in Pacific Palisades.

His employer, MacGuard Security Services, had received complaints a few days before Dyer’s murder that the guard had made sexual advances to a client after responding to a call at her house; the firm has refused to say what action, if any, it took.

Garmanian’s attorney has said that he may plead insanity. MacGuard, like the vast majority of guard companies, does not give psychological tests to its applicants.

Forensic psychiatrist Saul Faerstein, who examined the Hillside Strangler and a host of other killers, said some individuals are drawn to law enforcement for the wrong reasons, and may suffer from paranoid or antisocial personality disorders.

They may be overly rigid, suspicious people, sensitive and easily slighted, who see threats everywhere and go around looking for problems. Or they may be looking for a job that enables them to commit illegal acts, he said.

Some in the industry argue that stringent checks and training are not necessary because security guards do not perform actual police work. Guards do not have authority to conduct shakedowns, interrogations and other such police work.

“Our job is public relations and protection of clients, not law enforcement,” said Brian O’Connor, general manager of Bel-Air Patrol.

Most companies provide their own guards with some training, which varies widely. Bel-Air provides a two-week training course, plus 90 days on-the-job training with a veteran guard. Westec requires 200 hours of training. Pinkerton’s, which provided most of the 8,000 guards for the 1984 Olympic Games, has a special 24-lesson course available for its guards.

Attempts to upgrade image, pay and benefits have been hampered by a 40-year-old federal statute which decrees that guard associations cannot become affiliated with large labor groups such as the AFL-CIO, said Ronald Wells, business manager for the 2,000-member American Federation of Guards. The rule was created at a time when there were many plant strikes, and industry feared that guards would walk off their jobs, leaving plants unprotected. Wells said as a result, the unions have little political and bargaining clout.

“The general image is that guards are those who can’t get jobs anywhere else because they are stupid or lazy. They don’t stop to consider that we are guarding billions of dollars worth of property and millions of people’s lives,” said Charles Newport, president of the 10,000-member International Union of Security Officers.

Most guards start at the minimum wage, and wages hover there for most stationary post jobs. Those on patrol make an average $6 to $7 an hour, although some may make as much as $30,000 a year.

Some businesses skimp on security, leaving the industry ripe for companies that provide marginal services, said Guardsmark’s Lipman. “The growing disparity between performance rendered by thousands of cut-rate guard firms and the standards set by leading security organizations shows that the problem won’t solve itself.”

“It’s a tough business. It’s like opening a restaurant. The turnover is terrific,” said Rockwell, vice president of California Contract Security Guard Assn., a trade group of 125 guard companies. He noted that hundreds of the 18,000 guard companies in the country go out of business every year.

Still, new guard businesses continue to crop up, sometimes from strange quarters.

An accomplice to one of the most famous burglaries in U.S. history, G. Gordon Liddy, turned his talents to teaching others corporate security. Last year, Liddy, who spent five years in prison for his participation in the Watergate scandal, created a traveling security training school that bears his name.

In another case, a Hawthorne police officer was placed on medical leave and ordered not to carry a weapon because he was potentially dangerous. During his yearlong leave, he recently started a security service.