Security Firm Owner Sues Over Weapon Permit Denial

The owner of a Sylmar security company filed an $11-million lawsuit Tuesday charging that he was repeatedly denied a permit to carry a concealed weapon because authorities conspire to grant few permits, and those go only to applicants who are celebrities or political favorites.

Douglas Ray Hickman said he has been turned down numerous times for a permit despite his sometimes dangerous work. Meanwhile, other citizens such as judges and entertainers routinely receive the permits allowing them to carry concealed guns, he said.

“About 77% of the permit holders are judges, and the rest are all personalities and politically connected individuals,” Hickman said in an interview. “Why should they have permits and citizens that show a good cause need not be allowed to have them?”

Hickman is the owner of DRH Security Inc., an alarm company that also provides executive security. The suit claims that Hickman has an exposed firearms certificate and is a federally licensed firearms dealer.

His lawsuit states that only 129 individuals hold valid concealed-weapon permits in Los Angeles County.

Hickman said that since 1989 he has applied for a permit twice to the San Fernando police and one time each to the Los Angeles Police Department and the county Sheriff’s Department, each time being turned down in letters that said his application did not show convincing evidence that he was in danger.

Meanwhile, Hickman said, his research of permit records has shown that among those who have received permits are movie producer Jerry Weintraub, a political contributor to Sheriff Sherman Block; news anchorman Hal Fishman, and several entertainers such as Norm Crosby and Buddy Hackett.

His suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, alleges that concealed-weapon permits are issued “arbitrarily, capriciously and summarily, giving undue weight to notoriety or political or personal characteristics of individual applicants which bear little or no rational relation” to the applicants’ actual need to carry weapons.

The lawsuit names the heads of the Los Angeles and San Fernando police departments, the Sheriff’s Department, and several officers who were involved in turning down Hickman’s requests for a permit. Spokesmen for each department declined to comment on the lawsuit.

In the past, law enforcement officials have said few concealed-weapon permits are issued because they wish to let as few weapons as possible onto the streets of the densely populated county.

But Hickman’s attorney, Richard R. Hopkins, said that explanation hides what he said was the agencies’ real purpose--forcing security companies to hire off-duty and retired police officers who are allowed by law to carry concealed weapons, for assignments where such a degree of security is necessary.

“They have a monopoly on it,” Hopkins said, “and there is an unfairness to that.”