Officers Air Worries About Private Guards

Police officials from two dozen Southland agencies gathered Tuesday to vent their frustrations with unlicensed or unqualified security guards in their cities, but many left the meeting optimistic about promised reforms in the screening of private-sector sentries.

Officials from Westminster, Huntington Beach, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills and other cities offered local horror stories or chimed in during a far-reaching question-and-answer session with the leader of the state agency that regulates guards.

The unusual meeting was organized by Assemblyman Jim Morrissey (R-Santa Ana), who said he is “deeply concerned” about the integrity of the guard industry. He is especially worried about bureaucratic blind spots that allow criminals to slip into the ranks or sidestep regulation altogether.

The problems were not new to John Nickols, chief of the state Bureau of Collections and Investigative Services, who traveled from Sacramento to the summit meeting at the Santa Ana police station’s community center.

“It’s a vexing problem,” Nickols responded to several questions, but he also offered two possible solutions--an overhaul of the state licensing process and a plan to enact higher training standards.

Last year, the state revoked, suspended or denied 1,934 guard licenses for criminal behavior, but that number fails to track any offenses by thousands of contract guards who work illegally without a license, officials concede.

The police officials who met Tuesday offered numerous anecdotes suggesting that while most of the state’s more than 164,000 registered guards are hard-working and honest, there is a faction breaking the law--or at least skirting it.

One officer said guards have been caught in his city with counterfeit licenses, while another said guards at local bars were working to cloak the activities of drug-dealing or gun-wielding patrons.

Others complained about the qualifications and screening of guards. Some in the crowd groaned when Nickols explained that his agency does not have the ability to do a nationwide criminal background check on all applicants, and that only 14 hours of training are required for guards seeking a weapon permit.

Vernon Police Sgt. Ben R. Busse said he was alarmed by the training standards and worried by some of the encounters he has had with guards in his city.

“They’re doing some real crazy things with guns,” Busse said. “We had one guy shooting at shadows.”

Nickols said new training standards are being put together that will bring California closer to the tougher requirements found for security guards in other states.

He also told the audience that the planned launch next year of a new licensing program might help state and local police crack down on unlicensed guards.

The new system will streamline what Nickols called an “arcane, confusing” system that can require some guards to carry as many as four separate licenses--a “guard card” plus individual permits to use a gun, tear gas or baton.

The program would consolidate all those licenses into a laminated card that would be worn as an identification badge on guard uniforms, instead of the green paper cards now tucked away in guards’ wallets, Nickols said.

Nickols, who took over the agency last year, also said he hopes to put serial numbers on the temporary permits that the state allows guard companies to pass out to new employees who are waiting for their state criminal background checks and licenses.

The serial numbers would deter abuses by “unscrupulous people in the industry” who let some employees work on a series of those 120-day permits to avoid government scrutiny, he said.

Morrissey said he is mulling over a bill that would set standards that would help distinguish security guard uniforms from police togs, a key concern voiced by many attending the Tuesday meeting.