Security Guards Question Jobs After Killings

By KURT STREETER

Jan. 11, 1999 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The gunfire that killed two armed guards at a Compton housing development last Sunday also sent a shock wave through the ranks of the men and women who toil in the fast-growing business of private security. For guards like Alexander Muhammad, who ply their low-paying trade in tension-filled areas like South-Central Los Angeles, the killings stirred sober contemplation.

“When tragedy hits like this it shakes you. . . . It makes us all think, ‘Is this job, where I don’t get paid much, where I’ve sometimes got to put my life on the line, really worth it?’ ” said Muhammad, 33, who has worked security at a mall in the heart of gang territory for 10 years.

He, like a lot of his colleagues, has saved newspaper articles about last week’s ambush and pored over every detail, asking himself what might have gone wrong, how he might have responded.

Crime may be down, but fear of it appears unabated, and as a result private security guards now outnumber police by more than a 2-1 margin in California, state licensing authorities say.

Most of them start out at about $5.75 an hour and never see their wages rise much above the poverty level, said John A. Nickols, chief of the state Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, which oversees the state’s 170,000 private guards--108,000 of whom work in a five-county Southern California region.

More than 10,000 unlicensed guards, hired individually by private Southern California businesses such as bars and nightclubs, and working without guns, add to the private force.

Licensed guards like Muhammad, with a decade of experience and a license to carry a gun, usually make between $7 and $9 an hour.

“It’s a tragedy that the industry is paying guys wages like this and expecting them to be in such a difficult line of work,” Nickols said.

In a profession that routinely places its workers in potentially deadly situations, many guards say they get little or no health insurance. Life insurance is virtually unheard of. Nickols estimates that at least half of all private guards are completely uninsured.

What’s more, many guards complain that they must buy their own uniforms, nightsticks, pepper spray, walkie-talkies and guns.

But Muhammad wants this job, for the excitement, for the sheer pride of performing well. He considers himself a battle-tested veteran, a man who has experienced shootings, fights, wild foot chases and threats from gangbangers. He works at the Slauson Super Mall, known in South-Central Los Angeles as “the swap meet.”

The first thing you notice when you see Muhammad and his tightknit handful of fellow guards standing on a sun-parched swap meet entryway is that they look pretty much like cops. Most guards--the ones who can afford it--are armed with guns: 9-millimeters, .38 specials or .357 magnums. They have bulletproof vests tucked inside pressed olive uniforms and nightsticks at the ready, attached to the hip for easy access. They have what one of them calls “the look”: stoic, serious, confident, eyes alert and feet ready to move.

“It’s a command presence, and that alone, even more than having a gun, keeps customers from getting out of hand,” said Muhammad.

Less than 20% of security guards in California--like those shot in Compton--are licensed to carry and use their weapons on the job. They must go through two days of training for their permits and renew them twice a year. They must come to terms with two facts: Guns make you feel, wrongly, as though you are invincible. And they make you a target.

At the swap meet, an old warehouse, the guards are instructed to be proactive.

They stand in crowded aisles and just watch, every so often offering shopping advice and directions in the busy mall, populated by primarily black and Latino shoppers and primarily Korean American merchants. Quite often they spend time tracking potential shoplifters or scaring away teenagers who may be looking to shoplift. Occasionally they find themselves breaking up fights between gang members, using martial arts moves and their nightsticks to make citizen’s arrests.

Sometimes they end up drawing a gun, even using it.

One of Muhammad’s colleagues, Jose David Melgar, who came to this country from then-war-torn El Salvador, said he’s drawn his gun about 25 times in the past decade. He’s used it to shoot close to a dozen times.

“Usually a warning shot, just in the ground . . . or you take the gun out, to show ‘em you mean business, that’ll get them to run away,” he said.

Another guard, Aaron Tarvin, said that the instances in which he used his gun have dropped dramatically over the past four years as crime has plummeted and the experience of the group of guards at the swap meet has gone up.

“It’s mostly quiet now, not like the old days. . . . Now it’s more of a family place.”

Still, they remind themselves about the need to be vigilant. About what happened to the middle-aged guards--ages 62, 59, 52 and 49--who were ambushed at the New Wilmington Arms complex after a dispute with a gang member. Sometimes they seem to embrace the possibility of danger as a tool to stay alert, to keep them “from slippin’.” Slippin’ costs lives.

Guard Michael Rhodes said many of the guards at the swap meet have had plenty of opportunities to work in less stressful neighborhoods. Apartment jobs in Beverly Hills. Grocery stores on the Westside. But they don’t want to leave.

“It wouldn’t be as exciting as it is here, and I think it’s safe to say that the excitement keeps us all on this job,” he said.

Their families could live without the excitement. Muhammad’s wife, Gloria, stresses and stews a lot. You pray, she says. You work constantly to push fear away. You rarely, if ever, visit the job site.

“I don’t go there, even when we lived three blocks away from the swap meet, because I’m afraid of seeing something happen right in front of me. . . . All this, and they are being so underpaid,” she said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

High Security

The private security business is a sizable force in Southern California, outnumbering police officers by more than 2 to 1, according to December 1998 figures shown below. However, only a fraction of the guards are qualified to carry firearms on the job.

County: Los Angeles

Licensed guards: 62,354

Guards who are firearms-qualified: 14,134

Peace officers of all ranks: 24,794

County: Orange

Licensed guards: 11,090

Guards who are firearms-qualified: 1,919

Peace officers of all ranks: 4,463

County: San Diego

Licensed guards: 16,988

Guards who are firearms-qualified: 2,459

Peace officers of all ranks: 4,736