Want to Be an Armed Security Guard? It's Terrifyingly Easy

With the release of the Senate report on CIA torture during the Bush Administration, many Americans have been reflecting on the American experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.

While the U.S. military led the fight in both countries, they had plenty of civilians at their side—at least as many contractors served in Iraq and Afghanistan as deployed troops. And a new investigation from the Center for Investigative Reporting and CNN finds that the civilian security force abroad has a parallel at home: The armed security guard industry.

About one million Americans work as security guards, twice the number of those serving as police officers. While the data does not include the number of guards who carry arms, Shoshana Walter, public safety reporter at the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR), says that the security guard industry is a parallel universe where the expected norms of policing simply don't apply.

“The security industry is very different from the law enforcement profession,” says Walters. “They have limited powers, they don’t have the same ability to detain or arrest, or as it relates to search and seizures. But they’re often taking on the same types of roles as law enforcement officers.”

Walters says that guards often have a small fraction of the training that police officers usually get. In the state of California, for example, a police officer is required to get a minimum of 600 hours of training—an armed guard gets about 54 hours.

“The difference there is huge,” she says.

In addition to training, regulations regarding background checks for armed guards also vary widely by state.

"We found that 27 states are not checking armed guard applicants through the prohibited possessor database—that's a database of people who are prohibited by federal law from possessing guns," Walter says.

According to Walters’ research, many security guards are explicitly prohibited from owning a weapon for personal use, for several reasons: Some have been committed for mental health issues, others may have restraining orders against them, they may have been dishonorably discharged from the military, or have misdemeanor domestic violence convictions.

“These are people that who are prohibited, by law, from carrying guns,” she says. “They can’t buy guns and they can’t possess guns, and they’re getting jobs as armed guards.”

Walters says that the security guard profession is also used as a “backup” for law enforcement officers that were fired for issues of misconduct or excessive force, or for civil rights abuses.

“There’s only one state that actually checks for that—the state of Oregon,” she says. “But the state has actually never rejected an armed guard applicant who previously was a law enforcement officer.”

Though many studies show that the presence of a security guard can lead to a decrease in crime, CIR did an analysis of the FBI’s bank robbery database, which includes information about every bank robbery in the U.S., and came to a different conclusion.

“What we found was that when an armed guard is present during a bank robbery, the chance of violence happening triples,” says Walters. “One of the problems with the way armed guard industry is regulated is that, for the most part, there’s no one monitoring when a security guard shoots his or her gun.”

Across the country, Walters says a lack of oversight has produced situations in which security personnel have acted recklessly with a firearm and are still able to hold on to their armed guard licenses.

“People who work in the security industry, even some security executives, want to see more uniform standards across the states,” she says. “There are some states that do some things really well. Florida, for example, while they don’t require mental health evaluations for armed guard applicants, they do require that guards or their employers file reports whenever they use their guns.”

In most of the United States, Walters says that no entity tracks, monitors, or investigates armed security guard shootings—there are only 12 states that require those reports to be filed.

“Even among those 12 states, there’s massive underreporting,” she says. “Regulators receive the reports and rarely do anything with them. There’s a huge lack of oversight into security guards and what they do with their guns.”

Though Walters says the state of Florida investigates security guard shootings and takes action if a shooting does take place, she does bring to light one tragic example in Miami.

“An armed guard who was later diagnosed with severe mental health problems—psychotic disorders, delusional disorders—was working at a strip club and spotted these two men sitting in a car,” says Walters. “He said they looked menacing and that they were rolling a joint. As he was walking towards them, he said they both got out of the car simultaneously.”

She continues: “He interpreted that as a threat, and he shot both of them. One of them is now paralyzed from the waist down and the other was killed.”