Scarecrow Cops
Sometimes the only difference between an ex-con and a security guard is a uniform.
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To test the notion that some security companies are as good as their names, I applied at the Houston office of Pinkerton’s, the company whose name is legend and to which the Alley Theatre turned for protection after the killing of Mrs. Siff. Alan Pinkerton, the firm’s founder, was chief intelligence officer to Abe Lincoln and the Union Army; more venerable credentials don’t exist. The receptionist at the Houston office told me that before I could be hired, she would have to verify my background claims. She said I’d hear from her on the following Tuesday.
As she had promised she did make a call, to the last employer listed on my form. I claimed to have worked for a small West Texas implement company owned and run by an old friend (who knew I was using his name) and his brother (who knew nothing of my shenanigans). When the receptionist called, the brother answered. He said that I had never worked at the shop but promised to check with his brother, my friend and co-conspirator. The receptionist left her number, and two or three hours later my friend called to say that yes, he knew me well, and yes, I was a great fellow.
Early Tuesday morning, the Pinkerton agency called the home telephone number I had listed on my application, a number that rings in Texas Monthly’s Houston office. “Texas Monthly,” a colleague answered. The voice on the other end of the line asked for me. “You must have a wrong number,” my colleague advised, now alert to his mistake. In a few minutes the phone rang again. This time he answered with a simple “Hello.” He told the caller I wasn’t in and took a message: I should call Pinkerton’s as soon as possible. Half an hour later I called and was summoned to the office to suit out in guard clothes. The next day someone from the agency telephoned to give me an assignment. Once again, a colleague answered, “Texas Monthly,” and once again, the farce was replayed. Pinkerton’s did not catch on to my act.
Pinkerton’s was careless with my application in other ways. For example, I listed Texas Monthly’s office as my home address, a location some ten blocks from the Pinkerton office. A simple city directory check of the address would have told the world’s oldest detective firm that I was spying on it. But the Pinkerton agency’s caution was unparalleled. The company made one phone call to check on my claims about previous employment; none of the other firms made any. My hiring by Pinkerton’s, however, may have been a Pyrrhic victory. I was put into a training slot; for thirty days, the company continues to make inquiries into the backgrounds of new employees.
The private security industry is booming in Texas. Statewide population and crime are increasing faster than municipal police forces. In Houston, the growth of the city police corps has just barely kept up with the area’s population increase in the last decade, and the crime rate has soared. In 1976 there were some 250 security contractors in Houston. Today there are twice as many. In 1973 the Labor Department counted 388 guards on payrolls in Houston. Today there are 10,000. Ten years ago Houston’s police officers outnumbered private guards by a ratio of more than four to one. Today there are three security guards for every cop.
In the days of one-story Texas, homes and offices faced onto public streets and backed onto public alleyways. Police officers on traffic patrol kept an eye out for comings, goings, and suspicious circumstances. Today, our cities are pocked with towering offices, apartment buildings, and shopping malls, huge expanses of private property that extend beyond the scope of the passing patrolman’s eye – and sometimes his orders. In these areas, comings, goings, and suspicious circumstances are not the concern of municipal authorities until after crimes are reported the status of a policeman on private property is ordinarily that of invited guest. Private security guards are the first and sometimes the only agents of order.
They are not peace officers: they have only citizen’s arrest authority. Though citizen’s powers can be potent – in Texas, anybody can arrest someone he sees committing a felony or “an offense against the public peace” – few guards are aware of their powers. The law sets no educational or training requirements for ordinary guards, and if my experience is indicative, even the best companies give new employees only cursory orientations.
Of the companies that hired me, only Pinkerton’s provided any classroom training for newcomers. According to that company’s rule books, new employees are to be given four hours of instruction, to sign forms saying the instruction lasted four hours, and to be paid for attendance. The training session I went to lasted only ninety minutes, though I was paid for four hours. The instructor, a Pinkerton’s executive who has since left the company, explained work rules, vacation and promotion policies, and the importance of fire prevention. After his very professional lecture, he gave me my first order: to trim my moustache and get rid of my cowboy boots. My appearance, he said, was unprofessional.
Guard training programs are rare because training increases cost. In many cases the people who contract for guards don’t really care about the quality of guard services because they aren’t the people who are to be protected. Many plant, building and mall managers pick guard companies with only cost considerations in mind. “I hire guards as an excuse,” one Houston property manager told me. “If something should happen to one of my tenants, like a rape or a burglary, I could be liable unless I provide security. So, like everybody else, I hire the cheapest guards I can find.” Generally speaking, penny-pinching clients get what they pay for: scarecrow cops.
There is, however, an elite of security guards: the corps of commissioned officers. They represent only a sixth of the total guard force. Commissioned officers are graduates of a state-approved course on criminal law and pistol handling. Twenty-some schools in Houston, most of them in-house company operations, train security guards for commissioning. During my time in the city, I attended one of these schools with twenty other guards. I found that though schooling gave us a better understanding of our jobs, it did not make us into the competent guards some clients expect to hire.
The most critical failure of the schools is in firearms training. The schools were set up to enable guards to carry handguns, yet their students are given only a day’s worth of revolver instruction and to qualify for duty must fire only thirty rounds at a motionless man-size target fifty feet away. What the schools teach amounts to pistol safety, not marksmanship, which like any manual or athletic skill requires long and frequent practice. A commissioned guard is not likely to abuse or play with his pistol, because the schools impart an awareness of danger, but neither is he likely to defend himself or his client very well. Armed self-defense is probably vital to anyone who works in uniform; last December two unarmed Houston guards were shot to death on their jobs at an industrial site.
Commissioning does not ensure that guards are competent to make arrests, either. Most companies give their commission candidates the minimum instruction required by law: thirty classroom hours. By contrast, municipal police officers in Texas must receive 320 classroom hours of training, and in Houston, local authorities have doubled that requirement.
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