Scarecrow Cops
Sometimes the only difference between an ex-con and a security guard is a uniform.
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The illusion of authority is the stock-in-trade of guard companies. That is why guards are dressed not in industrial uniforms but in law enforcement look-alike outfits. Uniforms have a psychological effect, and to test how people respond to someone who looks like a cop, I wandered about Houston and Austin in a uniform I put together for a guard company that existed only in my imagination. My getup included a pistol holstered to a patent leather gun belt, a garrison cap, and metal badges, all purchased from retail suppliers. (Uniform regalia of all kinds is freely sold to the public. From one supplier I even bought a billfold badge made for Austin police patrolmen.) Though it is against the law for guards to carry handguns unless they are on duty or on their way to or from work, I paid a ticket at a police station, bought a money order in a bank, and had supper in a bar in full uniform. No one said anything about my pistol. (Had anyone taken it from me, he would have found that it was as much a dummy as my security company.) The privileges accorded me while in uniform included – oh, dream of dreams! – free admission to a freak show at a carnival in the Astrodome. My conclusion from these rovings in costume was that so long as lawmen are respected or feared, uniforms and badges will elicit deference. The trouble is, criminals already know this. Over the past two years, the Houston Police Department has received some twenty rape complaints in which the victims, mainly juveniles, say that they were attacked by men wearing what looked like police uniforms; two of the complaints resulted in arrests, both of security guards who had gained the confidence of their alleged victims by looking like cops.
Responsibility for the quality of guard services falls on the shoulders of both private security firms and the state government. It is they who must see that our guards are not criminals in sheep’s clothing. Security company operators say that they would check on the conviction records of guards and applicants were their hands not tied by the federal Privacy Act of 1974. The complaint is justified. By making it illegal for private companies and individuals to tap computerized crime information files, privacy legislation has made it nearly impossible for employers to check out the people they hire. The Privacy Act and parallel state regulations have put our judicial theory at odds with its practice. Crimes are in theory committed not against the police but against the people, the citizenry. Criminals are tried, sentenced, and imprisoned not in the name of the police but in the name of the people. Yet since the passage of the Privacy Act, the people no longer have access to centralized public records of crimes committed against them. Only police agencies do.
Arrest and conviction records are entered into the National Crime Information Center’s computerized data bank. The Privacy Act prohibits public release of NCIC reports, though it does not close off all access to criminal records. Reporters, employers, and nosy neighbors – the people – cannot tap the NCIC system, but courthouse records remain open to all lookers. The trouble is, no employer can afford to check the records in all the nation’s courthouses to determine if an applicant has been convicted of some crime, somewhere, sometime. For all practical purposes, a person’s record is today a secret known only to him and to the police.
There is one exemption, a crack in privacy law regulations through which Texas security companies can attempt to get a glimpse of the past deeds of their employees. A guard can carry a pistol only after having been commissioned by the Texas Board of Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies (PIPSA). Commissioning requires, in addition to the schooling already mentioned, a check by PIPSA of computerized crime files. The check costs $15. One inadequacy in this procedure, however, is the incompleteness of the NCIC crime files – entry of data is voluntary and only eight states (Texas is one) contribute to the system. If in its search PIPSA does discover that the employee has been arrested, all it can do is notify the employee and the employer of the date and place of arrest and ask for an explanation. Even if the employee was arrested for murder, PIPSA cannot reveal the charge.
The PIPSA records checks can be run even on guards whom companies don’t plan to arm, and the check would be widely used, perhaps, if it were practical. Even PIPSA’s “expedited criminal history check,” which costs an extra $4, takes two to four weeks to procure, and because of the Privacy Act, PIPSA can run checks only on people who have already been hired as guards, not on job applicants. This means that checks are run after guards are already on their jobs, in uniform – if companies choose to run them at all. For reasons endemic to the industry, security firms can’t expect that guards will still be on the payroll two to four weeks after hiring, when PIPSA reports come through.
Federal and Texas experts estimate the turnover in the private security industry at about 200 per cent annually. The most promising young recruits who put on security guard uniforms do not keep them for long because wages in the industry are low and benefits almost nonexistent. One reason is that the security industry is divided into competing sectors – one public, one private – and the public sector’s costs are subsidized by the taxpayers. Most of Houston’s 3200 uniformed police officers moonlight as guards while wearing their cloak of office, and so do most of Harris County’s 1200 deputy and reserve constables. These guards are recruited, uniformed, equipped, and sometimes dispatched at taxpayers’ expense, and they are far better trained than private guards. Competition from the police forces sets a ceiling on fees for security services. At present, the wage scale for off-duty Houston policemen begins at $13 an hour; for the constabulary, at $10 to $12 an hour. To ensure a clientele for itself, the private security industry must underbid its subsidized competitors. It does: the going rate for guard service in Houston is $7 to $9 an hour.
Companies in turn pay their guards starting wages of $4.50 to $5.50 an hour, and there is little chance for salary advancement. As a group, guards earn about a dollar an hour more than janitors do, and neither group is paid what can be called a living wage. Older, infirm, and immigrant men become janitors in Houston. Young men whose educational backgrounds are weak become guards, and they usually upgrade their occupations when the opportunity presents itself. Reducing the size of the labor pool by raising job qualifications would cause wages to rise, but currently the private industry has no reason to make that move.
PIPSA does not have authority to set wages for the industry, nor can it speed up its criminal records check without approval and funding from the Legislature. In security affairs, the Legislature has acted as the handmaiden of private companies. It created PIPSA in 1969 at the request of security chain operators, who wanted a statewide licensing procedure to replace the patchwork of local ordinances then in effect. From its birth until 1975, PIPSA did little more than charter private firms and take complaints against them. But in that year it was given a new power – again at the industry’s request. The penal code that had gone into effect a year earlier made pistol packing an offense for most purposes, and security guards – even armored car drivers – had not been exempted from the new code’s prohibitions. The industry asked for and got a law enabling PIPSA to commission guards to carry handguns.
PIPSA’s records clearance is slow, despite crime records computerization, because the agency is underequipped: it does not have its own terminals. It shifts its work onto the Department of Public Safety. PIPSA is also understaffed. It has 23 employees, who are charged with keeping tabs on 2000 companies and 15,000 commissioned guards across the state. It has only two investigators in Houston. PIPSA has another problem, too: it has no authority over the state’s 90,000 noncommissioned guards. No law requires guards who do not carry pistols to be registered with PIPSA.
New guard outrages may continue to be reported in our newspapers every week, but there will be fewer of them if – and only if – our Legislature will reform the security industry. It can do so in several ways.
Guard companies should be required to verify applicants’ employment references and to obtain PIPSA clearances on all employees. PIPSA – currently a board for the regulation of a business, not an agency with policing powers – should become an arm of the Department of Public Safety, because the DPS, as a law enforcement agency, is allowed to run computer checks on the criminal records of job applicants. Or PIPSA should be granted the funds and staffing necessary to speed up its processing of clearance requests; the expense could be recouped from licensing and commissioning fees. The Legislature should either prohibit police moonlighting or, to give the private security industry room for both profits and improvement, set higher minimum rates for off-duty work by lawmen in uniform. To make it more difficult for guards to pose as lawmen or to be mistaken for real cops, guards should be required to replace their metal badges with cloth patches.
These or similar proposals are not new. In 1976 the now defunct federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration issued a thorough 580-page study of the security industry nationwide, citing the dangers of the situation that exists today. The LEAA’s proposals are known throughout the industry, and no doubt in our Legislature as well: during its last two sessions, bills that would have implemented them died in committee.
Improvements in private security systems will not be free. Weeding out criminals from security agencies will increase the cost of guard services by $1 to $2 an hour. The expense will be passed on to consumers – the you and me who want protection. I believe that we are ready, and have always been ready, to pay for reliable security; few other services are worth as much to our peace of mind. Had the Legislature voted to require the screening of all guards when the proposal was first made, we would all be working, shopping, and sleeping with a greater sense of tranquility – and Iris Siff would be with us today.
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