Today, Explained - Mall cop nation

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

The three biggest private employers in North America are Walmart, Amazon, and a security firm you’ve maybe never heard of: Allied Universal. Time’s Alana Semuels explains the rise of poorly trained and poorly paid private security guards across America. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Michael Raphael, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So here's the truth. In this particular neighborhood in Philadelphia, the crime is low. But that was actually the entire point. What we really pitch to neighbors is that this is when you get involved. You get involved now to get out ahead of the crime. Joe Dane of Society Hill in PA is not just referring to Neighborhood Watch. His neighborhood hired a private security firm to protect them from that low crime. Joe had seen the problems compound elsewhere. I lived right next to Beverly Hills,

where there are now not only 10 cities, there are open-air drug markets, there is elevated crime. You know, I had a very similar thought process that this was not going to happen in my neighborhood. As of today, the third biggest private employer of people in North America is a private security company called Allied. And ahead on Today Explained, we're going to trace the explosive rise of the private security sector. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

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Alana Semuels is an investigative reporter for Time magazine. She was working on a story recently when she came across a press release from a private security company called Allied Universal with what, to her trained trained eye was kind of a staggering statistic. They had a press release saying that they were the third biggest employer in North America, which really just surprised me just because you don't think about private security as some giant company like Walmart or Amazon. And I hadn't really seen that many private security officers or people,

you know, in my daily life. So it seemed like this was kind of happening under the radar. But the more I started looking into it, the more I realized that this is a booming industry. It's booming as police departments are having a lot of trouble recruiting and retaining staff. And so I think we're really witnessing a sea change in the accountability of who patrols our public spaces in the U.S. You know, you have police departments, which have had some problems in recent years, but they're still ostensibly accountable to the public. They have to go to meetings and the public can ask some questions and see what's going on kind of behind closed doors. Private security does not have the same obligations. These are private companies whose first priority is to their shareholders and is to make a profit. And we don't really know what's going on behind the scenes at the private security companies.

And I think that's really different from the way we've thought about who governs us and who patrols public and private spaces in America. How big is the private security industry? It's pretty big. And the U.S. Allied has about 300,000 employees. They have about 800,000 globally. And if you look at just the number of security officers per citizens, basically, there are three security guards for every 1,000 people in the U.S., but there are only about two cops for every 1,000 people. And this is an industry that's

just really boomed in the last couple decades. So in the last 20 years, the number of security officers has doubled in the U.S. I have to say, once I started writing about this, I started seeing them everywhere. I mean, you see them in the grocery store, you see them in the airport, you see them driving around nice neighborhoods or at the gates of gated neighborhoods. You see them a lot of businesses just kind of hanging out. But a lot of it is these private companies or neighborhood associations who decide they want a little bit extra safety. In some Chicago neighborhoods, it is safety at any cost. The demand for private security grows in the city and suburbs. Some business executives are now even requesting armed security to take them to and from Chicago for meetings. OK, so private companies and neighborhood associations decide they want more safety and and that's the entirety of the hiring.

There are actually also a lot of governments that hire private security. You'll see a lot of them on public transit. The president of New York City Transit says the guards do more than just help the MTA recoup money. They improve the system's image and make it feel safer. And sometimes you'll see governments like, for instance, in Beverly Hills, California, they'll just hire security in addition to the police because they maybe don't have enough police officers or they just want the technology that private security companies can bring them. The city is still contracting with two private security companies, as many as 80 armed guards who've been supplementing police since the summer of 2020. What can private security guards do? Can they do exactly what police do?

It depends on the state. But yes, in a lot of states, they can do basically what police do. That is really wild. And so in order to be on the police force in a city or a town, you have to go through usually police academy. Do private security guards have the same kind of training? Most of the time they don't. A lot of times companies see this as kind of a service industry job, like McDonald's or Walmart, they're hiring the same people. And they want to hire them pretty quickly because there's so much demand. So they just kind of get them, you know, in the door. One guy told me it was kind of like a test at the DMV. This is what you should do. You go there or whatever security company you

want to go to, you go to the security company, you apply, you get the job. You know, you have to pass a test in some states to get your guard card, as they call it. But you can take the test as many times as you want. And, you know, no, there's no penalty for taking it five or six times. They're going to have you take a test for the level two security guard. It's like a test. It's really easy to pass, bro. You know, they're probably going to let you study for it. They should let you study for it. Everybody passes that test. You feel me? It's a little different if you're carrying a weapon. You do need a little bit more training in almost all states, but not all. So private security guards are allowed to act like police officers. How common is it that they actually do? Well, usually they're supposed to just observe and report. So they're kind of standing there, and if they see a crime happening, they're supposed to just call the police. But you have

a lot of people that don't do that, whether it's because they feel pressured from their employer to act or just because they don't want to see someone stealing something. You've had a few instances in New York and San Francisco where these private security guards actually assaulted the people that they thought were shoplifting. In San Francisco, the guy actually killed the person who was shoplifting. The district attorney announcing the Walgreens security guard who pulled the trigger will not face criminal charges, finding the guard acted in lawful self-defense. So it can get very dangerous for both civilians and, of course, for the guards themselves. Are these well-paying jobs?

So the median wage for a security guard is about $17 an hour. There are exceptions. There are some companies that hire ex-cops or ex-military, and they pay a lot better. But it's usually not that high of a wage because companies are just hiring someone to kind of observe and report. This isn't someone that's going to make money for them, right? It's just someone who's basically standing outside their business, deterring people from stealing things. So it's not like they're in sales or, you know, some department that's going to bring in revenue. We hear a lot of the time that the U.S. now essentially has a service economy, right? These are the sectors of our economy that are growing, the service sectors. And I can imagine this being characterized as

a service, right? Yeah, I think it definitely is a service. What is driving the growth of it? I mean, I think, first of all, you have 9-11, you have people feeling unsafe, and that's when the industry really started booming. But, you know, it's this kind of steady growth until the pandemic. Then the pandemic hits and, you know, people go home. There are a lot of empty buildings. So you have companies hiring people to patrol these empty buildings. And then you have the murder of George Floyd and a lot of backlash against police. And you have police not be able to recruit and retain people. From big cities to small towns, law enforcement agencies across the country

are in a bidding war for new officers as many lifelong first responders leave the profession in droves. There's just a lot of people leaving police departments. It's leading to significant shortages impacting cities that are already dealing with increases in violent crime. So you have this law enforcement crisis

where they don't have enough people. And then you have this narrative that's really going on across the country that crime is booming. You know, that's not really true. There's some crime stats that show that shoplifting or certain robbery is up, but then other things are down or it really depends on the place. But you have this narrative that crime is out of control. This video has been seen more than 300,000 times. A woman leaving a high-end retailer with an arm full of clothes and getting away in a waiting car. And so you have businesses and neighborhoods looking around and saying,

crime is out of control and the police aren't going to come if we call them, and so we're going to hire private security. And so part of it is, you know, that police can't come as quickly as they used to for things like, you know, someone broke into my house, but now they're gone. But some of it is just kind of this fear of quality of life things, like, you know, homelessness is definitely up,

and people don't like that, and there may be a few more car break-ins, and that makes people fearful. And there may be a few more car break-ins and that makes people fearful. And so they want to feel protected. And if they don't feel protected from the police, they're going to turn to private security and hope that that can do something. We needed extra eyes and ears on the ground after hours. Here are some uniformed guards walking this neighborhood, taking pictures, you know, have their walkies. And the visual deterrent alone is so impactful.

And we've seen a drop in just certain type of element kind of hanging around the neighborhood. I sometimes think of it as a scarecrow. You know, it's someone who's just kind of going to stand there and scare the birds away. But once the birds realize there's a scarecrow and they're not going to do anything, then they're going to, you know, keep doing what they were going to do in the first place. If you go on TikTok or Twitter, you can find all these videos of security guards just standing there while these retail crime rings go in and just sweep things off the shelves. Excuse me, did he pay for all that? All that ice cream he just walked out with? You don't know? You don't care? You know, on the one hand, you don't really want them to do anything because that probably

leads to more violence. But then you kind of wonder, what is the point of these security guards who can't do anything except call the police who can't really come. Coming up next, Time Magazine's Alana Semuels asked people who worked at Allied Universal if they liked their jobs. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family. And Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos

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Ma'am, I should warn you, I do have the authority to make a citizen's arrest. So does anyone. I could arrest you right now. That's true. She could. Hey, I'm not talking to you. Okay? It's Today Explained. Alana Samuels, in the first half of the show, you told us that in the last 20 years, since 9-11, private security has exploded. And one company in particular, Allied Universal, is the third biggest private employer in North America.

We band together to safeguard your people, businesses, and communities, giving you the freedom to love, create, produce, and innovate. Because when we are fearless, humanity thrives. How did it get so big? It's kind of like a Pac-Man where it just gobbles up lots of other companies. If you even Google Allied Universal, you'll see there used to be all these other companies like G4S. There are lots of smaller companies and it keeps eating those bigger companies. I actually have a friend whose family has a pretty small private security company and they said, you know, our dream is to be acquired because that's kind of how you get out. And that's what's happening across the country is

Allied is just eating up all these other companies and acquiring all their contracts. So Amazon and Walmart are the two biggest employers in North America. And then you have Allied. So it's really two big companies that have gotten a lot of scrutiny in the last couple of years and Allied. Walmart and Amazon, both behemoths. And both of them, if you ask people, is this a good place to work, you're going to get mixed responses for sure. What is it like to work for Allied? I talked to dozens of people and reviewed dozens of lawsuits, and I did not find anybody who had a positive experience working for Allied. I have been shift supervisor with Allied Universal.

This is an update video for the fact that I quit. This has been one of the worst working experiences of my life. You're not nobody. You're just a number to them. So right now I am working a 32-hour shift, basically. It really sounds like as they're growing, they're really losing control of the contracts and they just do not have enough people to staff all of these security contracts. So it's a private company, so we don't really know what's going on back there. But you have a lot of examples of pretty horrible things going on. I talked to a woman who worked in a hospital, and basically her first day on the job, she was told to disarm people coming into the hospital with weapons. And, you know, if there's a shooting victim, she'd have to lock down the hospital. She'd have to escort corpses to the morgue. And she did not have any training to do any of this.

I talked to a guy who patrolled a shopping center in California. And his job was to ask homeless people to move if they were camped out there. And he said he had been spit on. And, you know, sometimes people were very nice and sometimes it would turn a little nearly violent. You have examples of people who actually have been killed on the job. If you remember the mall shooting in Texas, the security guard on staff there who was killed was an allied security guard. If you remember the Buffalo supermarket shooting, the security guard who was killed there also worked for Allied.

Working security at the Topps grocery store, Salter engaged the shooter, who was heavily protected by body armor. Why do people keep hiring them? If I'm a homeowner's association or a business, and the data is mixed on how effective private security guards are, and also there are all of these other problems, why keep doing this? There really aren't that many other options, in part because they've acquired so many companies. So if you look at many markets across the country, there may be two security companies that you can hire because they've acquired so many other companies. And so maybe you try one, and then maybe you try the other one. And if neither of them are particularly effective, you might end up just bouncing back and forth between them. And the other problem is people want security. They want this sense that someone is going to protect them. Even if it's a false sense of security, they want to hire someone to

do that. And so allied can't get enough people to do that, but people still want to feel like they did something. They want to be able to say, well, at least we had security. So, you know, we tried. And, you know, I think the problem is you have a lot of industries in the U.S., especially industries where the workers have to be there in person, they can't work remotely, that are having trouble finding enough people. And this is probably one of the less pleasant jobs where you're not getting paid very much and it's dangerous. And so no wonder they're having trouble getting people. And no wonder people keep hiring them and they can't staff all the contracts that they're getting. This makes me wonder whether in your reporting you came across any conversations about whether maybe we need more police officers.

I watched this lengthy hearing in North Carolina where the Charlotte area was deciding on what they were going to do in their public transit system because they had allied officers as private police on their public transit system. And they had just been getting all these complaints. And, you know, even the DAs were saying allied officers are filing these charges that don't even make any sense. So they decided to replace allied. You have the mayor pro tem of Charlotte saying we should fund more police and then the police can come on the public transit system. Our local law enforcement are accountable to us on a public body. Those corporate police forces are not accountable to anybody besides their business models, right? So they would in fact be a contractor, right? And they don't come and answer to the city council or the county commission or the sheriff or the chief of police. And not only did he lose, but the council decided to double its private security budget. They changed the contract,

but instead of police, they're spending the money on private security. Why? What was the reasoning? Because they're short-staffed and because the police just don't have the resources to patrol the public transit system. You know, they don't have enough people to really do what they need to do without doing the public transit system. So how are they going to add on a whole public transit contract? Police training is going to take longer than training a private security guard. So there's an acknowledgement that there's a problem with private security. And the mayor pro tem says, we have a problem. We have the option to hire more police. And the city council says, no, absolutely not. We're going to stick with private security. Yeah, I think Allied being a private company is really helpful just because if you're a police department, you have some accountability. They can really see what's going on behind the scenes and say, look, you don't have the people to hire this contract.

Whereas if you're a private company, you can make all the promises in the world. And the only thing that's going to happen if you don't make them is maybe you're going to get fired. Actually, in Colorado, Allied couldn't fill all the positions it was supposed to fill on the public transit, and so it actually had to pay Colorado back. But that's the only thing that's going to happen is they're going to lose some money. But Allied does have some problems, just in that they have a lot of court cases pending against them. They have a lot of public relation problems right now. There's a case that's going to go to trial later this year

that a guy who was riding the public transit system in Miami in the very beginning of the pandemic basically got beat up within an inch of his life. And there was an allied security guard on the train. But he gets off minutes before the attack. The lawsuit claims the guard should have been more vigilant following several attacks earlier that month on MetroMover. And it later came out that he had been fired from his job at a corrections institute. So, you know, their hiring practices are getting them into more and more

trouble. And I think you do see places like North Carolina saying, okay, this isn't working. Where else can we go? The problem is that there just aren't that many other options because police are so short-staffed and because Allied and the other big companies have really eaten up all the smaller ones. After I read your piece, I started seeing private security guards everywhere too. In fact, I was talking to a couple of my neighbors who are private security guards about your piece. They don't work for Allied, but they were interested in it. And it did make me wonder what would happen if this industry didn't exist. Is there an understanding that if we didn't have private security guards in the United States, we would see a lot more crime?

Or is even that sort of unproven? I think that's unproven. I think we've gotten ourselves into this pretty vicious cycle where, you know, more people have guns, and then you have people feeling like they need guns to protect themselves or protect other people from the guns, and they need private security to protect themselves from the guns. I think if you didn't have private security, you might remove one layer of that vicious cycle of, oh, there's security and guns everywhere, so I need one too. You kind of wonder, you know, what's going to make places fund public services like police more? And it does seem like there has to be some sort of tipping point where they realize, you know, this is what we need. This is what we decided as a country we're going to do is we're

going to fund police and not we're going to fund police to the bare minimum. And then if you can afford it, you can add some services on on top of that. That was Time Magazine's Alana Semuels. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan and edited by Matthew Collette. It was engineered by Michael Rayfield and it was thoroughly fact-checked by Laura Bullard. Laura is our private security guard. The rest of our team includes Patrick Boyd, Siona Petros, Hadi Mouagdi, Amanda Llewellyn, Halima Shah, mother of two Victoria Chamberlain, and John Ahrens, while Victoria is out on maternity leave.

My co-host is Sean Ramosfirm, Amina El-Sadi is our supervising producer, and Miranda Kennedy is our EP. We're distributed to public radio stations across the United States by WNYC in New York City. I'm Noelle King. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.