They aren’t police officers, but they still carry deadly force.
That is why the state of Utah needs to take a hard look at how it regulates armed security guards. A recent analysis by Tribune reporter Paighten Harkins turned up several cases where people who shouldn’t have guns were carrying them as armed guards.
In essence, the bureaucracy is not keeping up with the risk.
In one case, a man who isn’t legally allowed to carry a firearm was still able to get licensed as an armed guard because he lost the right to carry when he was a juvenile. The Utah Division of Professional Licensing, which regulates armed guards, doesn’t have access to juvenile records.
In other cases, guards lost their right to carry because of a domestic incident or a criminal conviction. But knowledge of that was slow to come to the attention of DOPL, so the guards continued to carry weapons.
One guard was arrested for impersonating a police officer after he held someone at gunpoint and handcuffed him. A judge ordered him to not have a gun while he awaited trial, but he was licensed as an armed guard for another seven months. In another case, a guard was found to be mentally incompetent by a court, but it took DOPL three months to issue an emergency order to suspend his license.
DOPL requires guards and their employers to self-report any decisions that could affect their right to carry, and it isn’t surprising that not everyone cooperates. In this era of data, there has to be a better way to routinely check for legal actions involving licensed armed guards.
As Harkins points out, security guards make about half the money that police officers make, but nationwide there are twice as many guards as officers. In what is essentially a fully employed labor force in Utah, the security companies have to find people willing to take relatively low wages for what can be dangerous work.
In that environment, it’s almost inevitable that some unqualified people will be hired. Last year, a homeless man was shot and killed by a security guard in Salt Lake City. The guard first claimed the man grabbed his gun in a struggle, but security cameras showed no such thing. The guard was charged with murder.
The guards are required to have training on their weapons and maintain their status with regular practice, but it’s far less training than what is required police officers. Still, their bullets fly just as far.
If more laws or funding are needed, the state Legislature needs to step in. Otherwise, state regulators must get on top of this before some guard pulls the trigger on a gun he shouldn’t have.