Investigating and Litigating Security Guard Involved Shootings

Introduction

The Man Nobody Told

At about 8:40 on the night of October 1, 2017, a door alarm on the thirty second floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas generated a work order. Room 32-129 stood open. The system pushed the alert to a security officer's cellphone at 9:18. Jesus Campos, twenty five, unarmed, working alone, rode up to close a door.

Nevada licensed nothing about him. Nevada Revised Statutes 648.018(4) exempts proprietary in-house security from chapter 648, so the state that registers, fingerprints, and cards the contract officer at the casino next door registered nothing about the officer Mandalay Bay employed directly. The post order for an open door alarm ran two steps: call the room, then send an officer. It named no second officer, no supervisor notification, and no condition under which the officer stops and waits.

He reached the wing around ten. The open room was not the problem. Beside suite 32-135 somebody had screwed an L bracket across a stairwell fire door, barricading an emergency exit on an occupied guest floor. Campos picked up a house phone at 10:04 and reported it to security dispatch. Dispatch sent it to engineering.

At about 10:05 Stephen Paddock opened fire from suite 32-135 into the concert crowd across Las Vegas Boulevard, and fired through his own door into the corridor. A round struck Campos in the left calf. He took cover in a doorway alcove and put out the transmission that told the hotel what it had: shots fired in 32-135. Stephen Schuck, the engineer dispatch had sent for the bracket, walked into that hallway about two minutes later. Campos waved him off, and Schuck radioed for police.

Nobody told Campos what waited on that floor, because nobody knew. When he told them what he found, the report went to a maintenance department.

Eight days later the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department revised its account and put the shot into Campos at 9:59, six minutes before the massacre, which made him a warning nobody acted on. MGM Resorts disputed that on October 12 and traced the 9:59 figure to a Mandalay Bay report somebody created by hand after the fact. On October 13 the sheriff corrected the correction: Campos had encountered the barricaded door at about 9:59, and the shooting came after. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Behavioral Analysis Unit later put the first gunfire at around 10:05.

A six minute error stood for four days in the most examined shooting in American history, and it came from a security log written from memory. Chapter 23 covers clocks for that reason.

MGM settled with more than 4,400 claimants for $800 million, approved September 30, 2020, after first suing victims in three federal courts for a declaration that a federal antiterrorism statute capped what it owed.

Why a book on this and not on police shootings

The United States fields more private security officers than sworn police officers. A shooting by or of a private officer produces lawsuits in which he is sometimes defendant and sometimes plaintiff, plus criminal charges, licensing actions, workers' compensation claims, and coverage fights that run for years.

Police shootings have a literature, a document set, a body of federal civil rights law, three national databases, and a generation of trained experts. A guard shooting has none of that: no federal license, no national training standard, no national count of discharges. A private company holds the post orders, the daily activity report, the qualification score sheet, the dispatch log, and the video, beyond any public records law, and destroys most of them within thirty to ninety days unless somebody demands them by name in week one.

Two subjects that run on one document set

In one kind of case the officer is the defendant. He shot someone, and the questions are authority, training, arming, supervision, and whether the property owner and the guard company armed him without the screening the risk required. In the other he is the victim, sent alone into a hazard the company already knew about, with no information, no medical plan, and a radio nobody answered. Both run on the same document set, the same standard of care, and the same root cause.

Two further matters run through this book as unnamed teaching examples, because the analysis behind them is privileged. A hospital security officer, borrowed from another campus, sat beside a visitor for an hour while other employees learned the man was almost certainly carrying a gun, and nobody told him; chapter 13 works it. A hotel sent its only guard, unarmed, to an eighth floor disturbance without telling him anything, and he took a round through the knee; chapters 13 and 16 work it.

Five questions, asked in the same order every time

At Mandalay Bay the answer to question five is a routing rule: a barricaded fire door beside an occupied suite goes to the police desk, not to engineering. It costs nothing.

Every chapter ends with a checklist you can carry

Each checklist runs in the imperative, for a deposition, a site inspection, or a security director's office. The back matter carries a field card for the first seventy two hours after an incident, a glossary of trade terms, a source list by chapter, and a punch list of what still needs verification. Several figures that circulate in this industry trace to no published survey, and this book says so and prints nothing.

What a firearms background brings to a guard case

I hold firearms licenses, I have manufactured firearms, and I have spent decades teaching, building for, and doing practical firearms work. Plaintiffs and defendants retain me as an expert in security operations and premises security. I bring a working knowledge of what a firearm does, what a qualification course measures, what a post order says, and what an officer at eighteen dollars an hour could do at the moment the decision arrived.

Chapter 1

What a Security Guard Actually Is

There are more private guards than sworn police officers

Three comparisons hold up, and honest practice names which one you use.

Three limits belong in any report using the count. The survey samples establishments, so it counts wage and salary jobs, excludes the self employed, counts a guard working two part time posts for two employers twice, and does not distinguish armed from unarmed.

The median guard earns half what a patrol officer earns

The guard's May 2025 median hourly wage runs 49.9 percent of a patrol officer's, a gap of $18.36 an hour, and 74.6 percent of the median for all occupations. On annual mean wages, 60.9 percent.

Wages have not moved in twenty years

The Center for American Progress analyzed American Community Survey microdata from 2004 through 2023. In inflation adjusted dollars the median security officer earned $17.03 an hour in 2022 against $17.05 in 2003, and the private sector median $24.04. Contractor officers earned $16.83, site employed officers $18.59. It found 39.1 percent of security officers without employer health insurance, 45.9 percent among full time contractor employees, and 17.8 percent on Medicaid against 9.9 percent of private sector workers. Two decades of flat real wages is the predicate for the argument that this labor market supports no screening premium, no career ladder, and no retention.

The turnover number you can trace, and the one you cannot

Two published turnover figures rest on a stated method and disagree because they measure different universes. Using Census Bureau Quarterly Workforce Indicators, the Center for American Progress put security industry annual turnover at 50.8 percent in 2023 against 38.4 percent private sector. On the same indicators the University of California Berkeley Labor Center put security services turnover at 77.0 percent in 2024, up from 69.3 percent in 2019, against 58.1 percent private sector. They diverge on formula, industry scope, and year. Cite one, disclose its definition, and never average them.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics supplies a conservative floor. It projects zero percent net employment change for security guards from 2024 to 2034, about 5,100 jobs, against roughly 162,300 openings a year in an occupation of about 1,272,400. Replacement need therefore turns over about 12.8 percent of the workforce a year, and that understates churn, because the Bureau's openings measure nets out movement within the occupation. A guard who quits one national firm on Friday and starts at another on Monday generates no opening.

Client account attrition averages about eight percent, with retention of 87 percent at one major firm and 92 percent at another. That is contract churn, not officer churn.

Three in five guards work for a contractor, not for the site

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts 59 percent of security guards in the investigation, guard, and armored car services industry, the contract industry. The protected premises employ the rest directly: seven percent in educational services, six percent each in health care and social assistance and in retail trade, four percent in accommodation and food services. The Center for American Progress puts the contracted share at about 60 percent in 2023, up from under 50 percent in 2004, with 71 percent of contracted workers at firms of 250 or more. So in most cases the officer, the premises owner, and the author of the instructions work for three different entities.

Eight thousand firms, and fourteen hold nearly four fifths of the revenue

The standard industry market study, from a brokerage tracking the sector for decades, sizes the United States outsourced contract security market at $35.3 billion in 2025 and $38.8 billion across North America, split into $30.9 billion of manned guarding and $4.4 billion of technology. Growth over 2024 ran about 2.3 percent, which the paper attributes mostly to higher billing rates on existing accounts, not volume. It counts 8,000 contract security companies in the United States, the top fourteen holding $27.5 billion, or 79.6 percent of the market. Those two published figures do not reconcile, because $27.5 billion of $35.3 billion is 77.9 percent. Private equity owns $16.1 billion, or 46 percent.

One of these companies files audited accounts. Securitas, listed in Sweden, reports 2025 sales of 155,113 million Swedish kronor, 322,000 employees, and 44 markets, with a North America segment of 61,931 million kronor, 94,000 employees, and a 9.4 percent operating margin. Allied Universal, larger in the United States, publishes no audited financials and claims approximately 770,000 people in more than a hundred countries.

Allied Security opened in Pittsburgh in 1957 and became AlliedBarton; Universal Services of America opened in 1965 and entered security by 1969. The two merged in 2016 and began operating as Allied Universal in February 2017. In July 2018 the combined firm bought U.S. Security Associates for $1.5 billion, and in December 2019 a new investor group took control. In December 2020 G4S shareholders accepted a $5.1 billion takeover, which closed in April 2021 at roughly 800,000 employees and more than $18 billion in revenue. SecurAmerica followed in January 2021.

The officer at the post works for neither party

A national client signs a master services agreement with a national brand, and neither employs the officer standing at the post. A firm without density in a market subcontracts the site to a local operator, or subcontracts the technology components and runs the manned side the same way. A janitorial or facilities management prime bundles security into an integrated facilities services contract, then subcontracts the guarding. A staffing agency fills posts the guard company's own roster cannot cover, particularly events and surge coverage. Federal work flows through prime contract vehicles, and the Federal Protective Service relies on a privately contracted force of about 13,500 guards to protect federal facilities.

Each link dilutes or drops the training standard, the post orders, the firearms policy, the background check standard, and the insurance limit. The client's requirements flow downhill only so far as the subcontract repeats them. Map the chain first: who signed with whom, whose post orders governed, who issued the firearm, who ran the background check, whose payroll the officer sat on, whose workers' compensation covered him, and who held additional insured status.

The Government Accountability Office examined the federal contract guard program in 2013 and found 23 percent of the guard files it reviewed missing required documentation, and one contractor reporting 38 percent of its guards had never taken required screener training. That program runs under a written contract with explicit training requirements and a dedicated oversight agency, none of which the commercial market has.

Nobody counts how many guards are armed

No federal agency licenses security officers, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not distinguish armed from unarmed. Each state creates its own firearm authority for guards, in categories nobody can add together: a California firearms permit, a Texas commissioned security officer, a Virginia armed security officer, an Oregon armed private security professional, a Florida Class G license.

The best estimate is an industry one. The September 2025 market study states that fewer than twenty percent of officers working for contract security companies carry weapons, which against the 880,000 contract officers it counts implies fewer than roughly 176,000 armed contract officers. Do not extend it to the proprietary side, which the paper does not measure, without saying so. Treat any more precise circulating number as unsourced until its author produces the state by state licensing data. The same paper reports that companies vet armed officers more thoroughly and train them longer, and that clients will pay as much as three times the normal billing rate for armed coverage.

What the client is choosing between

Every bill rate below is arithmetic I derived from published inputs, not a rate survey quote. Label it that way.

Two inputs are public: the mean hourly wage for security guards, $20.42 in May 2025, and site level gross margins, which run about 17 percent for small and regional firms, above 19 percent for national firms, about 20 percent at Allied Universal and about 23 percent at Securitas. Assume a payroll burden of twenty to thirty percent for payroll taxes, unemployment insurance, workers' compensation, and mandated benefits, and label the assumption. Fully burdened cost then falls between roughly $24.50 and $26.55 an hour, which implies a bill rate of roughly $29.50 to $32.00 at a 17 percent site margin and $31.80 to $34.50 at 23 percent. Federal wage determinations under the Service Contract Act run higher: $24.76 an hour in Milwaukee, $23.61 in Richmond, $22.54 in Cleveland, before burden.

The client chooses between $87,600 and something three to seventeen times that. In the hotel dispatch the property contracted for security and chose the coverage itself, the table's first row: one unarmed guard, eight hours a day, on a property where a fatal shooting had occurred four months before.

One post around the clock for a year takes 8,760 hours, which at 2,080 scheduled hours per full time employee is 4.2 full time equivalents before any allowance for vacation, sick leave, training, or callouts. Schedulers commonly use a relief factor of 4.5 to 5.0 per around the clock post, for which I could locate no sourced national figure, so treat it as practice, not as a published standard. These figures describe an employer with no realistic opportunity to know the person it arms, and a client that bought coverage without a threat assessment, both provable from public data before anyone produces a document in discovery.

Chapter 2

Licensed by Nobody in Particular

The federal government does not license a private security officer, register one, set a training standard or minimum age, or hold authority to revoke anything. Federal training mandates reach only narrow categories: airport screeners, security at facilities the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses, federal contract guards, and certain maritime and rail personnel. None of them reaches the officer working a retail center, an apartment complex, a bar, a hospital, or a construction site.

There are no U.S. federal requirements for training of critical infrastructure guards other than airport screeners and nuclear guards.

Congressional Research Service Report RL32670, Guarding America: Security Guards and U.S. Critical Infrastructure Protection, updated January 27, 2005

With no federal floor, the standard of care in a guard involved shooting comes from four sources: the licensing state's statutes and rules, the employer's written policy, the client's post orders and contract, and industry consensus standards. Chapter three covers the fourth.

The one federal statute, and what it does not do

Congress enacted the Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act of 2004 as section 6402 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Public Law 108-458, signed December 17, 2004, and codified at section 41106 of title 34 of the United States Code. Its implementing regulations sit at part 105, subpart C, sections 105.21 through 105.27 of title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, which the Department published as an interim rule at 71 Federal Register 1734 on January 11, 2006.

Matthew Dolloff shot and killed Lee Keltner outside a Denver rally on October 10, 2020. Denver required a security license and he held none. A television station hired Pinkerton, Pinkerton subcontracted, and the subcontractor supplied him. Prosecutors dropped the murder charge on March 21, 2022. The civil case, Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated, 2024 COA 64, produced the holding chapter 18 turns on.

The statute lets an employer of private security officers submit fingerprints and identifying information to a State Identification Bureau, which forwards them through the Attorney General to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a national criminal history record search. It permits. It does not require.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation returns the record to the State Identification Bureau, not to the employer. A state with its own security officer fitness standards applies them and reports only the result. A state with no such standards reports four things: a felony conviction; a conviction within the previous ten years for dishonesty or false statement; one within ten years for the use or attempted use of force; and a felony charge pending against the applicant for 365 days or more.

In a negligent hiring or retention count, this statute answers the defense that the employer had no way to know. Since December 2004 participating states have run a federally authorized channel for a fingerprint based national criminal history check. Whether the defendant used it, and whether it re-ran checks on incumbent officers, is the jury question.

Fifty regulators, and no two of them agree

Every figure below comes from the statute, the rule, or the licensing agency's own page, and where a number circulates in trade writing with no primary source, the cell says so. Hours are for the individual officer, not the agency license. Table 3.1 carries the armed requirement and the requalification interval for these same sixteen states, and armed hours add to the unarmed requirement unless the entry says otherwise.

The credential means whatever the state of hire says, and in two states it means nothing.

Two states license no security officer at all

Colorado licenses no private security officers statewide; municipalities do all the regulating. Pennsylvania imposes no statewide licensing, registration, training, or background check on unarmed officers, reaching only the carrier of a lethal weapon. I verified both against primary or near primary sources.

Massachusetts licenses watch, guard, and patrol agencies but registers no individual guards, which differs from no regulation and changes a negligent hiring analysis. Kansas City, St. Louis, and other municipalities register guards despite the absence of a state scheme. Before publishing a fifty state table, check fifty regulator sites and build it from those pages.

A state with no licensing sets no training floor, requires no background check, issues no revocable credential, and keeps no disciplinary record to subpoena. You then build the standard of care from the three private sources above, plus what comparable operators in that market do.

Pennsylvania licenses the weapon, not the officer

Pennsylvania's Act 235 of 1974, the Lethal Weapons Training Act, at 22 Purdon's Statutes section 41 and following, with rules at title 37 of the Pennsylvania Code, chapter 21, reaches privately employed agents carrying a lethal weapon for employment. Carrying a firearm for employment in Pennsylvania without Act 235 certification is a misdemeanor. Pennsylvania waives nothing for military service or out of state security certifications, and the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act at section 926C of title 18 of the United States Code does not substitute for a privately employed individual.

Certification runs five years. An applicant may apply no earlier than six months before expiration and has six months to finish training after approval. The Commonwealth renews no expired certification; the holder reapplies as an initial applicant. Trade sources widely report a forty hour basic course, which I could not confirm against the Pennsylvania Code, so this book does not print it as fact. The renewal materials describe no interim qualification inside that term, which if the reading holds gives Pennsylvania the longest documented gap between qualifications of any state examined here. Confirm it against chapter 21 before a deposition.

Colorado tried twice and failed

Colorado's absence of state regulation is a legislative outcome, not an oversight. House Bill 25-1262, Regulate Private Security Officers and Agencies, would have created a State Board of Private Security Services within the Department of Regulatory Agencies. It would have required an event security officer or commercial security officer license with specified training, an assessment, and fingerprint based background checks. Only a licensed commercial security officer could have carried a firearm or nonlethal weapon, and then only under a board issued weapon endorsement. Licensing would have begun August 1, 2026. The House Finance Committee postponed the bill indefinitely on April 7, 2025, thirteen to nothing, and an earlier attempt, House Bill 21-1120, failed in 2021. The fiscal note is the best proof of the current law, describing regulation created where none exists and recording that municipally licensed individuals could obtain full licensure without additional requirements. Legislators took the bill up after the 2020 Denver shooting of Lee Keltner by Matthew Dolloff, a guard working a news station assignment who did not hold the municipal license Denver requires.

What a licensing file proves, and what it does not

The state regulator's file is the only public records source in the case, and costs a letter and a fee. Request it for the individual and the company before the first deposition.

The recurring finding is an officer with a valid unarmed registration carrying a gun. In Texas that is the distinction between a commissioned and a non-commissioned officer, and a non-commissioned officer carrying a firearm acted outside his registration. California issues firearms, baton, and tear gas authorizations as separate courses and separate permits on top of the guard registration. Ask which credential the officer held, then which one the assignment required. A pattern of prior administrative violations, particularly for unlicensed or undertrained officers, is the backbone of a negligent hiring, training, retention, and supervision claim. It is also notice evidence predating the incident, so the defense cannot dismiss it as hindsight.

A current license proves the officer submitted paperwork and the state cashed a check. It does not prove competence or that the training happened, and in the states above it certifies as little as eight hours of instruction. The state minimum is a floor, not a defense.

Chapter 3

What the Training Actually Covers

An armed security officer completes sixteen hours of firearms training in Arizona, forty seven in New York, and none in Colorado. No course in any state verified for this book tests whether the officer can decide when to shoot.

Armed training runs from a single day to a full week

What a course of fire tests, and what it does not

Only a minority of states write the qualification course into the regulation. Those that do describe a shooter standing still, firing at a paper silhouette at a known distance, on a signal, in daylight, at a target that neither moves nor decides.

None of those courses tests decision making, target discrimination, shoot and do not shoot judgment, movement, cover, stress, or low light beyond Virginia's eighteen familiarization rounds. The state qualification measures marksmanship, not judgment.

Demand the course of fire in writing: distances, round counts, time limits, target, passing score. Put it beside the incident: the distance, the light, the movement, the seconds, and the presence of people who were not the threat. Demand with it every score sheet for the officer's tenure, with dates. The range officer's identity, credentials, and certification expiration. The range facility, the date, and the sign in sheet for everyone who shot that day. The qualification ammunition, and whether it matched duty ammunition. The qualification weapon by serial number, and whether he carried it. Records of failures and remedial training. Comparing the company's records against the range's turns up identical scores across officers, impossibly perfect scores, and scores recorded when the range was closed.

Requalification runs from twice a year to once every five

Table 3.1 gives the interval for every verified state. California is the most demanding, at two qualifications per twelve month period. Texas renews on a two year cycle, so a commissioned officer can go roughly two years between documented qualifications, and Pennsylvania's five year certificate describes no interim requalification. Trade sources universally report an annual Florida requalification, which I could not confirm in the statute. For Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey, and Alabama I could not verify the interval from primary sources.

Continuing education runs four to eight hours a year where a state requires it at all: California eight, with a minimum of two on appropriate use of force, Washington four, Illinois eight, and Virginia four hours of core in service. A company meeting the state minimum delivers roughly one working day of training a year to a person it sends out to make custody and force decisions among the public. Whether that discharges the duty owed to a member of the public who gets shot is a jury question.

California is the only state that requires de-escalation to stay armed

Before each range qualification, California requires one hour on the laws and standards governing deadly force and one hour on avoiding deadly force and de-escalating force. An approved instructor must deliver both in a classroom at an approved facility, not online, and because qualification happens twice a year, so does that block. The initial firearms course adds three and a half hours of appropriate use of force instruction covering de-escalation and implicit and explicit bias. Separately, every California guard, armed or not, completes a five hour appropriate use of force course covering legal standards for force, objectively reasonable restraint, the duty to intercede, supervisory responsibility, de-escalation and interpersonal communication, bias, interactions with people with disabilities or behavioral health conditions, mental health considerations, and active shooter response.

Nothing else verified for this book comes close. New York's seven classroom hours on the state justification statute, and three of its eight annual armed hours, teach use of force law rather than de-escalation. Arizona lists use of force inside its eight hour curriculum, Alabama requires board approved use of force training of every applicant, Illinois requires the firearms course to cover legal use of force, and Nevada requires the classroom block to cover legal responsibilities. In the rest I found no dedicated de-escalation requirement, and not found is not does not exist. Say it that way.

No state prescribes a holster or duty ammunition

Florida is the outlier on caliber, with the most prescriptive duty weapon statute I located. It enumerates the permitted duty weapons: a .38 caliber revolver; a .380 caliber or 9 millimeter semiautomatic pistol; a .357 caliber revolver with .38 caliber ammunition only; a .40 caliber handgun; or a .45 caliber handgun. It also bars a licensee from carrying more than two firearms on the person. California ties the permit to the caliber carried, lists authorized calibers on the permit card, and requires separate qualification for each.

Beyond that, nothing. No state reviewed for this book prescribes or prohibits a duty ammunition type, mandates hollow points, requires frangible ammunition, prohibits handloads, or caps the round count beyond Florida's two firearm limit, and none prescribes a holster retention level, a holster type, or any retention holster at all.

With no state regulating the holster, the standard of care on retention comes entirely from those same private sources. With no state regulating duty ammunition, an employer that lets officers carry personally sourced ammunition of unknown provenance in a personally owned weapon operates in a regulatory vacuum. That is a policy failure, not a compliance failure.

No state verified for this book requires a psychological evaluation, a medical examination, a vision standard, or periodic fitness for duty screening before arming a private security officer, though every state's peace officer standards and training body requires some version for sworn officers. Verify the negative in your own jurisdiction before asserting it. A few states may require an evaluation for armed guards, and a negative research finding is not proof of absence.

Four bodies of published material fill the gap, and their names and status matter

ASIS International is the professional body for security management, and its letters are its legal name and stand for nothing. It publishes both American National Standards and guidelines, and the difference matters. Its Private Security Officer Selection and Training Guideline of 2019 is a guideline, not an American National Standard. It covers running a program to select and train private security officers, proprietary or contract: policies and procedures, roles and responsibilities, resources, vetting and selection criteria, officer training and competencies, and program evaluation. It states no minimum training hours, armed or unarmed, so attribute none to it.

Its Security Risk Assessment Standard of 2024 is the current American National Standard for risk assessment, replacing the 2015 risk assessment standard and the 2003 general security risk assessment guideline. Cite the 2015 document only historically, for the standard of care between 2015 and 2024. The Management System for Quality of Private Security Company Operations, 2022 edition, derives from the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers of 2010 and the Montreux Document of 2008, and appeared internationally as International Organization for Standardization standard 18788 in 2015. It requires documented rules for the use of force, weapons authorization and control, personnel screening and training, and incident reporting and investigation. The Workplace Violence and Active Assailant standard dates from 2020. The Preemployment Background Screening and Vetting guideline is the companion to a negligent hiring count. Protection of Assets is a multi volume reference set, neither standard nor guideline, absent from the standards index, authoritative only as a treatise an expert relies on.

The National Fire Protection Association publishes three documents that reach this work. Document 730, Guide for Premises Security, is a guide, meaning advisory material in non-mandatory language, as distinct from a standard, which carries mandatory provisions. That distinction is load bearing in premises liability motion practice: document 730 is persuasive evidence of the standard of care, not a code most jurisdictions adopted into law. A 2026 edition has since revised the 2023 edition. Document 731, Standard for the Installation of Electronic Premises Security Systems, is a standard, and its 2026 edition added the word electronic to a title previously reading Standard for the Installation of Premises Security Systems. Document 3000, Standard for an Active Shooter and Hostile Event Response Program, is in its 2024 edition. The association first issued it in 2018 on an emergency schedule as a provisional standard after the 2017 Las Vegas and 2018 Parkland attacks, then dropped the provisional designation. It has issued at least one tentative interim amendment against the 2024 edition.

The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety publishes healthcare security industry guidelines on a decimal numbering scheme. It updated guideline 02.02.04, Security Officer Training, to add de-escalation training, and guideline 02.02.05, Security Officer Use of Physical Force, on August 23, 2022. Trade coverage of that update reports initial and annual use of force training, proficiency testing and demonstrated physical competency, training on the totality of the circumstances and on preventing positional asphyxia, a requirement to use the minimum force necessary and stop as soon as the officer has control, documentation of every use of force, a defined incident notification and review process, and a requirement that the facility determine, after a security vulnerability assessment, which restraint devices and techniques an officer may use and when. Guideline 04.05, Weapons Screening in Healthcare, is newer, and I could not confirm its adoption status. That association's website blocks automated access, so the above rests on trade coverage and hospital policies citing the guidelines by number. Buy the current guidelines book before relying on it in a report.

The Joint Commission workplace violence prevention requirements took effect January 1, 2022 for hospitals and critical access hospitals. They are accreditation requirements rather than statutes, and a surveyor audits them, which makes them the operative standard of care for hospital security.

How an expert uses a standard that is not a law

A consensus standard creates no duty. It is evidence of what informed practitioners agreed was reasonable, published before the incident, by a body with no stake in this case. State the document's status accurately every time: standard, guide, guideline, or reference work. Cite the edition in force on the incident date, not the current one, and check for amendments. Attribute no content the document does not contain, most often hour counts to guidelines that state none. Say what a law enforcement document is. The International Association of Chiefs of Police issued a national consensus policy on use of force in 2017 and revised it in July 2020. It articulates objective reasonableness, proportionality, de-escalation, and the duty to intervene, and experts on both sides use it in guard cases. It remains a law enforcement consensus policy, and chapter 5 sets out why the standards written for police do not reach a private officer.

No single, nationally adopted use of force model policy exists for private security. That absence is itself a finding for the report, and it makes the employer's own written policy the controlling document, which you compare against what the defendant actually did.

Chapter 4

Post Orders and the Gap Between Observe and Act

Post orders are near universal, appearing in every guard services contract and every major guard company's operations manual. No federal standard, no state licensing regulation, and no American National Standard I found requires them by that name. The authority is practice and contract. Nearly every services agreement obligates one or both parties to produce and maintain them, and that clause also identifies who held control, the borrowed servant and joint employer question.

What a competent set of post orders contains

Post orders often say nothing about use of force, deadly force, weapon retention, holsters, ammunition, or warning shots. Compare them against the company's policy manual and the state licensing requirements, and build the list of things nobody ever told the officer.

Demand the version in force on the incident date, not the current one. Demand every prior version with its revision date and author, this officer's signed acknowledgment page with its date, every site specific supplement, temporary order, and pass down instruction, and any client request that changed the orders. Companies rewrite post orders after a shooting, and the version they produce in discovery is often not the one that governed.

Orient the officer before he works the post alone

A signed acknowledgment is not orientation. Orientation is somebody walking the officer through the property: the entrances, the blind corners, the camera coverage and its gaps, the radio dead zones, the elevator that opens onto the eighth floor hallway. It also means the automated external defibrillator and the first aid kit, the door the police will come through, and who at the client site can tell him what to do.

Regulatory hooks exist even though nothing requires post orders by name. California requires training for every employee taking a new assignment he has not trained for, and workplace violence training covering hazards specific to his own job. Oregon requires training on the employer's specific program within ninety days of hire, and Washington the same within ninety days on the health care setting's own workplace violence prevention plan. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's workplace violence guidance names training as a program element. Each says generic training does not discharge the duty when the assignment is specific. In the hospital escort, the officer's employer borrowed him from another campus. Ask who showed him what and when, whether he had ever worked that unit, and whether he knew the panic alarms, the facility's emergency codes, and which people in that hallway could authorize anything.

The daily activity report proves notice and patrol

Demand the report for the shift in question, every officer's reports at that post for at least ninety days before, and the reports for the same post afterward. Prior reports establish notice: if officers logged trespassers, drug activity, prior assaults, a broken light, or a broken gate for months, both the property owner and the guard company knew. The incident shift report shows what the officer was doing before the encounter and whether he logged it. The reports afterward show what changed, subsequent remedial measure territory but discoverable and useful. Identical entries copied shift after shift prove the officer never patrolled and the supervisor never read, a supervision claim standing on its own.

The tour system record carries timestamps, sometimes coordinates, and nobody can reconstruct it after the fact. Refuse a summary report. Demand the raw checkpoint scan log with device identifier, checkpoint identifier, and timestamps to the second, for the incident shift and ninety days before. Demand the location breadcrumb data if the system collects it, which phone based systems usually do, and the audit log of edits, deletions, and manual entries. Demand the offline synchronization records, because these systems buffer when connectivity drops and the event timestamp and the upload timestamp are different fields. Demand the missed checkpoint and exception reports, the photographs with their embedded metadata, and the written retention and deletion schedule.

Observe and report is a contract term, not a skill

The phrase appears in nearly every guard services contract, most proposals, and most marketing, and almost nowhere in training that tells an officer how to decide. Lawyers wrote it to allocate liability.

What an unarmed officer can actually do

The officer deters by presence: a uniform in a visible position changes an opportunistic offender's calculation, which is why the post exists. He summons help: he sees, he reports accurately, and he gets the right responder moving early. Everything past that, meaning physical intervention, detention, pursuit, and disarming, takes training, equipment, backup, and written authority an unarmed officer at the market wage almost never holds.

A client buys presence and reporting, then uses the officer for intervention because he is on site. In the hotel dispatch the contract bought one unarmed guard for eight hours a day. The property had no cameras in the elevators or hallways, let guests rent rooms without proving identity, and issued electronic keys as scannable codes anyone could forward by text. Two weeks in, the desk clerk pulled the guard off parking lot patrol and sent him to a disturbance on the eighth floor.

Whoever sends the officer tells him what he knows

The custom in this industry, and in every dispatch discipline it borrows from, is that whoever sends a person into a situation tells him what it is. Guard company dispatch protocols and standing operating procedures almost always require the dispatcher to relay known threat information, so a dispatcher who does not puts the employer outside its own written standard.

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has affirmed a general duty clause citation against an employer that knew a client's violent criminal history and sent a lone worker to that client's home without telling her. It accepted as feasible abatement identifying persons with violent histories and telling staff about them. Substitute a trespasser with three prior armed confrontations at this property, and the holding transfers. California requires procedures for communicating with employees about workplace violence, and a violent incident log recording, among other things, whether the employee worked alone. It also requires training whenever the employer learns of a new or previously unrecognized hazard, which is what a bag of guns in a patient room is.

Seconds measure the gap between what dispatch knew and what the officer heard. Preserve the computer aided dispatch record, the radio traffic recordings, and the radio system's event log even where nobody recorded audio, plus the emergency call and public safety answering point records, the guard company's dispatch log, the client's security control room log, and any text or application based dispatch.

Two men walked in, and nobody told either one

The operative fact is identical: each employer sent a man to do a job while holding what he needed to do it safely. These cases live in the gap between the written role and the assigned task. Find that gap in every matter, measure it on the timeline, and name the sentence that would have closed it.

Chapter 5

The Guard Is Not a Police Officer

The same law that judges the customer standing next to him judges a security guard who shoots someone. Not Graham v. Connor, but the justification chapter of the state penal code and the ordinary tort privileges of self defense, defense of others, defense of property, and private person arrest.

Graham v. Connor is about police officers

Graham v. Connor, 490 United States 386, decided May 15, 1989, answered which constitutional provision governs an excessive force claim against police. Its holding names the class it covers:

The gap runs the other way too. On November 11, 2018 Jemel Roberson, an armed officer at Manny's Blue Room Lounge in Robbins, Illinois, held a man on the ground outside the bar after a shooting inside. A responding Midlothian officer shot and killed him. Prosecutors declined charges in October 2020, and Midlothian settled with his family for $7.5 million in July 2022. A uniform tells an arriving officer nothing about who is authorized to be holding a gun.

All claims that law enforcement officials have used excessive force ... in the course of an arrest, investigatory stop, or other "seizure" of a free citizen are properly analyzed under the Fourth Amendment's "objective reasonableness" standard, rather than under a substantive due process standard.

Graham v. Connor, 490 United States 386 (1989)

At page 397 the Court described the test: whether the officers' actions are objectively reasonable in light of the facts and circumstances confronting them, without regard to intent or motivation. A good faith belief does not save an unreasonable seizure, and a malicious motive does not condemn a reasonable one.

At page 396 the Court set out the balancing and the three factors every police defendant now recites: the severity of the crime, whether the suspect poses an immediate threat to the officers or others, and whether he actively resists or attempts flight. It also directs a court to judge reasonableness from a reasonable officer's perspective on the scene rather than with hindsight, and to allow for the speed at which police must decide.

Every word of that framework, including the allowance for split second decisions, is an interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment restrains the government.

What Tennessee v. Garner actually decided

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 United States 1, decided March 27, 1985, by a vote of six to three, struck down as applied a Tennessee statute that let an officer use all necessary means to stop any fleeing felon. At page 11:

The use of deadly force to prevent the escape of all felony suspects, whatever the circumstances, is constitutionally unreasonable.

Tennessee v. Garner, 471 United States 1, 11 (1985)

The Court then stated the exception, at pages 11 and 12: where the officer has probable cause to believe the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm to the officer or others, deadly force to prevent escape is not constitutionally unreasonable.

Garner created no general right to shoot dangerous fleeing suspects. It set a constitutional ceiling on what a state may authorize its officers to do, and did not abolish the common law fleeing felon rule as state substantive law for private persons. It could not have, because no private conduct was in front of it.

New York Penal Law 35.30(4)(b) lets a private person use deadly physical force to arrest someone who has committed one of five named violent felonies and is in immediate flight, a list chapter 8 quotes. Garner does not reach it, because a private person acting on his own account is not the state. The catch is "has committed," not "is reasonably believed to have committed." A guard who shoots a fleeing man, reasonably but wrongly believing he robbed the store, gets nothing from it.

The Constitution restrains government, not a contract guard

Constitutional limits run against government actors, a rule old and unambiguous. In Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 United States 465 (1921), the Supreme Court said at page 475 that the Fourth Amendment protects against governmental action, a restraint upon sovereign authority, not upon other than governmental agencies.

Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Company, 457 United States 922 (1982), supplies the two part test for attributing private conduct to the state: the deprivation must flow from a right or privilege the state created or a rule of conduct it imposed, and the party charged must fairly count as a state actor. Chapter 10 quotes both prongs and works the four tests answering the second.

Four fact patterns make a guard a state actor

Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 428 F.3d 629 (Sixth Circuit 2005), held a Michigan licensed private security police officer with statutory arrest authority a state actor:

Where private security guards are endowed by law with plenary police powers such that they are de facto police officers, they may qualify as state actors under the public function test.

Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 428 F.3d 629 (Sixth Circuit 2005)

The statutory hook was Michigan Compiled Laws 338.1080, which lets a licensed private security police officer arrest without a warrant as public peace officers may, but only on the employer's premises, only during hours of employment, and only in the employer's full uniform.

The court set ordinary private security guards apart, because their powers are the ordinary citizen's. Of the guard in Wade v. Byles, a 1996 Seventh Circuit case chapter 10 takes up in full, the court said the state had reserved none of his powers to the police: citizen's arrests and the rights to carry handguns and use them in self defense belong to individuals outside law enforcement. That guard could carry a handgun, arrest for criminal trespass pending police arrival, use deadly force in self defense, check identification, and remain in lobby areas.

The second route is the moonlighting officer. In Chapman v. Higbee Company, 319 F.3d 825 (Sixth Circuit 2003, en banc), a department store security officer moonlighting as an off duty sheriff's deputy, in full uniform with badge and sidearm, partially strip searched a customer. The full court reversed summary judgment: a reasonable jury could fairly attribute to the state a strip search an armed, uniformed sheriff's deputy began. The same opinion cautions the other way, because investigating a crime does not by itself make a private officer's actions state action.

The third route is joint action with police under Lugar. A guard who detains at an officer's direction, or acts in concert with responding officers, crosses the line.

A fourth pattern is statutory and rarer. Virginia Code 19.2-13 lets a circuit court judge appoint special conservators of the peace, and an appointee who completes the minimum training standards may effect arrests using up to the force a Commonwealth law enforcement officer could use, expressly setting a private security force standard at the police level.

No case says it in exactly those words

No published opinion I could locate holds, in so many words, that Graham v. Connor does not supply the standard for a private security officer's use of force. State that absence to the court rather than papering over it. The proposition rests on a chain you cite as a chain: Burdeau, that the Fourth Amendment restrains government only; Lugar, the fair attribution test; Wade v. Byles, that an ordinary armed contract guard's powers are not exclusively the state's; and Romanski, by negative implication, that plenary police powers conferred by law make a guard a de facto officer.

Secondary authority runs the same way. David Alan Sklansky, "Private Police and Democracy," 43 American Criminal Law Review 89 (2006), calls the exemption of private police from the constitutional rules governing public law enforcement a persistent theme, and names what constrains private policing instead: statutes, agency regulation and oversight, and tort duties courts create.

What law governs the private guard instead

Post orders and the security contract matter in litigation and are not law. Violating one is evidence of breach, not a tort, and complying is no defense to an unlawful shooting. A contract telling a guard to protect the client's inventory does not enlarge what the penal code lets him do.

The guard gets neither the deference nor the authority

For the plaintiff, because the guard is not a state actor: no seizure claim, no Fourth Amendment claim, no attorney's fee award under the federal civil rights fee statute, no probable cause requirement, no departmental policy carrying the force of a standard, and no internal affairs file. He has instead a battery claim, a negligence claim against the employer, and a discovery fight over training records.

Police curriculum trains a guard to the wrong standard

The guard usually gets police training, from a retired police officer, on a police use of force continuum teaching Graham's three factors and Garner's fleeing felon exception as though a court would apply them to him.

That curriculum teaches a student he may use force reasonably proportionate to resistance to accomplish a lawful seizure. Close to true for a police officer. For a guard it is false twice over. He usually holds no authority to seize, so the lawful objective at the base of the ladder does not exist, and the court will not ask whether his response matched the subject's resistance. It will ask whether he reasonably believed deadly force immediately necessary to prevent death or serious bodily harm, a narrower question.

The language migrates through regulation too. California's Bureau of Security and Investigative Services requires Power to Arrest training before it registers a security officer, and the curriculum text it posts lists objectively reasonable force, force options, restraint techniques and their implications, laws and standards regarding use of deadly force, avoidance of deadly force, and ethics in citizen arrest. "Objectively reasonable" is Graham's phrase, imported by a state agency into a private guard curriculum, carrying none of Graham's protections.

Texas Occupations Code 1702.1675 requires a basic training course of at least thirty hours covering handgun proficiency, self defense tactics, weapons laws, deadly force regulations, nonviolent dispute resolution, secure handgun storage, and safety, plus range instruction, of which at least ten and no more than fifteen hours must run in person from an approved on site instructor. The state mandates instruction about deadly force law and supplies no deadly force standard for guards; that comes from Penal Code chapter nine, reaching everyone in Texas. Statute and rule carry two numbers: thirty hours in the statute, forty five minimum in the rule's Level III commissioned officer course, the figure table 3.1 reports.

Pull the lesson plans, the slides, the handouts, the written test, the signed acknowledgment, and the instructor's background. If they cite Graham or Garner, teach a continuum, or use the words "suspect," "subject control," or "officer safety," the employer taught this man a police standard and put him on a post where that standard would not protect him.

Chapter 6

Self-Defense and Defense of Others

Self defense is not one rule but a stack of requirements, and the guard's justification fails if any one fails. Names and wording differ by state, but the structure holds well enough that an investigator can work it in any jurisdiction and know what evidence he needs before he knows which statute applies.

The elements every state uses under different names

Deadly force means any force creating a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury, which captures conduct a guard does not think of as deadly force, including a warning shot, which Illinois counts as force likely to cause death or great bodily harm at 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-8.

What the Model Penal Code actually says

The Model Penal Code, from the American Law Institute, is law nowhere by itself. It is the template most modern penal codes copied, and it teaches the architecture of the statute in front of you.

Section 3.04 limits deadly force to four named harms

the use of deadly force is not justifiable under this Section unless the actor believes that such force is necessary to protect himself against death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping or sexual intercourse compelled by force or threat.

Model Penal Code section 3.04, American Law Institute

The Code writes the retreat trigger as knowledge, not opportunity:

the actor knows that he can avoid the necessity of using such force with complete safety by retreating or by surrendering possession.

Model Penal Code section 3.04, American Law Institute

The actor need not retreat from "his dwelling or place of work," unless he was the initial aggressor, and at the place of work the Code adds a qualification where the assailant is a coworker. Peace officers in performance of duty keep the protection too.

Connecticut codifies the same idea at General Statutes 53a-19(b). Textually a guard working a post is at his place of work, and I located no case applying it to a contract officer at a client's site. Chapter 9 briefs the open question and the parallel gap under Texas Penal Code 9.32(b).

Section 3.05 gives the rescuer a three part test

The Code relaxes retreat for the rescuer. He need not retreat before using force to protect another, "unless he knows that he can thereby secure the complete safety of such other person."

Section 3.06 draws the property line at nondeadly force

The Code permits nondeadly force where "the actor believes that such force is immediately necessary" to prevent unlawful entry onto land or the carrying away of property. It justifies deadly force only on one of two beliefs: that the other is dispossessing the actor of his dwelling without a claim of right, or that he is attempting or consummating arson, burglary, robbery, or other felonious theft or property destruction. In the second case the other must also have employed or threatened deadly force, or nondeadly force must expose someone to substantial danger of serious bodily harm. Chapter seven takes that limit apart.

Section 3.09 covers mistake, recklessness, and injury to bystanders

Its full title is "Mistake of Law as to Unlawfulness of Force or Legality of Arrest; Reckless or Negligent Use of Otherwise Justifiable Force; Reckless or Negligent Injury or Risk of Injury to Innocent Persons."

Subsection (1) removes the justification where the actor errs about the unlawfulness of the force he resists, or the lawfulness of an arrest he endeavors to effect by force, and the error "is due to ignorance or mistake as to the provisions of the Code, any other provision of the criminal law or the law governing the legality of an arrest or search." A guard who believed he could stop and hold a departing customer, and could not, sits inside it.

Subsection (2) is the reckless belief provision. Where the actor is "reckless or negligent in having such belief or in acquiring or failing to acquire any knowledge or belief which is material to the justifiability of his use of force," he loses the justification in a prosecution for an offense for which recklessness or negligence suffices.

Read subsection (2) with an eye on "failing to acquire any knowledge." It reaches backward into everything the guard did and did not do to learn what he was walking into. That is how a prosecutor charges the shooting of a man holding a telephone as manslaughter rather than letting justification end it.

Subsection (3) is the bystander provision. Where the actor "recklessly or negligently injures or creates a risk of injury to innocent persons," the justification does not carry over to them. A shot justified as to the aggressor carries none as to the bystander hit behind him.

Who must prove self defense, and how much

The allocation varies, and the Constitution permits it to. Martin v. Ohio, 480 United States 228 (1987), decided five to four, held that the Due Process Clause does not forbid Ohio to place the burden of proving self defense on a defendant charged with aggravated murder. So a state may put persuasion on the defendant.

Ohio then changed the rule by statute, and its current text is the cleanest statement of the majority allocation:

A person is allowed to act in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence. If, at the trial of a person who is accused of an offense that involved the person's use of force against another, there is evidence presented that tends to support that the accused person used the force in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence, the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused person did not use the force in self-defense, defense of another, or defense of that person's residence, as the case may be.

Ohio Revised Code 2901.05(B)(1)

Most states now run the same way: the defendant carries a burden of production, enough evidence to earn the jury instruction, and the prosecution then disproves the defense beyond a reasonable doubt. Verify state by state, because Martin makes the other allocation lawful. Several stand your ground states add a pretrial immunity motion, and legislators in Florida and elsewhere have amended the burden on it repeatedly. Pull the current text.

Defense of others is the guard's ordinary situation

Two rules govern the rescuer who guesses wrong

Under the older common law alter ego rule, the intervenor steps into the shoes of the person he defends. If that person held no privilege, because he was the initial aggressor, or because the apparent attacker was a plainclothes officer making a lawful arrest, the intervenor loses the defense entirely, however honest his own mistake. He acts at his peril.

Under the modern reasonable belief rule, the court judges the intervenor on the circumstances as he reasonably believed them. Texas Penal Code 9.33 is the clean statutory example, justifying force to protect a third person where, on the circumstances as the actor reasonably believes them, sections 9.31 or 9.32 would justify that force to protect himself and he reasonably believes his intervention immediately necessary. Model Penal Code section 3.05 follows the same model, and Ohio Revised Code 2901.05(B)(1), quoted above, covers defense of another with the burden on the prosecution.

A guard responding to a fight in progress arrives after the start. He sees one person on top of another and does not know who started it, the fact neither rule lets him escape. Either way the same evidence decides the case: what the guard could see, from where, for how long, and who told him what before he acted. Capture it in that order and capture it early, because sight lines change and witnesses scatter.

What the Restatement can and cannot tell you

The Restatement (Second) of Torts states the civil side of these privileges at sections 63 through 79. I verified only part of it, and this book says which. The titles I verified are section 63, "Self-Defense By Force Not Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm"; section 65, "Self-Defense By Force Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm"; section 77, "Defense of Possession by Force Not Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm"; and section 85, the mechanical device section Katko v. Briney quotes and the next chapter discusses.

Section 65, read in an educational reproduction rather than the Institute's own text, recognizes a privilege to use force likely to cause death or serious bodily harm where the actor reasonably believes himself in peril of death or serious bodily harm that only the immediate use of such force can safely prevent. It imposes no duty to retreat when the assailant attacks him within his own dwelling that is not also the assailant's, when he prevents intrusion upon or dispossession of that dwelling, and when he effects a lawful arrest, the exception a guard making a lawful arrest sits inside.

An acquittal does not end the civil case

A guard the state never charges, or charges and fails to convict, can lose a civil trial on identical facts, for structural reasons.

A declination letter says the office could not disprove justification beyond a reasonable doubt to a unanimous jury. It does not call the shooting reasonable, does not reach the employer's conduct, and says nothing about whether anyone should have armed, posted, or dispatched the guard.

Run the elements before you argue the shot

The shoplifting detention ends on proportionality

A contract officer at a big box store watches a man conceal merchandise and pass the registers. The officer stops him at the door and takes hold of his arm. The man swings. The officer draws and fires.

Start with authority, not with the shot. The merchant detention statutes chapter 8 sets out shield the holding and grant no force authority, and California Penal Code 490.5(f)(2) says so in terms, allowing only a reasonable amount of nondeadly force.

Imminence arrives at the swing and not before. Proportionality ends the case. A fist is not deadly force unless something else makes it so, a disparity of force, a weapon, a position on the ground, and the officer must articulate it. Necessity asks what lay within arm's length, including letting go. The initial aggressor question is live, because the officer started the physical contact. In a strict private arrest state he must also be right that the shoplifter committed a qualifying offense. If a customer stood four feet behind, section 3.09(3) puts the round that missed into a separate analysis carrying no justification.

The merchandise is irrelevant to all of it. That is chapter seven.

Nobody told the escort officer anything

In the hospital escort of the introduction and chapter 4, the officer sat beside the visitor over an hour while others in the building learned there were guns in the room and said nothing to him.

Run that through section 3.09(2), the reckless belief provision, and notice which way it points. The officer formed his beliefs on almost no information, and did nothing reckless in acquiring or failing to acquire knowledge, because the knowledge existed and the people holding it kept it from him. Had he used force, a court would have judged him on the circumstances as he reasonably believed them, and he believed he sat with a difficult visitor.

The recklessness belongs to the hospital and the guard force, not the officer. That is a negligence question, not a justification question, and it is why the civil and criminal cases go different places on the same facts.

Chapter 7

Property Is Not Worth a Life

Almost no American jurisdiction lets a person use deadly force to protect property alone, not his own and not the property his employer hired him to watch. The rule is old, and the criminal codes and the law of torts state it in the same terms. It is also the rule these incidents break most.

A device may not do what its owner could not

Katko v. Briney, 183 N.W.2d 657 (Iowa 1971), decided February 9, 1971, is the canonical statement. The Brineys owned an unoccupied, boarded up farmhouse that bottle hunters had broken into repeatedly. They rigged a twenty gauge shotgun in a bedroom, wired to fire when the door opened. Katko broke in to take antique bottles. The shotgun fired and took off much of his right leg.

The reasoning comes from Restatement (Second) of Torts section 85. The value of human life and limb so outweighs a possessor's interest in land that he may not install a deadly mechanical device to protect it, and cannot do through a device what he could not do in person. The landowner standing in that bedroom could not lawfully have shot a man for taking bottles, so the device he set holds no more authority.

Substitute a guard for the spring gun and nothing changes. The possessor placed him there to protect the property, so he cannot use more force in its defense than the possessor could in person, and in most states the possessor could use none.

The rule almost everywhere: nondeadly force only

Chapter 6 sets out Model Penal Code section 3.06: nondeadly force to prevent unlawful entry or the carrying away of property, deadly force only in the dwelling dispossession case and the enumerated felony case.

The state codes are, if anything, tighter for a private person acting in an arrest. Illinois, at 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-6(a), permits a private person making a lawful arrest force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only where he reasonably believes it necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another. New York Penal Law 35.30(4), which chapter 5 sets out, carries no property exception either, and neither does the Illinois section. California Penal Code 490.5(f)(2) allows a merchant only a reasonable amount of nondeadly force during a detention, an explicit cap that decides the California case before the argument starts.

Georgia repealed its general citizen's arrest statute in 2021, replacing it with narrow category specific detention authorities at Official Code of Georgia Annotated 17-4-80, one of which names licensed security officers and private detectives. It then wrote the force limit into the same section:

Except in circumstances involving use of force in defense of self or others, involving use of force in defense of a habitation, or involving use of force to prevent the commission of a forcible felony, a person acting pursuant to this Code section shall not use force which is intended or likely to cause great bodily harm or death, but may use reasonable force to the extent that he or she reasonably believes is necessary to detain an individual.

Official Code of Georgia Annotated 17-4-80(d)(2)

Georgia legislators wrote that subsection after a killing. It is one of only two statutes I located stating a force rule for private security officers.

Texas is the exception

Section 9.41 supplies the baseline, justifying a person in lawful possession of land or tangible, movable property in using force when and to the degree he reasonably believes it immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other's trespass or unlawful interference. Subsection (b) permits force to recover land or property if the actor acts immediately or in fresh pursuit and reasonably believes the other had no claim of right, or took possession by force, threat, or fraud.

Section 9.42 supplies the deadly force authority:

A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property: (1) if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41; and (2) when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary: (A) to prevent the other's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime; or (B) to prevent the other who is fleeing immediately after committing burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime from escaping with the property; and (3) he reasonably believes that: (A) the land or property cannot be protected or recovered by any other means; or (B) the use of force other than deadly force to protect or recover the land or property would expose the actor or another to a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury.

Texas Penal Code section 9.42

Section 9.43 fits a security guard exactly

Section 9.43 extends all of it to third party property:

A person is justified in using force or deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if, under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force or deadly force to protect his own land or property and: (1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or (2) the actor reasonably believes that: (A) the third person has requested his protection of the land or property; (B) he has a legal duty to protect the third person's land or property; or (C) the third person whose land or property he uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor's spouse, parent, or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor's care.

Texas Penal Code section 9.43

Read subsections (2)(A) and (2)(B) next to a security contract. Hiring the guard is a request for protection of the property, and a court can read the contract and the post orders to create a legal duty to protect it. With section 9.42's nighttime theft and criminal mischief triggers, a Texas guard can in principle assert a deadly force justification for a client's property at night that exists almost nowhere else.

Section 9.42(3) still requires a reasonable belief that no other means could protect or recover the property, or that nondeadly force would create a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury. Where the guard could have photographed a license plate, called police, kept the door closed, or pulled the video, that element is hard to satisfy, and it is the one to attack. The nighttime qualifier attaches to theft and criminal mischief only, so section 9.42 authorizes shooting a daytime shoplifter in Texas no more than in California.

One policy manual, fifty different answers

A national or regional guard company runs one policy manual, one orientation deck, and one annual refresher across every state it operates in. The law under those officers is not one law.

Texas, Georgia, California, and Illinois each answer differently, on the statutes above and in chapter 9. New York's surviving fleeing felon rule even turns on whether the fleeing person actually committed one of five felonies, which the officer cannot know when he must decide.

One sentence in a national manual cannot be correct in all of those places at once. When the company produces it in discovery, ask which state's law its author wrote to, then whether it ever issued a state supplement.

The triggering event is almost always trivial

I examined thirty four matters in detail for this book. An administrative rule of no consequence almost always started the sequence: a drink carried out of a bar, a coronavirus occupancy limit at a door, a refusal of entry, a trespass warning, a shoplifting stop, an open door alarm. In the fatal retail cases the dollar value was small and always in evidence. One began with roughly fifteen dollars of candy.

Not one of the twenty five matters in the second incident set began with a reported violent felony in progress.

Two related patterns come from the same research. The shot usually lands after the guard has won or lost control, so it accomplished nothing: a man already on the ground and released, a man already running away and shot in the back. Drawing is itself an escalation. In at least one confirmed matter the guard drew during a fight, and a person who had not been shooting immediately shot him.

Every one of those triggering events is a property or policy interest, and none supports deadly force in any state.

Chapter 8

Citizen's Arrest and the Merchant's Privilege

In many states a private person who arrests another for a felony that never happened is liable. His belief may have been reasonable, he may have acted in good faith, and the law would have protected a police officer on the same facts; if the felony did not in fact occur he is a trespasser to the man he grabbed. An unlawful detention turns every ounce of force used during it into unprivileged force, and strips him of the argument that he was lawfully doing his job when the fight started.

Probable cause protects a police officer and not a guard

The common law rule is old and still the starting point. A private person may arrest for a felony committed outside his presence, and for a misdemeanor or breach of the peace only in his presence.

Beyond the mistaken felony, the private arrest risks the misidentified suspect, which some states forgive on reasonable cause and others do not. A guard who chases the wrong man after a real robbery stands differently from one chasing the right man after a robbery that never happened.

The states split on what the guard has to be right about

New York states the strict rule most cleanly. New York Criminal Procedure Law section 140.30(1) permits any person to arrest another "for a felony when the latter has in fact committed such felony," and "for any offense when the latter has in fact committed such offense in his presence." Subdivision (2) adds a geographic limit: a felony arrest anywhere in the state, a non felony arrest only in the county.

California Penal Code section 837 looks softer than New York's and is not. A private person may arrest for a public offense committed or attempted in his presence, when the person arrested has committed a felony although not in his presence, or "[w]hen a felony has been in fact committed, and he has reasonable cause for believing the person arrested to have committed it." The third subdivision gives a reasonable cause safe harbor as to who did it, and still demands a felony in fact.

Illinois and Ohio sit in the other group. Under 725 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/107-3, "[a]ny person may arrest another when he has reasonable grounds to believe that an offense other than an ordinance violation is being committed." Ohio Revised Code section 2935.04 permits a private arrest "[w]hen a felony has been committed, or there is reasonable ground to believe that a felony has been committed," by any person who "has reasonable cause to believe" the arrestee is guilty, to "detain him until a warrant can be obtained."

Texas is its own category. Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 14.01(a) allows "[a] peace officer or any other person" to arrest without a warrant "when the offense is committed in his presence or within his view, if the offense is one classed as a felony or as an offense against the public peace." It requires presence for every private arrest, and defines the reachable offenses broadly.

In presence is a factual question the guard usually loses

Where the statute requires presence, the guard must have perceived the offense himself. That excludes much of what generates guard detentions: a dispatch call, a cashier's report, a manager's accusation, a still image handed over at shift change, recorded video. Whether a guard watching a live closed circuit television feed is "present" is a genuine fight that state's cases answer. Assume nothing either way.

The arrest privilege almost never reaches deadly force

Even a lawful private arrest buys narrow force, most states capping it at non deadly.

New York routes the question through two statutes. Criminal Procedure Law section 140.35(3) allows a private arrester "such physical force as is justifiable pursuant to subdivision four of section 35.30 of the penal law." Penal Law section 35.30(4) permits non deadly force as reasonably necessary to arrest or prevent the escape of a person who has in fact committed an offense, and deadly physical force only against what the actor reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of deadly physical force, or to:

Effect the arrest of a person who has committed murder, manslaughter in the first degree, robbery, forcible rape or forcible criminal sexual act and who is in immediate flight therefrom.

New York Penal Law section 35.30(4)(b)

That is a surviving fleeing felon deadly force rule for private persons, narrower than it looks: as chapter 5 sets out, it keys to the arrestee having actually committed one of the five, not to the guard's belief.

Illinois is flatter. As chapter 7 sets out, 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-6(a) allows a private person making a lawful arrest force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only where he reasonably believes it necessary to prevent the same, with no property exception and no fleeing felon exception.

Washington takes the same shape from another direction. Revised Code of Washington section 9A.16.020 makes force lawful in three situations: when a person arresting a felon necessarily uses it delivering him to a public officer; when a person uses it to prevent an offense against the person or a malicious trespass, and "the force is not more than is necessary"; and when a person uses reasonable force "to detain someone who enters or remains unlawfully in a building or on real property," the detention being "reasonable in duration and manner."

The pattern across all of them: the arrest power stops and holds, and self defense law, not arrest law, answers the deadly force question. A guard whose only justification is that the man he shot was under arrest and would not stay has none.

Georgia repealed its citizen's arrest statute and kept security officers

In 2021, after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, Georgia repealed Official Code of Georgia Annotated section 17-4-60, its general citizen's arrest statute. House Bill 479 created a new Article 5 in Title 17, Chapter 4, "Detention by Private Persons," holding one section, Official Code of Georgia Annotated section 17-4-80.

Five narrow detention authorities replaced it:

The detainer must release the person or, within a reasonable time, contact law enforcement and surrender him with his belongings. Subsection (d)(2), which chapter 7 quotes, then does what almost no other state statute does, writing a force ceiling for private detention into the text. Subsection (d)(1) preserves any immunity or defense under Article 2 of Chapter 3 of Title 16.

A Georgia security officer holds a detention privilege an ordinary Georgian no longer has, and a force ceiling in the same section.

Georgia separately lets nuclear power facility security officers threaten or use force in defense of a federally licensed facility and the people in it, and search and detain under imminent threat, at Official Code of Georgia Annotated section 17-4-20(f).

The merchant's privilege buys time, not a gun

They share a structure: the elements above, plus purposes limited to recovering the property, investigating, and summoning police. They shield the holding and almost never authorize deadly force.

California says so out loud. California Penal Code section 490.5(f)(1) lets a merchant detain a person "for a reasonable time for the purpose of conducting an investigation in a reasonable manner" on probable cause that he has taken or is attempting to take merchandise unlawfully. Subdivision (f)(2) then caps the force:

[The merchant may use] a reasonable amount of nondeadly force necessary to protect himself or herself and to prevent escape of the person detained or the loss of tangible or intangible property.

California Penal Code section 490.5(f)(2)

Subdivision (f)(4) allows a limited, reasonable search of packages, shopping bags, handbags, and other property in the person's immediate possession, expressly excluding clothing. Subdivision (f)(7) makes probable cause plus reasonable conduct a defense in a civil action.

Ohio's is typical of the rest:

A merchant, or an employee or agent of a merchant, who has probable cause to believe that items offered for sale by a mercantile establishment have been unlawfully taken by a person, may, for the purposes set forth in division (C) of this section, detain the person in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time within the mercantile establishment or its immediate vicinity.

Ohio Revised Code section 2935.041(A)

Division (C) limits the purposes to recovering the property, causing an arrest by a peace officer, obtaining an arrest warrant, and offering pretrial diversion while informing the person of other remedies. Related divisions extend the privilege to libraries, museums, and archival institutions.

Texas is the one to read closely in a contract guard case, for who it covers:

A person who reasonably believes that another has stolen or is attempting to steal property is privileged to detain that person in a reasonable manner and for a reasonable time to investigate ownership of the property.

Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code section 124.001

The statute says "[a] person," not "a merchant." A contract guard who is neither the store's employee nor its agent falls inside the Texas privilege on its text, which is not true everywhere.

Florida Statutes section 812.015(3) extends detention authority on probable cause to law enforcement officers, merchants, merchants' employees, farmers, and transit agency employees and agents. The detention must run "in a reasonable manner for a reasonable length of time," and one meeting the statute leaves the detainer neither criminally nor civilly liable for false arrest, false imprisonment, or unlawful detention. It grants no force. New York General Business Law section 218 is a defense statute, not a grant of authority, answering claims for false arrest, false imprisonment, unlawful detention, defamation, malicious prosecution, assault, and battery where the detention ran "in a reasonable manner and for not more than a reasonable time" on reasonable grounds.

Which word the guard wrote decides which test applies

Every armed post generates two documents: the daily activity report chapter 4 defines, and an incident report for anything out of the ordinary. In one the guard wrote that he arrested the subject or that he detained him. Those are different legal events.

If he wrote "arrest," the case runs through the private person arrest statutes: did the offense occur, in his presence, in the right class, and what force did the statute permit. If he wrote "detained," it runs through the merchant's privilege or the state's detention statute: probable cause, reasonable manner, reasonable duration, a named purpose, non deadly force. The strict felony rule can decide the first case and mean nothing in the second.

Check the verb, then whether it holds across the daily activity report, the incident report, the radio traffic, the police statement, and the deposition. When those five disagree, the disagreement is the discovery.

Chapter 9

Retreat, Stand Your Ground, and the Post

The retreat question and the presumption question have different answers. The first asks whether the guard owed a duty to retreat before using deadly force. The second asks whether he gets a presumption that his belief in its necessity was reasonable, and it usually does not reach him, belonging to the possessor.

Lawful presence is all stand your ground asks

Modern stand your ground statutes key the privilege to lawful presence, not ownership. A guard on a client's property under a contract is lawfully present, so the analysis ends there.

Texas Penal Code section 9.32(c) provides that a person who has a right to be present where he uses deadly force, who has not provoked the other person, and who is not engaged in criminal activity "is not required to retreat before using deadly force as described by this section." Subsection (d) closes the back door: in weighing whether the belief was reasonable, "a finder of fact may not consider whether the actor failed to retreat."

The castle presumption belongs to the occupant, not the guard

A guard posted at a client site owns no habitation there, and the client possesses the premises. Where he acts for the client's property rather than himself, castle doctrine does not govern. Defense of a third person's property does, in Texas Penal Code section 9.43 and elsewhere narrower.

Some retreat states carve out the place of work

Where a retreat duty still applies, the workplace exception decides the case. Read it first.

Model Penal Code section 3.04(2)(b)(ii) imposes no obligation to retreat from "his dwelling or place of work," unless the actor was the initial aggressor, with a further limitation where the assailant is a co-worker. Connecticut General Statutes section 53a-19(b) tracks it, making deadly physical force unjustifiable if the actor knows he can avoid its necessity with complete safety by retreating, "except that the actor shall not be required to retreat if he or she is in his or her dwelling ... or place of work and was not the initial aggressor." Subsection (c) carries the provocation and initial aggressor bars, with the usual escape hatch for one who withdraws and communicates it.

Restatement (Second) of Torts section 65, which chapter 6 sets out, adds a third route: no duty to retreat when effecting a lawful arrest. One more reason chapter 8's question about the lawfulness of the arrest controls so much of the analysis.

Nobody has answered whether the post is his place of work

The statutes say "place of business or employment" and "place of work." A security company employs the contract guard, the client owns the site, and he often rotates. On the text his post looks like his place of work: his employer sends him there to work, and the statutes speak to the employee, not the owner. I found no case applying that language to a contract security officer at a client site, in Texas under Penal Code section 9.32(b), under the Model Penal Code formulation, or under Connecticut General Statutes section 53a-19(b). That does not make the answer no. It leaves it open.

A warning shot is deadly force by statute

Some armed officers believe a shot into the ground or the air is less than deadly force because the shooter aimed at nobody. The law does not agree, and the Illinois legislature wrote the answer down:

(a) Force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm, within the meaning of Sections 7-5 and 7-6 includes: (1) The firing of a firearm in the direction of the person to be arrested, even though no intent exists to kill or inflict great bodily harm; and (2) The firing of a firearm at a vehicle in which the person to be arrested is riding.

720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-8(a)

Read that with 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-6(a), which limits a private person making an arrest to force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only where he reasonably believes it necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm. In Illinois a warning shot toward a fleeing shoplifter is unlawful force by statutory text, and intent has nothing to do with it.

The National Consensus Policy on Use of Force, published in January 2017 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Fraternal Order of Police, and other national law enforcement bodies, defines deadly force as "[a]ny use of force that creates a substantial risk of causing death or serious bodily injury," then conditions warning shots on three findings at once:

Warning shots are inherently dangerous. Therefore, a warning shot must have a defined target and shall not be fired unless (1) the use of deadly force is justified; (2) the warning shot will not pose a substantial risk of injury or death to the officer or others; and (3) the officer reasonably believes that the warning shot will reduce the possibility that deadly force will have to be used.

National Consensus Policy on Use of Force, section D.3.b, January 2017

The drafters wrote it for sworn police officers, and it is not law. In a guard case it is evidence of custom and practice in protective services, and a benchmark for an expert. Chapter 3 notes the July 2020 revision. Check which edition governed on the incident date.

Most states forbid shooting a person who is fleeing

An ordinary guard shooting has no state actor in it, so Tennessee v. Garner does not supply the rule. The state rule that applies is usually more restrictive than Garner, not less.

Chapter 8 gives the three in full: New York's five enumerated violent felonies actually committed, during immediate flight; Illinois with no fleeing felon exception; and Georgia's three named exceptions, licensed security officers expressly included.

Texas is the outlier. Its Penal Code section 9.42(2)(B) permits deadly force against a person fleeing immediately after burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, or theft during the nighttime, "from escaping with the property." Chapter 7 sets out the counterweight in subsection (3).

Do not shoot at or from a moving vehicle

The consensus policy sets two rules:

Firearms shall not be discharged at a moving vehicle unless (1) a person in the vehicle is threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle; or (2) the vehicle is operated in a manner deliberately intended to strike an officer or another person, and all other reasonable means of defense have been exhausted (or are not present or practical).

Firearms shall not be discharged from a moving vehicle except in exigent circumstances.

National Consensus Policy on Use of Force, sections D.3.c and D.3.d, January 2017

A handgun round does not reliably stop a vehicle, a driver the round hits stops steering, and the vehicle continues with nobody controlling it. Illinois again codifies the point: firing at a vehicle carrying the person to be arrested is deadly force by statute.

Almost no state tells a guard when he may shoot

State private security statutes govern licensing, registration, background checks, uniforms, firearm permits, and training hours, and almost never set a standard for when an officer may use force. That absence is the finding.

I verified five provisions speaking to private security use of force. Three set a standard, and two reach private security officers generally.

A statute handing a private officer police level force authority, as Virginia's does, also supports the chapter 10 argument that he is a state actor.

A court measures a police officer against a constitutional standard and a departmental policy written to it. It measures the guard against the general penal code, which treats him as any citizen, then against three private sources of duty.

In the hotel dispatch, the hotel chose the coverage itself, one unarmed guard for eight hours a day. The desk clerk then sent him to an unknown disturbance on the eighth floor without telling him anything. No statute governed that. The contract and the post orders did.

Chapter 10

When the Guard Becomes the State

An ordinary private security guard, employed by a private company to protect private property, is not a state actor. His shooting is a state tort case: assault, battery, wrongful death, negligent hiring, training, retention, supervision, and negligent entrustment of a firearm. It is no federal civil rights case, because section 1983 of title 42 of the United States Code reaches only one who deprives another of federal rights "under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State." Color of law is an element of the claim, not a defense, and the plaintiff carries it.

A defendant acts under color of state law when he exercises power "possessed by virtue of state law and made possible only because the wrongdoer is clothed with the authority of state law." West v. Atkins, 487 United States 42, 49 (1988). The question is not whether the guard acted like a police officer, but whether the state gave him a power he could not otherwise hold.

The cleanest holding calls it a tort case

In 1992 an armed guard shot a man in the groin during an altercation at a security checkpoint in a Chicago Housing Authority lobby. He worked for a housing authority contractor, holding the narrow powers chapter 5 lists. The Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the defense:

We therefore find that Byles' function as a lobby security guard with the aforementioned limited powers is not traditionally the exclusive prerogative of the state.

If Wade's allegations are true, he may very well have a cognizable tort claim, but it is not one of constitutional dimension.

Wade v. Byles, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 1996

Lugar asks two questions and only the second is hard

Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 United States 922 (1982), set the two part approach for deciding whether private conduct is fairly attributable to the State:

[T]he deprivation must be caused by the exercise of some right or privilege created by the State or by a rule of conduct imposed by the State or by a person for whom the State is responsible.

[T]he party charged with the deprivation must be a person who may fairly be said to be a state actor, either because he is a state official, because he has acted together with or has obtained significant aid from state officials or because his conduct is otherwise chargeable to the State.

Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Co., 457 United States 922 (1982)

A private creditor used Virginia's prejudgment attachment procedure, a state clerk issued the writ, and a sheriff executed it. Joint participation with state officials made the creditor a state actor.

Prong one asks where the guard's authority came from: if only a state statute or a municipal commission gave him power to stop, detain, search, or arrest, it holds. The four tests below answer prong two. Lugar is also the source of the rule that the color of state law and Fourteenth Amendment state action inquiries are coextensive.

Four tests for attributing private conduct to the state

Any one of the four suffices.

Public function. The private party performs a function "traditionally the exclusive prerogative of the State." Marsh v. Alabama, 326 United States 501 (1946), the company town case, is the paradigm. The failures are utility termination, Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 United States 345 (1974); a warehouseman's lien sale, Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 United States 149 (1978); and a private school educating state referred students, Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 United States 830 (1982). This test decides the commissioned guard's case: warrantless arrest power is the exclusive state function, and the delegated power, not security, is the function at issue.

State compulsion. State action exists where the State "has exercised coercive power or has provided such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State." Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 United States 991 (1982). That test rarely helps here: Blum and Jackson together foreclose the argument that heavy licensing and regulation make the private security industry the state.

Nexus and joint action. Nexus asks for "such a close nexus between the State and the challenged action" that the private behavior counts as the State's own. Jackson, 419 United States 345. Joint action asks whether the private party was "a willful participant in joint action with the State or its agents." Dennis v. Sparks, 449 United States 24 (1980); see also Adickes v. S.H. Kress & Co., 398 United States 144 (1970). The recurring patterns: the guard detains a person and summons police who act on his report without investigating; the guard and responding officers jointly restrain him; a corporate policy requires police involvement; or the private security department shares radio channels, reports, and trespass enforcement with municipal police.

Entwinement. Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, 531 United States 288 (2001), held that an association's "nominally private character is overborne by the pervasive entwinement of public institutions and public officials in its composition and workings." Entwinement fits a hybrid: a business improvement district patrol partly staffed by sworn officers, or a private security operation a police department trains, commissions, supervises, and disciplines. The symbiotic relationship variant comes from Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 United States 715 (1961).

The modern narrowing runs against plaintiffs. Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck, decided in 2019, holds "very few" functions are traditional and exclusive government functions: running elections and operating a company town qualify, while administering insurance, running nursing homes, providing special education, resolving disputes, and supplying electricity do not.

Griffin: possess the authority, and purport to use it

Five Black petitioners entered an amusement park in Montgomery County, Maryland, that excluded Black patrons. The park employed Francis Collins as a security officer, and the county had also deputized him. He ordered the petitioners to leave, arrested them when they refused, and the state prosecuted them for criminal trespass. The Supreme Court reversed the convictions:

If an individual is possessed of state authority and purports to act under that authority, his action is state action. It is irrelevant that he might have taken the same action had he acted in a purely private capacity or that the particular action which he took was not authorized by state law.

Griffin v. Maryland, 378 United States 130, 135 (1964)

Possession of state authority and purporting to act under it do the work. Collins wore a sheriff's badge and called himself a deputy sheriff, not a park employee. What did your guard wear, say, show, and write?

Plenary police powers make the guard a state actor

In 2001 a 72 year old woman picked up an abandoned five cent token at a Detroit casino. Security officers, led by a licensed private security police officer, took her to a windowless back office, photographed her, seized the token, and ejected her on a six month ban. The Sixth Circuit held that officer a state actor as a matter of law under the public function test, on the plenary police powers rule chapter 5 quotes and the arrest authority Michigan Compiled Laws section 338.1080 confers:

[T]he plenary arrest power enjoyed by private security police officers licensed pursuant to M.C.L. 338.1079 is a power traditionally reserved to the state alone.

Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 428 F.3d 629 (United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 2005)

Powers the state reserves to itself sit on one side; common law privileges open to anyone outside law enforcement, the merchant's privilege and citizen's arrest from chapter 8, sit on the other. The jury awarded 279.05 dollars compensatory and 875,000 dollars punitive, which the Sixth Circuit remitted to 600,000 dollars with the alternative of a new trial on damages.

The same casino, the same conduct, the opposite result

Lindsey v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 484 F.3d 824 (Sixth Circuit, 2007), involved the same casino. Officers detained seven patrons who had taken abandoned tokens or credits, held them for hours, photographed them, and banned them. The Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment and held these officers not state actors, because the state had never licensed them with statutory arrest authority, leaving them only the ordinary citizen's arrest and shopkeeper's privileges, which do not suffice.

State action turns on the individual officer's legal commission, not on the employer, the uniform, the weapon, or the conduct.

A commission gets a plaintiff past the pleadings, and no further

In Payton v. Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, 184 F.3d 623 (Seventh Circuit, 1999), a man alleged that two hospital security guards holding Chicago special police officer status beat, detained, and arrested him without provocation as he tried to enter an office area. Reversing a dismissal, the Seventh Circuit held the complaint adequately alleged color of state law, because for pleading purposes the ordinance made the guards de facto police on the premises.

Say the posture out loud whenever you cite it: Payton decides a motion to dismiss.

The ordinance is doing all of the work, and it is still in force:

Every special policeman shall conform to and be subject to all the rules and regulations governing police officers of the city, and to such additional rules and regulations as the superintendent of police may make concerning special policemen. Special policemen shall possess the powers of the regular police patrol at the places for which they are respectively appointed or in the line of duty for which they are engaged. Special policemen shall report in person to the superintendent of police at such times and places as may be required by him.

Chicago Municipal Code section 4-340-100

Two phrases matter. "The powers of the regular police patrol" delegates the exclusive state function. "Subject to all the rules and regulations governing police officers of the city" is entwinement evidence.

Which jurisdictions hand private officers police powers

A commission converts a common law privilege any citizen holds into delegated state power, satisfying Lugar prong one and supplying both Romanski's exclusive function and the authority Griffin asks about.

Virginia's statute forecloses the argument that the appointment takes the private employer out of the case:

If any such special conservator of the peace is the employee, agent or servant of another, his appointment as special conservator of the peace shall not relieve his employer, principal or master from civil liability to another arising out of any wrongful action or conduct committed by such special conservator of the peace while within the scope of his employment.

Code of Virginia section 19.2-13

On the state law side the employer stays in. On the federal side the judicial appointment plus state registration is the delegated power evidence a plaintiff needs.

New Orleans is the contrasting structure, in the table's last row: the city rents sworn officers to businesses rather than commissioning private guards, and Louisiana Revised Statutes section 33:2339 makes each assignment "a public record subject to the Public Records Law." When a city picks the officer, sets the rate, takes a fee, and records the assignment, the which hat question below tilts hard toward the public hat, and you get the record without discovery.

Read the state constitution before conceding a private search

Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 United States 465 (1921), which chapter 5 cites for the principle that the Fourth Amendment restrains government alone, also holds the government may keep and use incriminating material a private person obtained through a wrongful search, so long as federal officials played no role. So a court does not suppress what a guard's unlawful search turned up, and a criminal case can proceed against the person he shot at even where his own conduct was tortious.

California went further, once. In People v. Zelinski, 24 Cal.3d 357 (1979), store detectives detained a customer for theft and found heroin in her purse. The California Supreme Court applied the exclusionary rule under article I, section 13 of the state constitution, because "when private security personnel conduct an illegal search or seizure while engaged in a statutorily authorized citizen's arrest and detention of a person in aid of law enforcement authorities, the constitutional proscriptions of article I, section 13 are applicable." Such personnel, the court said, exercise "the coercive power of the state to further a state interest."

A private state actor gets no qualified immunity

Courts treat a guard held a state actor as the state for liability and a private party for immunity.

Wyatt v. Cole, 504 United States 158 (1992), holds "[q]ualified immunity from suit, as enunciated by this Court with respect to government officials, is not available to private defendants" charged with liability under section 1983 of title 42 of the United States Code. The rationales for official immunity, preserving officials' willingness to exercise discretion and attracting qualified public servants, do not reach private parties who "hold no office requiring them to exercise discretion."

Richardson v. McKnight, 521 United States 399 (1997), holds "[p]rison guards employed by a private firm are not entitled to a qualified immunity from suit by prisoners charging a Section 1983 violation." The reasoning is market discipline: a firm competing for a contract, facing insurance, employment, and reputational pressure, needs no immunity to attract or motivate employees. A private security company is the paradigm.

Filarsky v. Delia, 566 United States 377 (2012), is the counterweight, biting where a government agency retains, deputizes, and supervises the individual rather than a firm employing him. A unanimous Court held "a private individual temporarily retained by the government to carry out its work is entitled to seek qualified immunity from suit." It distinguished Richardson as involving "a private firm, systematically organized to assume a major lengthy administrative task (managing an institution) with limited direct supervision by the government, undertaking that task for profit," where Filarsky was an attorney retained for a temporary, specialized engagement.

Both Wyatt and Richardson left open a good faith affirmative defense for private defendants, and its contours are unsettled. The circuits divide, the Sixth, Seventh, Ninth, and Eleventh denying qualified immunity to private state actors and the First, Second, Third, and Fifth permitting it in the surveyed cases. That survey draws almost entirely on prison health care litigation, and I did not verify its citations against the reporters or check developments after 2019. Verify the split in your circuit.

Which hat was the off duty officer wearing

An off duty sworn police officer working a security detail wears two hats. Which one he wore at the moment of the shooting decides five things: whether a federal claim exists, whether he can raise qualified immunity, whether the municipality indemnifies him, which insurer pays, and whether state law makes the private employer vicariously liable. The answer is fact specific and usually a jury question.

The Ninth Circuit asks whether the officer acted or pretended to act officially, invoked his law enforcement status to influence others, and engaged in conduct meaningfully related to his governmental status or duties. Anderson v. Warner, 451 F.3d 1063, 1068 to 1069 (Ninth Circuit, 2006). The Fifth Circuit asks whether he misused official power and whether a connection runs between the victim, the conduct, and his duties. Bustos v. Martini Club, Inc., 599 F.3d 458 (Fifth Circuit, 2010). In Gomez v. Galman, 18 F.4th 769 (Fifth Circuit, 2021), off duty officers who beat a bar patron acted under color of law because they issued direct orders, called for backup, and identified themselves as police.

The cases run both ways. Chapman v. Higbee Co., 319 F.3d 825 (Sixth Circuit, 2003, decided en banc), which chapter 5 sets out, adds one fact that matters here. The en banc court reversed summary judgment: "Because Dillard's policy mandates police intervention in strip search situations, a reasonable jury could very well find that the initiation of a strip search by an armed, uniformed sheriff's deputy constituted an act that may fairly be attributed to the state."

In Bracken v. Okura, 869 F.3d 771 (Ninth Circuit, 2017), a Honolulu police officer worked New Year's Eve security at a hotel restaurant in his police uniform, on the hotel's payroll, not the department's. Hotel guards tackled and allegedly assaulted a guest who entered a restricted area without a wristband while he stood by. The Ninth Circuit denied him qualified immunity because he performed no government duty. He "used his badge of authority in service of a private, non-governmental goal," was "not attempting to stop a crime," and "acted on behalf of the hotel while being paid by the hotel."

As Bracken shows, the color of law question and the qualified immunity question are distinct and can come out opposite ways in the same case.

Can the security company answer for its own policy

Yes as to the theory, no as to respondeat superior.

Where a private entity's employees are state actors, most circuits import Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 United States 658 (1978), whole. The corporation answers for no employee's constitutional torts vicariously, only where its own official policy or custom caused the deprivation.

The leading case is a security case. In Austin v. Paramount Parks, Inc., 195 F.3d 715 (Fourth Circuit, 1999), park employees mistook a guest for someone who had passed a bad check days earlier. Commissioned special police officers detained and questioned her for hours, warrants issued, and a court dismissed the charges nine months later. The Fourth Circuit assumed without deciding that the park was a state actor, then held "a private corporation is liable under Section 1983 only when an official policy or custom of the corporation causes the alleged deprivation." She lost because she could not show the loss prevention manager held final policymaking authority over arrest decisions, which state law vested in the county sheriff. That failure names the issue for discovery.

Judges inside the courts applying Monell to private corporations attack the extension. In Shields v. Illinois Department of Corrections, 746 F.3d 782 (Seventh Circuit, 2014), the panel followed circuit precedent while arguing that the legislative history Monell relied on does not show Congress rejected respondeat superior for corporations, settled common law in 1871. The panel said "a new approach may be needed" and invited en banc reconsideration. The case did not go en banc.

The practical answer: Monell bars respondeat superior only on the federal claim. State law respondeat superior against the security company survives intact and is usually easier to prove, and Virginia says so in the commission statute. Whether a private employer can ever answer vicariously for constitutional torts remains open, and the District of Columbia's leading special police officer case expressly reserved it.

A company that arms a person, clothes him in delegated arrest authority, and trains him for a fraction of the hours the state demands of its own officers is a defendant on that theory anywhere.

Chapter 11

The Employer's Duty Under the General Duty Clause

The duty owed to the guard runs from the guard company that employs him and the client whose property he stands on. Workers' compensation exclusivity swallows most of the first, and Chapter 15 takes that apart.

The federal duty is one sentence long

Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 provides that each employer:

shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.

Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, section 5(a)(1), codified at 29 United States Code section 654(a)(1)

Most forums admit a citation as evidence that the employer recognized the hazard and that a fix existed. A missing citation proves nothing, because the agency carries a heavy burden and loses these cases regularly.

Four elements, and the fourth is feasible abatement

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's own compliance directive CPL 02-01-058, Enforcement Procedures and Scheduling for Occupational Exposure to Workplace Violence, effective January 10, 2017, requires it to establish all four:

1. The employer failed to keep the workplace free of a hazard employees faced.
2. The employer or the industry recognized the hazard.
3. The hazard was causing or was likely to cause death or serious physical harm.
4. A feasible and useful method existed to correct the hazard.

An expert who names no measure, and ties it to no post and no event, testifies to the element the agency loses on, as it did in the only decided case involving a contract guard company.

Agency guidelines supply the benchmark, not a standard

Agency publication 3148-06R 2016, Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers, is a guideline, not a standard, enforceable by nobody on its own. Parties cite it as evidence of industry recognition, and it benchmarks a standard of care opinion, so long as the expert says out loud that it is guidance rather than law.

Its five core program elements, quoted:

1. Management Commitment and Worker Participation
2. Worksite Analysis and Hazard Identification
3. Hazard Prevention and Control
4. Safety and Health Training
5. Recordkeeping and Program Evaluation

Two companion publications follow, 3153 from 2009 on late night retail work and 3976 from November 2019 on taxi driver violence. The agency wrote none of the three for contract security, so an expert applying the five elements to a mall post must say why they transfer: the hazard is the same, and a federal tribunal has now found stranger violence a recognized hazard of guard work. Say that in the report rather than leaving the mismatch for cross examination.

Recognized hazard, vacated citation

In Secretary of Labor v. Professional Security Consultants, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission docket number 22-0597, the agency cited a contract guard company whose exposed employees were security officers. The reported administrative record holds nothing else like it. The company supplies officers to retail stores and shopping malls nationwide, including Boise Towne Square Mall, where a gunman killed the officer on post, Jo Acker, on October 25, 2021. The agency charged under the general duty clause that the company repeatedly exposed officers there to workplace violence hazards and failed to follow its own procedures for interacting with armed individuals while enforcing the mall's code of conduct.

The administrative law judge vacated the citation on December 26, 2024, and the Review Commission made it a final order on January 31, 2025.

On recognition, the agency won. The judge found on a contested record that both this employer and industry experts recognize stranger violence as a hazard of security officer work. That finding supports foreseeability and the recognized hazard element of any state law negligence framing, and forecloses the defense that a guard shooting is unforeseeable as a matter of law.

On abatement, the agency lost all four proposed measures. The judge rejected:

• a written workplace violence program, because the agency reasoned from hindsight and no officer could have known the shooter's mental state in advance;
• a threat management team, because the guard company held no authority over the mall's stakeholders;
• enhanced recordkeeping, because the agency never showed it would have reduced the hazard;
• a no approach policy and retraining, because the evidence did not show better police coordination or more training would have stopped a mass shooting.

The party holding authority over the property's stakeholders is the client premises, where Chapter 15 takes the case.

One affirmed case supplies seven abatement measures

The leading Review Commission level workplace violence decision under the general duty clause is Secretary of Labor v. Integra Health Management, docket number 13-1124, decided March 4, 2019. The employer sent a twenty five year old service coordinator to make home visits to a member whose criminal history included battery, aggravated battery, and aggravated assault, and never disclosed that history to her. On December 10, 2012, the member stabbed her nine times during a home visit. She died the same day.

The Review Commission affirmed the citation. On recognition it wrote that the hazard the Secretary identified is rooted in the very reason for the employer's services, so it arises from the work itself and sits squarely within the general duty clause. Substitute security officer for service coordinator and the sentence holds.

The measures it accepted as feasible abatement are the operative part, because an expert can point to them as approved and tested:

• a written workplace violence prevention program;
• obtaining behavioral histories through background checks;
• identifying individuals with violent histories and communicating that information to staff;
• de-escalation and self defense training;
• mandatory buddy system procedures for high risk situations;
• reliable communication systems for summoning assistance;
• establishing liaison with law enforcement.

Nobody told the officer who he was sitting next to. The guard worked the hotel alone, and the desk clerk did not answer his radio. Neither company had a working relationship with the responding police agency.

Withheld threat wins, generic program loses

In the affirmed case the employer knew one identified dangerous man and sent a lone worker to his house without telling her. In the vacated case nobody had identified anyone, and the agency argued only that a better program would have helped.

Scope the investigation around the withheld known threat from the first preservation letter, not around a missing binder. In the first thirty days, identify every person who held threat information before the shooting, fix the minute each of them acquired it, and name the channel that already existed to carry it to the officer.

In the agency's own architecture the guard is equipment

The compliance directive names four high risk categories for programmed workplace violence inspections: correctional facilities, healthcare and social service settings, late night retail, and taxi driving. Security guarding is not among them, so the agency never looks for workplace violence hazards at guard posts. Officers appear only on the abatement side, as something an employer provides to protect other workers. Its risk factor list for late night retail transfers to a guard post without modification: exchange of money, high crime area, twenty four hour operations, solo work, isolated worksites, sale of alcohol, and poorly lit premises and parking areas.

No federal rule is coming for contract security

The pending rulemaking is Regulation Identifier Number 1218-AD08, Workplace Violence in Health Care and Social Assistance. The agency published a request for information on December 7, 2016 and granted rulemaking petitions in January 2017. A Small Business Advocacy Review Panel under the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act reported on May 1, 2023, and comment on that report, on the preliminary regulatory flexibility analysis, and on the draft regulatory framework ran through July 3, 2023. The Spring 2025 Unified Agenda, published September 4, 2025, then moved the rule from the proposed rule stage to long term actions with the notice date to be determined, and it stayed there in the 2026 edition. No federal workplace violence standard exists, and none is imminent. Even if one issues, it covers health care and social assistance, not contract security.

Chapter 12

The Violence Prevention Plan the Law Now Requires

California Labor Code section 6401.9, enacted by Senate Bill 553 in 2023 and effective July 1, 2024, is the only statute that squarely regulates a contract guard company as an employer owing its own officers protection. Everywhere else the guard sits outside the statute, or inside it as somebody else's safety measure.

California now requires the plan, and it covers guards

The statute defines workplace violence as any act or threat of violence in a place of employment, and sorts it into four types by the perpetrator's relationship to the workplace: the stranger with criminal intent, the customer or client, the coworker, and the person with a personal relationship to an employee. Five categories fall outside it: health care facilities the state's health care violence regulation already covers; corrections facilities complying with the injury and illness prevention program regulation; law enforcement agencies; employees teleworking outside the employer's control; and workplaces with fewer than ten employees at any time that stay closed to the public and comply with that same regulation.

A contract guard company is neither a health care facility nor a law enforcement agency, so no exemption reaches it, including the company posting officers at a California hospital. The health care regulation covers the hospital, section 6401.9 the guard company.

Section 6401.9 requires a written plan available to employees at all times, naming the persons or job titles responsible for carrying it out, with procedures for:

• employee involvement in writing it;
• coordination with other employers on multiemployer worksites;
• accepting and answering reports of workplace violence without retaliation;
• holding supervisors and other employees to the plan;
• talking to employees about workplace violence;
• emergency response, which the statute specifies rather than leaving general: alerting employees to a workplace violence emergency, evacuation or sheltering plans, and getting help from staff, security, or law enforcement;
• training;
• finding and evaluating hazards through scheduled inspections and inspections after any incident;
• correcting hazards promptly;
• post incident response and investigation;
• an annual review of how well the plan works.

Multiemployer coordination and the log's two fields

Subdivision (c) requires procedures to coordinate the plan with other employers on a shared worksite, so the client's failure to share what it knew about a dangerous visitor stops being a lapse in courtesy and becomes the breach of a procedure the law requires somebody to write. Subdivision (d) requires the employer to record, for every incident, the circumstances, expressly including whether the employee worked alone, and the consequences, expressly including whether anyone contacted security or law enforcement and how they responded. Those two fields acknowledge in statute that working alone is a hazard and that the quality of a response to a call for help is worth preserving.

What the violent incident log must record

Every workplace violence incident gets its own log entry, written from information the employer asks the employees involved to supply, and leaving out the names of the people involved. Each entry records:

• the date, time, and location;
• the type of violence by perpetrator relationship;
• a description, and who committed it;
• the circumstances, including whether the employee was doing his usual duties, working in a poorly lit area, working late at night or early in the morning, or working alone;
• where it happened, in the facility, a parking lot, or a vehicle;
• the kind of incident, from physical attack with a weapon down to a threat of force;
• the consequences, including whether anyone called security or law enforcement, how they responded, and what the employer did to protect employees from a continuing threat;
• who wrote the entry and when.

In a California guard shooting the guard company writes this log as events happen, keeps it five years, and records prior violence at the post, whether the officer worked alone, and how anyone responded. Its absence violates the statute.

Train every year, with a person who answers

The statute requires training when the employer first establishes the plan and every year after, covering the plan and how to get a free copy, how to report workplace violence, the hazards specific to the employee's job, the corrective measures in place, how to seek help, and ways to avoid physical harm. It must train again whenever it finds a new hazard or changes the plan.

The training must let employees ask a person who knows the plan and get answers. A computer module with a ten question quiz does not satisfy it. Ask who that knowledgeable person was, what employees asked him, and whether he had ever visited the post.

Records run on four clocks: hazard identification, evaluation, and correction records five years; training records one year, showing dates, contents or a summary, trainer names and qualifications, and the names and job titles of attendees; violent incident logs five years; and incident investigation records five years, excluding medical information. The employer must hand all of it to the state division, to employees, and to their representatives on request.

Two health care provisions nobody cites reach guards

California Code of Regulations, title 8, section 3342 is the state's health care workplace violence standard, phased in with subsections (d) and (h) on April 1, 2017 and subsections (c), (e), and (f) on April 1, 2018. Table 12.1 gives its coverage. Its plan elements largely parallel section 6401.9, including coordination with other employers sharing the facility.

The regulation requires sufficient staffing, including security personnel, to maintain order in the facility, and line of sight or other immediate communication capability. Few American regulations require security staffing as a hazard control at all. Where a hospital cut guard coverage, ran a single officer across a campus, or eliminated an overnight position, cite this section. It is a regulation, not a guideline, and it anchors the failure Chapter 13 describes.

The text does not distinguish contracted from directly employed security staff. The covered facility must address the security function in its plan, section 6401.9 still covers the contract guard company, and both regimes apply at once. General acute care, acute psychiatric, and special hospitals also report to the state division within twenty four hours for incidents involving physical force causing injury or psychological trauma, a firearm or other dangerous weapon, or an urgent threat to personnel safety. Other reportable incidents get seventy two hours. Those date stamped reports are discoverable, and the hospital wrote them before anyone thought about litigation.

New York protects the retail worker, not the guard

The New York legislature enacted Labor Law section 27-e, the Retail Worker Safety Act, in September 2024 and amended it in February 2025, pushing the policy, training, and notice requirements to June 2, 2025. The Act reaches stores selling consumer commodities at retail, excluding food service establishments. The written policy must list the factors or situations that put retail employees at risk, the methods to prevent them, the federal and state protections available, and a statement that retaliation is unlawful. Training runs on hire and every two years under fifty retail employees, on hire and every year at fifty or more, covering de-escalation, active shooter drills, emergency procedures, and how to use security alarms, buttons, and other emergency devices.

The silent response button must sit within easy reach and call for immediate help from a security officer, manager, or supervisor. The original bill wrote a broader panic button reaching emergency services; the amendment narrowed it to an internal call for help. A contract guard posted at a covered store works for the guard company, not the retailer, so the Act does not protect him. It still makes him the person the button summons.

Four more states regulate health care violence

New York Labor Law section 27-b names the risk factors every covered employer must evaluate: public settings, late night or early morning hours, exchanging money, working alone or in small numbers, uncontrolled access, and areas of previous security problems. An employee may give written notice of a violation and, after a reasonable chance to cure, ask the state labor commissioner to inspect.

Under Revised Code of Washington section 49.19.020 the security and safety assessment leads to a plan, reviewed annually, addressing the facility's physical attributes, staffing patterns, staffing sufficiency, job design, security personnel availability, training strategy, high risk areas, emergency and incident reporting procedures, and post incident support. Section 49.19.030 sets the ninety day training deadline, section 49.19.040 the five year record retention, and section 49.19.080, effective January 1, 2026, adds a periodic incident summary filed with the state labor department. The state may cite a noncomplying employer under its industrial safety and health act.

New Jersey's statutes, chapter 236 of the laws of 2007, required a violence prevention committee within six months and a written plan within eighteen months identifying risks including facility layout, access restrictions, lighting, communication systems, staffing levels, and security.

Texas Health and Safety Code chapter 331 arrived with Senate Bill 240 in 2023. Its coverage, in Table 12.1, reaches home and community support services agencies employing at least two registered nurses. Section 331.002 requires a workplace violence prevention committee holding at least one registered nurse in direct patient care, one physician licensed in Texas unless the facility has none, and one security services employee, if available. Section 331.004 requires the plan to define workplace violence to include incidents involving a firearm or other dangerous weapon, and to address annual training, incident response and investigation, physical security measures, and staff input. Section 331.005 requires immediate post incident services, including any necessary acute medical treatment, a response for the injured worker few American statutes require at all.

Oregon Revised Statutes sections 654.412 to 654.423 are the state's health care assault prevention statutes. Note the range: it runs to 654.423, not to 654.416. Section 654.414 requires periodic security and safety assessments; an assault prevention and protection program addressing the facility's physical attributes, staffing plans including security staffing, personnel policies, first aid and emergency procedures, assault reporting, and employee education; and training of new employees within ninety days of hire. Section 654.416 requires assault records for at least five years, one field being the staffing present at the time, the lone worker discovery item in Oregon.

Every one of them treats security as a control

Every statute in the table except California's section 6401.9 and New York's section 27-e is a health care statute, and section 27-b, nominally a public employer statute, does its heaviest work in the public hospital. Each treats security personnel as a control measure rather than a protected worker: Washington lists security personnel availability, Oregon lists security staffing, California requires sufficient staffing including security personnel, and New York makes the guard the person the button calls.

Texas alone seats a security employee on the committee, and only if one is available. California alone regulates the guard company as an employer owing its own officers a plan, a log, training, and coordination with the client. Outside California, the statutory hooks in Part three come from somebody else's statute, and you argue them as evidence of the standard of care, not as a duty the guard company owed.

Chapter 13

The Information He Was Never Given

The duty to tell is a communication duty

Three of the abatement measures Chapter 11 sets out bear on warning: identifying individuals with violent histories and communicating that to staff, obtaining behavioral histories through background checks, and reliable communication systems for summoning assistance.

California Labor Code section 6401.9 requires procedures to communicate with employees about workplace violence, and the violent incident log that records prior ones. California Code of Regulations title 8 section 3203, the injury and illness prevention program regulation, requires training whenever the employer learns of a new or previously unrecognized hazard, and for every employee given a new job assignment without prior training. Oregon's assault prevention statute requires training in factors predicting violent behavior and in obtaining the history of a violent patient. The California health care regulation requires patient specific risk assessment and communication of violence concerns.

None of those statutes says tell the guard.

An hour of warning reached everyone but him

The hospital borrowed an unarmed safety and security officer from another campus and sent him to help remove a hostile visitor from a birthing unit. Over the three days before that morning, the visitor had interfered with care, tried to force an operating room door, punched toward a nurse, and told a nurse that if staff kept acting that way, someone was going to get killed. A nurse hit a panic alarm. Nurses and guards filed five incident reports in two reporting systems in two days, and not one reached anyone who made security decisions.

The officer sat beside the visitor for more than an hour. Twenty four minutes in, guards searching the visitor's room found two firearms and ammunition in a duffel bag. Twenty six minutes later, the visitor's partner told a guard there was a third gun and the visitor probably carried it. That guard told other employees there was a ninety nine percent chance he carried it. Nobody told the officer sitting next to him. Nobody called an emergency code, because the lead guard who held that authority had never called one and did not know how.

Forty two minutes after the guards found the guns, the officer, still uninformed, said he needed to pat the visitor down. The visitor said he would leave instead, and the officer started walking him out. Other staff pursued and stopped them in a corridor. The visitor turned and shot the officer in the neck. Nobody rendered aid for eight minutes. The officer died.

He had no post orders for a unit he had never worked, no orientation to the campus, and no second officer in the room. The people forty feet away who held the third gun information never used it, and when the visitor shot him, nobody had a plan for treating him.

Why the pat down proves nobody told him

No unarmed officer knowingly starts a hands on search of a subject he believes is carrying a gun. The search is the moment the subject learns the officer is about to take his weapon and decides what to do about it. Nobody creates that moment alone, in a room, with no cover, no backup, and no plan. He waits, he withdraws, or he calls for people who can control the weapon.

So when a report puts an unarmed officer's hand on a subject's waistband, it tells you what he was thinking. He thought this was an escort. That corroborates that the ninety nine percent statement never reached him, and it answers the comparative fault argument that he should have handled a known armed man differently.

The hotel dispatch told him nothing at all

A hotel rented rooms without proving identity and issued electronic keys as scannable codes any guest could forward by text. It ran no cameras in the elevators or hallways, and four months after a fatal shooting on the property nothing had changed. The hotel contracted for security and chose the coverage itself: one unarmed guard, eight hours a day.

Two weeks into the assignment, the desk clerk called the guard off his parking lot patrol and sent him to a disturbance on the eighth floor without telling him anything about it. The elevator opened on a hallway full of people shoving and yelling. Two of them fired into a room and shots came back out. The guard took a round through the knee. He radioed the front desk four times, got no answer, rode the elevator down, and crawled into the lobby to ask for first aid.

The desk clerk knew of a disturbance, knew the floor, and almost certainly knew more, because the front desk takes the calls that generate the complaint. The guard got a floor number, then rode an elevator that opens directly into whatever is happening, leaving him no way to approach, observe, or withdraw. His radio transmitted to a desk nobody watched.

Seven failures, and a document proves each one

No post orders for the post he was on

Report this honestly: no federal standard, no consensus standard located in this research, and no state licensing regulation requires written post orders by that name. Chapter 4 sets out the practice and contract authority. Here the company's own paper proves the failure: its written procedures set the standard it answers to, which was the agency's theory in the vacated mall case, and breach of the services agreement clause also shows who held control for Chapter 15.

No orientation to a site he had never worked

California Code of Regulations title 8 section 3203, subsection (a)(7)(C), requires training for every employee given a new job assignment he has not trained for. A guard reassigned to a new post is that employee, so posting him without site specific instruction violates the regulation on its own, with no workplace violence statute needed. Labor Code section 6401.9, the Oregon and Washington ninety day rules, and the guidelines publication's fourth core element all reach the same failure.

One officer where the hazard needed two

The regulation on lone workers is 29 Code of Federal Regulations section 1915.84, and the agency wrote it for shipyards:

(a) Except as provided in section 1915.51(c)(3) of this part, whenever an employee is working alone, such as in a confined space or isolated location, the employer shall account for each employee: (1) Throughout each work shift at regular intervals appropriate to the job assignment to ensure the employee's safety and health; and (2) At the end of the job assignment or at the end of the work shift, whichever occurs first. (b) The employer shall account for each employee by sight or verbal communication.

29 Code of Federal Regulations section 1915.84, Working alone, shipyard employment

That rule does not reach a guard at a mall. Disclose the scope limit and use it for what it is: a federal regulation requiring an employer to account for a lone worker in an isolated location. Chapter 14 sets out the rest of the lone worker authority.

A radio that transmits into an empty room

Table 13.1 names the authorities. Add New Jersey's plan requirement, which names communication systems, and the shipyard rule, which accounts for the worker by sight or verbal communication.

Ask who the company assigned to monitor the console, whether he was doing something else, and what its own answer time standard was.

Dispatch that withholds what it knows

The dispatcher knows a man has a gun, or that police are already rolling, or that the subject has a history at the site, and sends the officer in cold. Table 13.1 names the authorities, one of them the Review Commission's acceptance of liaison with law enforcement, which assumes information flows back to the officer in the field. Preserve every record the table lists, because they measure in seconds the gap between what the dispatcher knew and what he told the officer.

No warning about a known violent history

The affirmed Review Commission decision supports this claim. Substitute a trespasser with three prior armed confrontations at this property for the member with the undisclosed criminal history, and the case transfers cleanly to a guard company that holds a violent incident log full of prior armed incidents at a post and sends a new officer there without telling him. Find the distribution list for each proving record and check whether the officer's name appears.

No medical plan for the officer himself

The guard's medical plan is usually the client's plan, written for customers and the client's own employees. It does not contemplate a guard bleeding in a service corridor or an exterior lot. The federal rule is 29 Code of Federal Regulations section 1910.151:

(a) The employer shall ensure the ready availability of medical personnel for advice and consultation on matters of plant health. (b) In the absence of an infirmary, clinic, or hospital in near proximity to the workplace which is used for the treatment of all injured employees, a person or persons shall be adequately trained to render first aid. Adequate first aid supplies shall be readily available.

29 Code of Federal Regulations section 1910.151

In a letter of interpretation dated January 16, 2007, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration read near proximity as emergency medical services reaching the worker within three to four minutes where breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, or bleeding runs uncontrolled, unless someone on site can render first aid. It allowed up to fifteen minutes in low hazard workplaces such as offices, where serious work related injuries are remote.

A guard post where gunshot wounds are foreseeable is not an office. Ask whether a tourniquet, a pressure dressing, or a hemostatic agent sat within reach, and who could use it, then ask the fire district for the real response time at that address. Texas requires covered facilities to furnish immediate post incident services including necessary acute medical treatment, and Oregon and Washington require the plan to address first aid and emergency procedures.

Chapter 14

Alone, Unarmed, and Unarmored

Budgets decide three safety questions: how many officers work a property, whether they carry, and whether they wear armor. Find out who chose.

The client sets the number of officers and the hours

In the hotel case from Chapter 13, the hotel chose the coverage itself: one unarmed guard, eight hours a day. The guard company quoted it and staffed it. The client sets the number of posts and the hours because the client pays by the hour, and the guard company often proposes more coverage, sometimes in writing. Ask for the original and revised proposals, every scope change, and the internal pricing correspondence.

Armor protects the officer and does nothing about the other man's. Aaron Salter Junior, a retired Buffalo police officer working armed security at Tops Friendly Markets, fired on the gunman on May 14, 2022. His rounds struck the attacker's body armor, and the attacker killed him. Ask what the company knew about the post, and ask the same question about what the officer was expected to stop.

One officer cannot hold a post and respond at the same time, cannot maintain a two person contact and cover approach, and cannot check on himself.

Observe and report describes authority, not hazard

The officer at an observe and report post stands in the same lot at the same hour as an armed officer would, in the same uniform and badge, and the same people approach him for the same reasons. A uniform invites contact.

Measure the staffing model against what the property produced, not what the officer could do about it: the prior calls for service at the address, the client's own incident reports, the violent incident log where a statute requires one, the trespass warning file, and the crime data for the surrounding blocks. Put that record beside the coverage model and the date somebody set it, and a jury can decide whether one unarmed officer for eight hours was reasonable.

What authority reaches the lone worker

The federal shipyard regulation on working alone, quoted in Chapter 13, requires the employer to account for a lone worker at regular intervals through the shift and at the end of it, by sight or verbal communication. Its scope is shipyard employment. Say that limit out loud every time you use it.

Around it: the agency's compliance directive lists solo work and isolated worksites among recognized workplace violence risk factors. New York Labor Law section 27-b requires every covered public employer to evaluate working alone or in small numbers. California requires the violent incident log to record whether the employee worked alone, and its April 2026 draft general industry standard adds working alone to the hazard assessment examples. The Review Commission accepted mandatory buddy system procedures for high risk situations as feasible abatement in the stabbing case.

The question on a lone worker post is whether anybody ever confirmed the officer was still alive during the shift, and the tour data answers it. Pull the tour records, the system's exception reports, and the written escalation rule, then ask what the company's own procedure required when an officer missed a checkpoint and whether anyone did it.

Outside the United States, the British Standards Institution publishes a code of practice on lone worker services, covering devices, alarm receiving center response, and escalation. It is voluntary, foreign, and no evidence of an American standard of care. Confirm the current edition before citing it.

Arming is a separate and higher qualification

The state treats arming as a much higher qualification, which means somebody looked at the post and decided it did not need one. California is representative. Business and Professions Code section 7583.7 requires eight hours of pre assignment training before duty: three hours on the power to arrest and five on the appropriate use of force, each with an examination he must pass at one hundred percent. He then completes thirty two hours of skills training within six months, half of it in four mandatory four hour courses, on public relations, observation and documentation, communication and its significance, and legal aspects and liability, and the rest in electives, among them a four hour course in weapons of mass destruction awareness. He completes eight hours of continuing education every year, at least two on the appropriate use of force. A firearms permit is a separate credential with its own approved course, requiring two range qualifications in each twelve month period, at least four months apart, each preceded by a two hour review of the law of deadly force and de-escalation.

That scheme licenses the person. Nothing in it requires anyone to tell the officer what is dangerous about the site. The workplace violence statute, the injury and illness prevention program regulation, and the contract fill that gap, if anything does.

An armed post costs more, requires a permit and requalification, and carries its own liability. Choosing an unarmed post is therefore a documented, priced, deliberate choice by someone who knew the difference. Ask what he knew about the property when he chose, and put the prior incident history next to the date of his decision.

No American jurisdiction requires armor for private guards

Report this honestly. No jurisdiction located in this research mandates body armor for armed private security officers. State licensing schemes regulate firearms training, permitting, and requalification, not protective equipment. The California scheme just described says nothing about a vest.

Where American law addresses body armor at all, it restricts possession rather than requiring provision. Federal law at 18 United States Code section 931 bars a person convicted of a violent felony from possessing body armor. Several states restrict purchase or possession, and some enhance penalties for wearing armor during a crime. New York restricted purchases in 2022 and expanded those restrictions afterward, and whether licensed security guards fall within its exempt professions has been a moving target. Verify the current statutory text and exemption list in your jurisdiction before writing about it.

Where anything requires armor, the contract does. High risk contracts in armored transport, cannabis, health care security, and critical infrastructure often specify it, and company policy is the other source. Ask whether this officer paid for his own protective equipment.

Which ballistic standard governs the armor he had

The National Institute of Justice publishes the voluntary performance standards the commercial market runs on, and two are operative now. Standard 0101.06, Ballistic Resistance of Body Armor, is the long governing standard, with protection levels IIA, II, IIIA, III, and IV. The institute published Standard 0101.07, carrying the same title, in November 2023 and announced it at 88 Federal Register 83579 on November 30, 2023. Companion document Standard 0123.00, published at the same time, now carries the protection level definitions and replaced the Roman numerals with a new nomenclature.

The transition matters for dating the armor in your case. The compliance testing program stopped accepting applications for new armor models under Standard 0101.06 on January 5, 2024 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Under current guidance the institute will maintain that standard's compliant products list through at least the end of 2029, and it has told wearers to keep the armor they have. Never write that Standard 0101.06 is obsolete: for armor bought before 2024 it governs, and the armor still complies.

Certification is voluntary, and no federal rule requires anyone to certify private security armor. Buyers use it as the benchmark anyway, and uncertified armor on an armed post is a finding on its own.

Ask what they knew about this post

Suppose the guard company or the client knew the post carried an armed encounter risk, its own risk assessment or violent incident log said so, and armor was cheap, available, and in use at comparable posts. The failure to furnish it then raises a feasible abatement question under the general duty clause and a reasonable care question at common law. Ask what the two companies knew about this post, and what comparable operators did about posts like it.

If the guard company issued armor, examine it as evidence. Record the manufacturer and model, the certification level, which version of the standard the laboratory tested it to, the manufacture date and warranty expiration, whether anyone fitted it to this officer, and whether its threat level matched the threat known at the post. Expired armor, wrong sized armor, or handgun rated armor at a post with a documented rifle history is its own claim, depending on no mandate.

Chapter 15

Why the Injured Guard Often Has No Defendant

For most of the failures in Chapters 11 through 14, against most defendants, the remedy is a workers' compensation benefits check. The case turns on whether the plaintiff can sue anyone who was negligent.

The compensation bargain kills the case against the guard company

The guard shot on post gets benefits and, in the ordinary case, nothing more from the guard company. No post orders, no orientation, no radio, no vest, no warning about the man with the duffel bag: all ordinary negligence, and exclusivity bars ordinary negligence against an employer. Negligent training, supervision, equipping, and assignment are the same claim wearing four names, and nearly every state bars all four.

The intentional tort exception, which most states recognize in some form, requires actual intent to injure or, in a minority of states, substantial certainty that injury would follow. A shooting meets neither, because the guard company did not want the officer shot and held no substantial certainty this shooting would happen. Dual capacity, which sues the guard company in a role wholly separate from employer, has narrowed nearly out of existence, though it still merits a look where the guard company also owns or manages the property.

Three doorways, and two of them are jurisdictional

Deliberate intent in West Virginia. West Virginia Code section 23-4-2(d)(2) requires no intent, only five factors: a specific unsafe working condition presenting a high degree of risk and a strong probability of serious injury or death; the employer's knowledge of that condition and the risk; violation of a state or federal safety statute, rule, or regulation, cited or not, or of a commonly accepted and well known safety standard; intentional exposure of an employee to it; and serious compensable injury or death directly caused by it.

The third factor is the doorway. It admits the federal guidelines publication, guard company practice on post orders and lone worker protocols, and the Review Commission's approved abatement measures. A known dead radio zone, or a post with three prior armed robberies and no vest, is a specific unsafe working condition. West Virginia alone lets a failure to warn and failure to equip case against the guard company survive when the five factors line up. Confirm the current statute, which the legislature has amended more than once.

Non subscription in Texas. If the guard company is a non subscriber, the negligent training, negligent equipping, and failure to warn theories run against it directly, and it loses its best defenses.

Uninsured employer statutes. Small and undercapitalized guard companies fail to secure the coverage the law requires more often than anyone expects.

The client may be an employer too

Exclusivity bars the suit against the guard company, the general employer. If the client also qualifies as an employer, it bars the suit against the client too, and no case remains. That is the borrowed servant problem, also called special employment or dual employment.

The leading workers' compensation treatise supplies a three part test. A special employer borrowing an employee owes compensation, and gains the matching immunity, only if all three hold: the employee made a contract of hire, express or implied, with the special employer; the work is essentially the special employer's work; and the special employer holds the right to control the details of that work. Check the section number against the edition you cite, because it has shifted between editions.

Attack the first element first, because it requires the guard's consent. The guard company hired, paid, licensed, and disciplined the officer, and he never agreed to become the client's employee. Many courts add a factor overlay: the nature of the project and the work, the length of the special employment, who furnished the equipment, the acts showing actual control, the right to substitute another employee, and whether the work falls within the normal scope of the general or the special employer's business. Two favor the guard: providing security is the guard company's business, not the shopping mall's, and the guard company keeps the right to substitute another officer.

The more the client's site manager directed the post, the hours, the patrol route, and the response protocol, the stronger its defense on the third element, control over the details of the work. That is the same evidence that proves the client's negligence.

Thread it by separating two kinds of control from the first deposition. The negligence case needs control over risk producing conditions: staffing level, radio system, information flow, physical environment. The immunity defense needs control over the employment relationship: hiring, firing, pay, discipline, and assignment of the individual officer. Keep the pleading and the questions on the first and off the second. The contract usually settles this. Read it early for an independent contractor clause, a clause reserving supervision of officers to the guard company, a clause barring the client from directing the officers' methods, the indemnity and additional insured provisions, and the name of whoever may issue and amend post orders. Then depose the client's site manager on what happened at the post, before anyone reads the contract to him.

The doctrine that leaves nobody owing a duty

Under Privette v. Superior Court (1993) 5 Cal.4th 689, one who hires an independent contractor is presumptively not liable to the contractor's employee for on the job injuries, because the hirer delegates workplace safety to the contractor and the contractor's employee already holds workers' compensation coverage the hirer funds through the contract price. Most reported cases are construction cases, but the courts state the rule for independent contractors generally. A contract security company is an independent contractor and the guard is its employee, so the doctrine applies on its face.

In SeaBright Insurance Company v. US Airways (2011) 52 Cal.4th 590, decided August 22, 2011, an airline hired a contractor to maintain a luggage conveyor that lacked state required safety guards, and the contractor's employee lost the use of his arm in it. The court held:

By hiring an independent contractor, the hirer implicitly delegates to the contractor any tort law duty it owes to the contractor's employees to ensure the safety of the specific workplace that is the subject of the contract.

SeaBright Insurance Company v. US Airways (2011) 52 Cal.4th 590

The court rejected the argument that state occupational safety duties are non delegable. The client hires a guard company to provide security, and the subject of that contract is the safety of that workplace, so under this holding the client delegates its tort duty to keep the workplace safe for the company's own officers, including its occupational safety obligations and, by extension, its workplace violence plan obligations. The guard company then stands behind exclusivity, and absent an exception nobody owes the injured guard a tort duty at all.

Plead the two exceptions in the complaint rather than raising them in opposition to summary judgment.

Retained control, under Hooker v. Department of Transportation (2002) as refined by Sandoval v. Qualcomm (2021). The hirer must have kept control over how the contractor performs the work, limiting its freedom, and must have used that control in a way that affirmatively contributed to the injury. Passive permission is not enough; the conduct must induce or worsen unsafe conditions. Chapters 13 and 14 supply the facts. The client wrote or amended the post orders. Its site manager directed the patrol route, the post location, or the response protocol. It set the staffing level and cut it to one officer. It controlled the radio system and who monitored it. It forbade the officer to carry, to call police, or to leave the post. Its dispatcher withheld what he knew. Each is affirmative contribution rather than passive permission.

Concealed hazard, under Kinsman v. Unocal Corporation (2005) as narrowed by Gonzalez v. Mathis (2021). The hirer answers for a latent hazard it knew or should have known about, that the contractor did not know and could not reasonably have discovered, and that it did not disclose. This is the withheld threat exception. Classic latent hazards: a history of armed confrontations the client knew and did not disclose, a known specific threat, a known dead radio zone, a disabled alarm, a camera system the client knew was not recording. If the guard company knew or should have known, the exception fails, so target discovery at what the client knew that the guard company did not, in its own incident reports, calls for service history, and prior crime data. A third and narrower exception covers defective equipment the hirer supplied: a client provided radio, alarm, access control system, or guard shack.

Oregon opens a door no other state opens

Oregon Revised Statutes section 654.305, the Employer Liability Law, originated in a 1910 ballot measure, three years before the state's workers' compensation act. It survived the compensation bargain and now sits alongside it.

Generally, all owners, contractors or subcontractors and other persons having charge of, or responsibility for, any work involving a risk or danger to the employees or the public shall use every device, care and precaution that is practicable to use for the protection and safety of life and limb, limited only by the necessity for preserving the efficiency of the structure, machine or other apparatus or device, and without regard to the additional cost of suitable material or safety appliance and devices.

Oregon Revised Statutes section 654.305

Every device, care, and precaution that is practicable, with added cost irrelevant, asks more than reasonable care. Contributory negligence is not a complete defense.

A defendant who is not the guard's direct employer answers under the statute on any one of three disjunctive tests: he and the direct employer shared a common enterprise, he kept the right to control the manner or method of the risk producing activity, or he actually controlled it. Miller v. Georgia-Pacific Corporation, 294 Or. 750, 662 P.2d 718 (1983), supplies the framework, refined in Brown v. Boise-Cascade Corporation, 150 Or.App. 391, 946 P.2d 324 (1997). A common enterprise exists where the defendant's operations are integral to the work and he had charge of, or responsibility for, the activity or instrumentality that caused the injury.

The statute does not override the direct employer's immunity, so the guard company stays protected. It lets the injured guard take compensation benefits and at the same time sue the indirect employer, the owner or controlling entity, in tort under the heightened standard. Other states either immunize everyone in that position or allocate liability by fault.

The Oregon statute reaches any work involving a risk or danger, not construction alone. New York's non delegable labor law provisions are construction statutes and do not reach a security post. Everywhere else the substitute is retained control under Restatement (Second) of Torts section 414: one who entrusts work to a contractor but keeps control of any part of it answers for physical harm his careless exercise of that control causes. It maps onto the second and third Oregon tests under ordinary reasonable care rather than every device, care, and precaution. Two other routes remain: the possessor of land's duty to an invitee, and the federal multiemployer worksite enforcement doctrine, which creates no private right of action but frames the argument well.

The firefighter's rule turns on who paid

The firefighter's rule, also called the professional rescuer doctrine, bars a person whose occupation is to confront a danger from recovering for injuries caused by that danger. The reason for the rule decides how far it reaches.

In Neighbarger v. Irwin Industries, 8 Cal.4th 532, 34 Cal.Rptr.2d 630, 882 P.2d 347 (1994), a contractor's employees released flammable petroleum and burned two privately employed refinery safety supervisors trained in industrial firefighting and assigned to emergency response. The California Supreme Court held that neither assumption of risk nor the firefighter's rule bars a private safety employee's claim for injuries a third party's negligence caused. The reasoning is about who paid: that contractor never bought the supervisors' services and never bought release from the usual duty of care, unlike the public, which buys that release from the firefighter it summons through taxes. Nobody buys release from a duty toward a private security officer.

The security guard case is Marquez v. Mainframe (1996) 42 Cal.App.4th 881. A contract officer patrolling a building slipped in a darkened generator room with standing water from condenser pipes. The building occupant knew of the hazard; the maintenance contractor was the defendant. Because the officer's duties included identifying and reporting safety hazards, defense counsel argued the firefighter's rule and primary assumption of risk barred him. The Court of Appeal reversed summary judgment: the rule does not reach private security officers, who receive no special financial rewards and lack the special relationship with the public that justifies releasing a defendant from the duty of care. Cite it whenever a defendant argues the officer assumed the risk of a shooting because confronting danger was his job. In California, see also Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instruction number 473, on the exception for conduct outside the range of ordinary activity involved in the occupation.

Then the limit. In Gregory v. Cott, California Supreme Court docket number S209125, decided August 4, 2014, an agency sent a trained home health care worker to care for a woman with advanced Alzheimer's disease known to bite, kick, and scratch. The family warned her. She hurt herself trying to restrain the patient and sued the family. The court held primary assumption of risk barred the claim: those hired to manage a hazardous condition may not sue their clients for injuries caused by the very risks they took the job to confront. It treated the firefighter's rule as a variant of primary assumption of risk rather than a separate concept. Verify the parallel reporter citations before print.

The line between those two cases is who bought the protection. A negligent stranger, another contractor, another tenant, an equipment manufacturer, never bought release from the ordinary duty of care, and the rule shields none of them. The client who hired the officer to confront this category of danger did buy it, and against that client the officer faces a real bar. Getting around it takes one of the three showings the card below lists, and the concealed hazard and retained control exceptions require the same three. Plead them once and prove them once.

This doctrine varies by state. New Jersey abolished the firefighter's rule by statute for public safety officers, several states never adopted a professional rescuer doctrine at all, and some may have extended it to private security. Confirm the local rule and its statutory overlay in every case rather than carrying a California answer across a state line.

In the case against the client, the guard company's failures are how the client's failures reached the guard. The contract required the guard company to train, equip, and supervise. The client's site manager knew the post carried one officer and a dead radio. The client received the incident reports and did nothing. Plead against the client and prove the guard company's failures as the causal chain. Expect the guard company on the verdict form for comparative fault even where it cannot appear on the complaint.

Chapter 16

Negligent Security and Foreseeability

A negligent security claim says the property owner, or the guard company hired to secure it, failed to take reasonable measures against a criminal attack it should have anticipated.

The owner did not hurt anybody. A third person committed a deliberate crime, and the owner only failed to act, with no light, no lock, no camera, no guard, or a guard in the wrong place. Tort law treats a stranger's crime as breaking a causal chain rather than extending it, so every American jurisdiction starts alike. A landowner owes no general duty to protect a visitor from a third person's criminal act, and a duty arises only where the crime was foreseeable. The jurisdictions split four ways on what foreseeable means.

The jurisdictions give four answers to one question

The four approaches ask for different evidence and different witnesses, and a case strong under one dies on the pleadings under another.

A stranger attacked Marie Cornpropst in a Memphis shopping center parking lot at night. The Tennessee Supreme Court held shopping center owners owe no duty to guard against a third party's criminal acts "unless they know or have reason to know that acts are occurring or about to occur on the premises that pose imminent probability of harm to an invitee," and called surrounding conditions irrelevant. Tennessee overruled it twenty one years later in McClung v. Delta Square Limited Partnership, adopting balancing and restoring the surrounding area to the analysis.

An attacker raped and robbed Ann M. behind her own counter at a photo processing store she opened alone in a San Diego shopping center in June 1985. The center had no guards: tenants had asked for patrols and the merchants' association had refused them as too expensive. The California Supreme Court held that "the requisite degree of foreseeability rarely, if ever, can be proven in the absence of prior similar incidents of violent crime on the landowner's premises." It is a sliding scale rule, because California demands heightened foreseeability only for burdensome measures, and hiring guards is the paradigm. It also narrowed Isaacs without overruling it, so California opinions after 1993 read as though two tests run at once.

An unidentified gunman, never caught, shot Dr. Mervyn Isaacs, an anesthesiologist, in the chest at his car in a hospital research parking lot in March 1978. The California Supreme Court held prior similar incidents "are helpful to determine foreseeability but they are not necessary," and that "what is required to be foreseeable is the general character of the event or harm ... not its precise nature or manner of occurrence."

A man hiding under Shirley Posecai's car robbed her at gunpoint about 7:20 in the evening in a Kenner, Louisiana warehouse club lot, where a guard covered the cash office inside from five to eight and none covered the lot. Louisiana adopted balancing, holding that "a very high degree of foreseeability is required to give rise to a duty to post security guards, but a lower degree of foreseeability may support a duty to implement lesser security measures." Posecai lost anyway: three predatory offenses in six and a half years, only one involving a customer in the lot, created no duty, and the court reversed a trial award of roughly twenty nine thousand dollars.

A man knocked three times on Gerald Bass's motel room door in Orangeburg, South Carolina, asked for money, and shot him in the leg. South Carolina discarded imminent harm for balancing: "duty is a flexible concept," and the approach "seeks to balance the degree of foreseeability of harm against the burden of the duty imposed." Bass lost on summary judgment anyway, offering no evidence that the motel's measures were unreasonable for the risk shown. You still need a security expert to name the measure the owner owed and price it.

One opinion surveys all four approaches

Posecai lays out all four approaches in the court's own words before choosing one, and Bass v. Gopal runs the same survey sixteen years later, the better choice for a court wanting a recent opinion. Cite one in any brief that must explain the landscape in a paragraph. Two citation traps go with this line of cases. Bass v. Gopal has a court of appeals decision below at 384 S.C. 238, 680 S.E.2d 917 (Ct. App. 2009), and citing it instead of the supreme court decision reverses the holding on which test South Carolina uses. The Oregon case Piazza has a court of appeals decision at 271 Or.App. 490, 354 P.3d 698 (2015) that at least one commercial database mislabels as the supreme court citation.

Texas counts the crimes on a grid

An intruder later convicted of that assault and seven others sexually assaulted Tammy Cain in her unit at a three hundred unit apartment complex about three in the morning. She sued the owners and manager for the absence of locks, alarms, access gates, lighting, surveillance, and guards. Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1998), set five factors, which courts must "consider together in determining whether criminal conduct was foreseeable."

Cain lost. No violent personal crime had occurred at the complex in the preceding decade, and nobody had reported a sexual assault there, so the court found the risk unforeseeable as a matter of law. Read the five factors as an instruction to the investigator: a geocoded, date stamped, offense coded incident history for the property and a defined radius around it, built from calls for service, offense reports, and the property's own incident logs. Nobody builds that in the month before trial.

Watching the danger build displaces the crime grid

Bradley Smith attended a fraternity reunion at a Texas golf resort. For roughly ninety minutes before closing, intoxicated fraternity members and a wedding party traded threats, cursing, and shoving in view of the bar staff, and at closing staff funneled everyone toward one exit. An unknown assailant put Smith in a headlock and left him with a skull fracture and brain damage. Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762 (Tex. 2010), found a duty because the resort "had actual and direct knowledge that a violent brawl was imminent between drunk, belligerent patrons and had ample time and means to defuse the situation."

A reasonable person who knew or should have known of the one-and-a-half hours of ongoing "heated" verbal altercations and shoving matches between intoxicated bar patrons would reasonably foresee the potential for assaultive conduct.

Del Lago Partners, Inc. v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762 (Tex. 2010)

The court declined to run the Timberwalk factors, holding they do not reach a case built on what staff watched rather than on crime history. The jury apportioned fault fifty one percent to the resort, forty nine percent to Smith.

California reached the same place in different vocabulary. In Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill, 36 Cal.4th 224, 30 Cal.Rptr.3d 145, 113 P.3d 1159 (2005), a bar's inside guard watched another patron and his group stare at Michael Delgado, concluded a fight was coming, and told him to leave without escorting him the forty feet to his car. The outside guard had left his post and, against the bar's own policy, never dispersed a group loitering in the lot. Twelve to twenty men beat Delgado there. Fractured skull, subdural hematoma. When employees hold actual notice of imminent or ongoing criminal conduct, the proprietor must take "reasonable, relatively simple, and minimally burdensome steps," and the plaintiff need show no prior similar incidents.

Those two cases share one rule. When staff watch the danger build, the prior crime evidence drops out, and the plaintiff proves not the neighborhood but what the people on duty saw, when, and what they did with it. That is the hospital escort case exactly: three days of escalation, a punch toward a nurse, the threat that someone was going to get killed, a panic alarm, two firearms in a duffel bag, and a guard telling other employees there was a ninety nine percent chance the visitor carried a third. Nothing about the neighborhood matters in that file.

California runs two duties at the same time

Delgado is also the clearest statement anywhere of a two track duty:

a proprietor that has no duty under Ann M. and Sharon P. to hire a security guard or to undertake other similarly burdensome preventative measures still owes a duty of due care to a patron or invitee by virtue of the special relationship, and there are circumstances (apart from the failure to provide a security guard or undertake other similarly burdensome preventative measures) that may give rise to liability based upon the proprietor's special relationship.

Delgado v. Trax Bar & Grill, 36 Cal.4th 224 (2005)

Track one asks whether the owner had to hire guards at all, and demands heightened foreseeability, in practice prior similar violent crime. Track two asks whether the owner, through the people on site, behaved reasonably given what they knew, and demands nothing of the kind. Say the consequence in the first brief: once the owner has hired a guard, the question collapses to whether that guard behaved reasonably.

Oregon decides foreseeability on the pleadings

A gunman who chose the location to find young people killed a seventeen year old foreign exchange student in January 2009 as she waited in line on a public sidewalk outside a teen nightclub in Portland. In Piazza ex rel. Piazza v. Kellim, 360 Or. 58, 377 P.3d 492 (2016), the Oregon Supreme Court reversed dismissal. Under Oregon's framework foreseeability is ordinarily a jury question, and at the pleading stage the plaintiff need allege only a generalized risk of that type of incident, not the actual sequence or the harm to the particular person. That duty analysis reached a public sidewalk outside the premises, where the business had queued its own patrons, and guard posts sit at the queue, the door, and the lot.

One opinion gives three defendants three duty analyses

In Georgia CVS Pharmacy, LLC v. Carmichael, decided June 29, 2023, the Georgia Supreme Court decided three consolidated appeals, Nos. S22G0527, S22G0617, and S22G0618, captioned also Welch v. Pappas Restaurants, Inc. and Welch v. Tactical Security Group, LLC. It rejected any bright line requiring prior substantially similar crimes:

while evidence of substantially similar prior crimes ... may often be one of the most probative considerations ... it is not a required consideration, and other circumstances may be relevant, too.

Georgia CVS Pharmacy, LLC v. Carmichael (Ga. 2023)

The question is whether the totality of the circumstances gave the proprietor sufficient reason to anticipate the criminal act. The factors are "neither exhaustive nor required in every case," and foreseeability is generally a jury question, resolvable as a matter of law only in "plain and palpable cases."

It is the first modern state supreme court decision to take three defendants, the premises owner, the restaurant tenant, and the contract security company, through three duty analyses in one opinion. That is the defendant structure of a guard shooting case: the owner answers for the condition of the property and the security program, the tenant for the operation on its leased space, the guard company for the service it sold. Each owes a different duty and holds different documents, so pleading all three as one premises count invites three dismissals.

What actually proves notice, ranked by value

Documents prove foreseeability, and they are not of equal value. Rank them before spending the budget.

• The property's own incident reports and daily activity reports. Worth the most, because they are the defendant's own knowledge and need no imputation. Three years is a reasonable opening request.
• Prior use of force reports at the site, by any officer. Notice of how the post runs, and the seed of a retention and punitive damages claim.
• Police calls for service at the address. The backbone of a crime grid, obtainable by public records request without the defendant's cooperation. Discount it in argument, because dispatchers code fast and wrong and a call is not a crime.
• Offense reports. Worth more than calls for service, because they say what an officer found, not what a caller said. Slower to obtain, and worth the delay.
• The security survey, risk assessment, or vendor proposal. A proposal recommending cameras, lighting, or a second officer, priced, dated, and declined, is notice, breach, and causation on one page.
• Tenant, guest, and employee complaints. Notice from outside the security function, defeating the argument that nobody told anyone.
• Prior claims, lawsuits, and demand letters at this site. Notice the defendant paid lawyers to read.
• Budget documents, meeting minutes, and staffing decisions. Where the owner chose the coverage itself, as the hotel did with one unarmed officer for eight hours a day, the choice is the breach and the document is the proof.
• Marketing materials, signage, and lease representations. Not notice of crime. Notice of reliance, which matters in Chapter 19.

Proving causation with a timeline

Assume the plaintiff wins every argument above: the owner should have had two officers, lit the lot, replaced the broken camera. Defense counsel answers not on duty but on cause. The attacker would have done the same anyway. He would have waited for the officer to pass, shot in the lit lot, ignored a camera nobody watched.

The counter is a timeline, not an opinion: the plaintiff must show the missing measure would have put a person, a delay, or a piece of information into a sequence documented to the minute, at a named moment. Three causation facts: five incident reports that reached nobody with authority, because the information and the path both existed; forty two minutes between the guards finding two guns and the officer telling the visitor he needed a pat down, because one call inside that interval would have changed what he did; and a radio nobody answered on four transmissions, because somebody owed an answer.

Do not overclaim it. An expert can say something narrower than that a guard would have prevented the shooting: this measure was available, standard, and cost this much, and in place it would have met the attacker at this point in this timeline. Then let the jury decide.

Chapter 17

Hiring, Training, Supervision, and Entrustment

These direct negligence claims survive when vicarious liability fails. Defense counsel argues the shooting fell outside the scope of employment, and if that wins, the plaintiff holds a judgment proof officer and whatever the guard company itself did wrong. They also carry punitive damages, because they prove the company's own fault rather than fault borrowed from the officer. A complaint alleging "negligent hiring, training, retention and supervision" as one count gives the defendant one motion instead of four.

Four claims, and they break at four different moments

The gap between the paper the guard company wrote and what it did is the retention claim.

He took the guard job in order to steal

Three thefts at a Providence, Rhode Island manufacturing plant took more than two hundred thousand dollars in gold between August and October 1973. A contract guard on the job less than six months admitted the thieves twice, having taken the job for that purpose with a neighbor. By the third theft, about one hundred eighty thousand dollars, he had quit but supplied the information that made it possible. Welsh Manufacturing, Division of Textron, Inc. v. Pinkerton's, Inc., 474 A.2d 436 (R.I. 1984), held the guard company liable for negligent hiring.

An employer has the duty to exercise ordinary care in hiring persons who, because of the nature of the employment, could present a threat of injury to members of the public.

Welsh Manufacturing, Division of Textron, Inc. v. Pinkerton's, Inc., 474 A.2d 436 (R.I. 1984)

On how hard the employer must look, the court said "the sensitive nature of the employment, coupled with the opportunity and temptations incident to it, would lead to the conclusion that a prudent employer in these circumstances should rely on more than the absence of specific evidence." The company had checked with a high school principal and a hospital and never called the three character references the applicant supplied. That "cursory investigation" could support an inference of negligence where it posted the guard to protect valuable material.

Creating the opportunity beats proving a bad record

Section 302B requires precautions where the actor "has brought into contact or association with the other a person whom the actor knows or should know to be peculiarly likely to commit intentional misconduct, under circumstances which afford a peculiar opportunity or temptation for such misconduct."

The guard company puts a person in a post supplying access, authority, isolation, and a weapon. The theory is not that it hired a man with a record but that it created the opportunity. A hiring claim built on a bad background check dies the moment the company produces a clean one; a claim built on the manufactured opportunity survives that document.

Prior beatings by other guards supplied the notice

Raymond Gonzales stood a calm bystander at a wrestling match. Five contract guards threw him down, handcuffed him, and beat him in a small room off the auditorium. Broken jaw, four teeth lost. The company issued its guards uniforms, handcuffs, guns, and nightsticks. Gonzales v. Southwest Security & Protection Agency, Inc., 100 N.M. 54, 665 P.2d 810 (N.M. Ct. App. 1983), affirmed a judgment against the company on respondeat superior and on negligent hiring, training, and supervision together.

A master is subject to liability for the intended tortious harm by a servant ... by an act done in connection with the servant's employment, although the act was unauthorized.

Gonzales v. Southwest Security & Protection Agency, Inc., 100 N.M. 54, 665 P.2d 810 (N.M. Ct. App. 1983)

On the direct claims, the court found the company's background investigation and weapons training both fell short, and that it knew of prior beatings by its guards, not by this guard, and never corrected them. Every element of the modern guard case sits in that short opinion: prior similar conduct as retention notice, no weapons training, an armed and equipped force, and a company arguing the beating fell outside the scope of employment.

The passkey case that named the tort

The owner of a one hundred ninety eight unit apartment complex hired a man with convictions for armed robbery and burglary to manage it, and gave him a passkey to every unit. Learning a tenant's husband was away, he raped her at knifepoint in her apartment. Ponticas v. K.M.S. Investments, 331 N.W.2d 907 (Minn. 1983), is the leading American negligent hiring decision, and though the employee managed apartments rather than guarding them, the fact pattern is the guard's: a person hired into a position of trust and handed the means of access.

Liability attaches where an employer places a person with known propensities, or propensities reasonable investigation should have found, in a position where injury to others is foreseeable. On how deep the inquiry must run, the court said "a very different series of steps are justified if an employee is to be sent ... to work ... in the apartment of a young woman tenant."

The controlling idea is proportionality: how hard the employer must look scales with the access, authority, and isolation the job confers. An armed officer alone on a night post, with a master key, credentials that get him past locked doors, and apparent authority to give orders, sits at the far end.

How you actually prove a disqualifying record theory

In nearly every licensing state the registration statute and its rules list disqualifying convictions and require the company to submit fingerprints and obtain a criminal history record before or shortly after the officer goes on post. A company that posted a guard with a disqualifying record has in one step violated the statute, hired an unfit person, and handed the plaintiff a statutory violation to plead alongside common law negligence, which no ordinary employer's file yields.

Three files prove it. Get them in this order.

The state licensing file. Request it for the individual officer and separately for the company, by public records request, without waiting for discovery. It shows registration status on the date of the shooting, the armed endorsement and its expiration, the disciplinary history, and whether the company ever filed the paperwork. In the Denver case in the next chapter, that file, not the defendants, showed nobody had confirmed the man they sent out armed held the city license the code required.

The federally authorized criminal history check. The Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act of 2004, codified at section 41106 of title 34 of the United States Code, permits an employer of private security officers to submit fingerprints through a State Identification Bureau to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for a national criminal history record search. It permits, it does not require. The employer never receives the record, only a state fitness determination or, in a state with no standards of its own, a narrow answer covering felony convictions, offenses involving dishonesty within ten years, offenses involving the use or attempted use of force within ten years, and felony charges pending a year or more. Ask whether the guard company used the channel, when, and whether it ever re-ran a check on an officer already working. It has existed since December 2004.

The application. Ask whether the applicant answered the criminal history question, whether anyone verified it or called the references, and whether the company put him on post before the record came back. Posting him early is a dated documentary breach.

Entrust the weapon and you answer for the weapon

Deborah Kitchen's intoxicated former boyfriend shot her at the base of the neck and paralyzed her permanently, shortly after buying a rifle and ammunition at a discount store. He had drunk a fifth of whiskey and a case of beer and could not legibly complete the required federal form, so the clerk filled it out for him to initial. In Kitchen v. K-Mart Corp., 697 So.2d 1200 (Fla. 1997), the Florida Supreme Court adopted section 390 and held the seller could answer. It reaches one who supplies a chattel to another "whom the supplier knows or has reason to know to be likely because of his youth, inexperience, or otherwise, to use it in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical harm to himself and others," and its comment adds that a supplier may answer knowing the person's condition makes him incapable of the care expected of a normal sober adult.

Plead it as its own count rather than folding it into negligent hiring. The guard company supplies the weapon, or approves the officer's personal weapon and authorizes him to carry it on post. If it knew or should have known of this officer's missing training, missing qualification, prior violence, mental unfitness, intoxication on duty, or statutory ineligibility to carry, the entrustment claim stands alone. Depending on no scope of employment, it survives the defense that wins the vicarious liability fight, and it is the count least vulnerable to the redundancy rule above, because it concerns the weapon rather than the conduct.

Five documents carry it: the firearms qualification record and its expiration date; the armed endorsement or permit, and whether it ran current on the date of the shooting; the company's written authorization for the specific weapon and ammunition; the medical or psychological fitness screening, where the state requires one; and any prior report of this officer drawing or pointing a weapon.

Choosing the cheapest bidder is its own tort

An unregistered, uninsured tractor trailer with defective brakes struck a car and killed the two people in it. The hauling company had contracted with a carting corporation, which subcontracted without permission to the truck's operator. In Puckrein v. ATI Transport, Inc., 183 N.J. 257 (2006), the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed summary judgment under the incompetent contractor exception: a company whose business involves highway transportation must reasonably inquire whether the truckers it hires hold valid licenses, registration, and insurance. It applied the section 411 principle that "an employer is subject to liability for physical harm to third persons caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care to employ a competent and careful contractor," and defined a competent contractor as one "who possesses the knowledge, skill, experience, and available equipment which a reasonable man would realize that a contractor must have" to do the work safely.

A reasonable owner selecting a guard company must run a short list of inquiries, each answered by a public record:

• Is the company licensed here, and is the license current?
• Is its insurance in force, and at what limits?
• Does it hold the armed authority the post requires?
• What are its firearms training standards and its claims history?
• Does the contract price pay for any of it?

A price below the market rate for licensed armed officers is evidence the owner bought a company it should have known could not do the work. That price sits in the contract, which the plaintiff gets in the first round of discovery.

Section 411 is direct liability for a careless choice, which a careful choice defeats. Non delegable duty, the next chapter's subject, is vicarious liability however careful the choice. Plead both.

Chapter 18

When the Company Answers for the Shot

If the officer fired within the scope of employment, the guard company and, in several states, the property owner answer for the shot without proof of their own fault, and the plaintiff reaches the insurance. If he fired outside it, the plaintiff holds the last chapter's direct negligence theories and an officer with nothing.

Motive, enterprise risk, and aided in agency

In a motive state the plaintiff proves the job task the guard was performing when force began: a stop, a detention, an ejection, protecting property. In N.X. v. Cabrini Medical Center a surgical resident not assigned to the patient assaulted her in a recovery room, and the New York Court of Appeals found no vicarious liability, because he "departed from his duties for solely personal motives unrelated to the furtherance of the Hospital's business." It reinstated the direct negligence claim on whether nursing staff saw or should have seen an unknown physician approach the bed.

In an enterprise risk state the employee's motive is beside the point. Rodgers v. Kemper Construction Co. held an employer liable for subcontractor employees who beat two general contractor employees at a construction site after work, over a bulldozer operator's refusal to give one man a ride. California, the opinion said, has abandoned any requirement that the employee intended to benefit the employer, and asks whether the injury grew out of a dispute arising out of the employment.

In Mary M. v. City of Los Angeles, an on duty uniformed police officer stopped a motorist, took her home, and raped her. The California Supreme Court held the city could answer vicariously, because abuse of the coercive authority society hands an armed, uniformed officer inheres in the enterprise of policing.

In Lisa M. v. Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, 12 Cal.4th 291, 48 Cal.Rptr.2d 510, 907 P.2d 358 (1995), an ultrasound technician completed an ordered examination on a nineteen year old pregnant patient, told her he needed to scan lower to determine the fetus's sex, and molested her. No vicarious liability. The tort must grow out of the employment, or the risk must inhere in the working environment, and the technician's "motivating emotions were not causally" attributable to his duties. The court confined the police officer holding to the coercive authority of peace officers, which an ultrasound technician lacks.

The employer owns the uniform, the badge, the gun

The third route ignores motive. On an evening in December 1997, an armed, uniformed deputy sheriff on patrol visited a convenience store three times and coerced the lone cashier into oral sex, then resigned and pleaded no contest to lewd and lascivious conduct and neglect of duty. In Doe v. Forrest, the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment on traditional scope of employment grounds, calling the act rooted in prurient self interest, then reversed under Restatement (Second) of Agency section 219(2)(d), which reaches conduct where the servant "was aided in accomplishing the tort by the existence of the agency relation." It pointed to the uniform, the badge, the gun, and the handcuffs, and to the cashier's testimony that the deputy held controlling power over her because he had a gun. The vote was four to one, over a dissent warning the rule would eviscerate the general scope of employment rule.

The uniform tells a stranger he has authority, the badge tells her the authority is official, and the firearm tells her force she cannot resist stands behind it. None of the three belongs to the guard. The guard company issued, approved, or required every one, and every one leaves a document: the uniform allowance, the equipment issue sheet, the weapon authorization, the post orders requiring the uniform.

Non delegable duty closes the owner's escape hatch

The owner's defense is the independent contractor rule: hire a competent contractor and its negligence is not yours. Non delegable duty answers that rule, and a guard case supplies the authority.

In Peachtree-Cain Co. v. McBee, 254 Ga. 91, 327 S.E.2d 188 (1985), three consolidated cases, the owners of a commercial complex hired a management company, which contracted with an independent security agency. The agency's officers committed intentional torts against invitees, including false imprisonment and detention. The owners argued the independent contractor rule immunized them. The Georgia Supreme Court held otherwise, because the owners

had undertaken to obtain security services, their duty to their invitees to provide responsible agents was personal and nondelegable.

Peachtree-Cain Co. v. McBee, 254 Ga. 91, 327 S.E.2d 188 (1985)

The analysis runs through sections 51-2-4 and 51-2-5 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated on independent contractor liability. Pair it with the 2023 Georgia decision in Chapter 16, which put the contract security company, the restaurant tenant, and the premises owner separately before the same court.

Liability from status, not from fault

In Srithong v. Total Investment Co., 23 Cal.App.4th 721, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d 672 (1994), the court held "the duty which a possessor of land owes to others to put and maintain it in reasonably safe condition is nondelegable," a form of vicarious liability grounded in "status or relationship, not fault." The owner answers however carefully it selected the contractor, which separates this theory from the negligent selection theory closing Chapter 17 and is why you plead both. The duty to keep premises reasonably safe for invitees is the owner's own, imposed by law rather than contract, so hiring a contractor transfers the work, not the duty.

Non delegable duty varies by jurisdiction, and in most states it is a list of recognized categories, not a general principle. Texas is restrictive. Several states apply it to the condition of the premises but not to a contractor's employee's conduct, the exact distinction a guard shooting turns on. Everywhere it governs liability, not indemnity: an owner held liable on this theory ordinarily keeps its indemnity claim against the guard company, which is why Chapter 20 matters more to who pays. Press three Restatement anchors: section 424, on a duty imposed by statute or regulation to provide specified safeguards; 425, on a duty to maintain land or chattels used by the public; and 416, on work involving a special danger. Use 424 where a statute, ordinance, or fire or building code requires the security measure. Confirm the texts against the volume, because the research for this book did not verify them.

Armed security at a volatile event is inherently dangerous

On October 10, 2020, at dueling rallies near Civic Center Park in downtown Denver, a plainclothes armed man working a protection detail for a television news crew shot and killed a demonstrator. The contracting chain ran three layers deep: the station and its parent hired a national investigations firm, which subcontracted to a small local security company, which put the man on the crew. He did not hold the Denver security guard license the municipal code required, and none of the three had confirmed that he did. The court dismissed the criminal case in March 2022, on the district attorney's motion, because the state could not disprove the right to use deadly force. The city revoked the national firm's Denver private security employer license and the local company surrendered its own.

In Wright v. TEGNA Inc., Colorado Court of Appeals No. 23CA0436, decided June 13, 2024, a witness to the shooting brought claims for negligent infliction of emotional distress, alleging the three companies recklessly employed the shooter. None verified his security guard license, his basic security training, or his authority to carry a firearm or work in plainclothes. On a motion under Colorado's statute limiting strategic lawsuits against public participation, the court split the case in two.

• Direct negligence reversed. Negligent hiring, retention, and supervision by the television station did not survive, because the plaintiff showed no reasonable likelihood of prevailing.
• Vicarious liability affirmed. The station could answer for a subcontractor's guard, on the theory that placing armed security at a volatile public event is an inherently dangerous activity, which makes the duty non delegable.

The claim that survived required no proof of any failure by the television station. It rested on the character of the activity: armed security, at a public event, before a volatile crowd. If that work is inherently dangerous, nobody can hand the duty of commissioning it to a subcontractor, the layers in the contracting chain stop mattering, and the theory reaches the company at the top of the three.

It also settled a question of first impression on the evidentiary standard under the state statute: a plaintiff need not support every allegation with admissible evidence, though a defendant's affidavits usually prevail over bare allegations. The court remanded, and the research for this book did not confirm the final outcome.

Plead vicarious liability first and duty third

Plead vicarious liability first, direct negligence second, non delegable duty third, and never let the pleading imply one depends on another. Against the guard company, plead respondeat superior on whichever approach the forum uses, then negligent hiring, retention, training, and supervision, then negligent entrustment of the firearm. Against the owner, plead negligent security under Chapter 16, negligent selection of the contractor, and non delegable duty, including the inherently dangerous activity route where the officer carried and the crowd was volatile. Expect the guard company to argue the officer fired outside the scope, which strengthens your direct claims, and the owner to call it an independent contractor, the argument non delegable duty answers.

Chapter 19

The Guard Who Did Nothing

Here the guard did nothing, or left the post, or the property had no guard at all. American tort law imposes no general duty to rescue: a person who watches a stranger drown owes him nothing. The plaintiff must find a duty somewhere other than the defendant's ability to help.

Three sources supply that duty, and they are not alternatives. Plead all three: they attach to different defendants at different moments.

The land itself creates the first duty

Restatement (Second) of Torts sections 314A and 315 impose the duty Table 19.1's first row states: reasonable action to protect entrants against unreasonable risk of physical harm, and first aid and care after injury. The California Supreme Court enforced it in the bar case in Chapter 16, holding the proprietor owed due care by virtue of the special relationship even though it had no duty to hire a guard at all.

Rendering aid is a separate breach with its own timeline. In the hospital escort case, nobody rendered aid for eight minutes after the visitor shot the officer in the neck. That is not part of the negligent security claim but its own, with its own duty, witnesses, and damages.

The undertaking sections, and the one subpart that matters

Section 323 says, in substance, that one who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another that he should recognize as necessary for the protection of the other's person or things answers for physical harm his failure to exercise reasonable care causes. The research for this book could not verify the exact wording against the Restatement volume, hence this paraphrase. Case text verifies the parallel section 324A wording, quoted below.

Section 324A reaches the guard company. The California Supreme Court quoted it in full in Artiglio v. Corning Inc., 18 Cal.4th 604, 76 Cal.Rptr.2d 479, 957 P.2d 1313 (1998):

One who undertakes, gratuitously or for consideration, to render services to another which he should recognize as necessary for the protection of a third person or his things, is subject to liability to the third person for physical harm resulting from his failure to exercise reasonable care to perform his undertaking, if (a) his failure to exercise reasonable care increases the risk of such harm, or (b) he has undertaken to perform a duty owed by the other to the third person, or (c) the harm is suffered because of reliance of the other or the third person upon the undertaking.

Restatement (Second) of Torts section 324A, quoted in Artiglio v. Corning Inc., 18 Cal.4th 604 (1998)

In Paz v. State of California, 22 Cal.4th 550, 93 Cal.Rptr.2d 703, 994 P.2d 975 (2000), the same court broke the section into five elements, and a complaint should track them in order.

The property owner owes its invitees a duty of reasonable security, and the guard company contracts to perform it. Under subpart (b) the company then owes that duty directly to the invitee, with no need to prove anything it did made the situation worse. That is how a plaintiff sues a guard company for a guard's absence; every other subpart requires proof that something happened.

Did the contract swallow the owner's own function

New York asks when a contract creates a duty to someone who is not a party to it, and two decisions mark the ends of the line. In Espinal v. Melville Snow Contractors, Inc., 98 N.Y.2d 136, 773 N.E.2d 485, 746 N.Y.S.2d 120 (2002), a snow removal contractor owed no duty to an employee of the property owner who slipped on ice, because its obligations ran narrow and specific and it neither created nor worsened the hazard. The court named three exceptions under which a contracting party does owe a duty to a non contracting third person: the contractor, failing to exercise reasonable care, launches a force or instrument of harm; the plaintiff relies to his detriment on the contracting party's continued performance and the failure to perform injures him positively or actively; or the contracting party has entirely displaced the other party's duty to maintain the premises safely.

The third exception is the guard case, and the decision on the other side of the line shows what it takes. In Palka v. Servicemaster Management Services Corp., 83 N.Y.2d 579, 634 N.E.2d 189, 611 N.Y.S.2d 817 (1994), a contractor took over the entire maintenance function at a hospital, including safety inspections the hospital had run in house, for a stated fee. A wall mounted fan fell on a nurse, and the contractor argued it owed her nothing because she was no party to its contract.

when a party contracts to inspect and repair and possesses the exclusive management and control of real or personal property which results in negligent infliction of injury, its assumed duty extends to noncontracting individuals reasonably within the zone and contemplation of the intended safety services.

Palka v. Servicemaster Management Services Corp., 83 N.Y.2d 579 (1994)

A guard contract falls on one side or the other, and its shape decides which. One unarmed officer at one door for eight hours a day, with the client choosing the coverage, looks like the snow contractor: narrow, specific, no displacement. A contract where the guard company writes the post orders, staffs every shift, runs the camera room, controls access, and investigates incidents, and the owner keeps no security staff, looks like the maintenance contractor: exclusive displacement, and a duty to every invitee. Get the scope of work exhibit first, not the boilerplate master services agreement: the exhibit or schedule listing what the guard company agreed to do, usually two to six pages.

Hiring guards at all creates the undertaking

An owner who had no duty to hire guards and hired them anyway has undertaken services necessary to protect invitees, and sections 323 and 324A attach. Once a guard is on post, Chapter 16's escalating conduct track applies and the plaintiff need show no prior similar incident. The security program itself evidences the owner's recognition of the risk, the evidentiary corollary of the totality of the circumstances rule. And if the guard company's undertaking displaced the owner's own security function, the duty runs straight to the invitee under subpart (b) and the New York displacement exception together.

What the defense says back, and the answer

Sections 323 and 324A are not strict liability. Subparts (a) and (c) require either that the undertaking increased the risk or that someone relied on it. A guard who does nothing, defense counsel says, leaves the plaintiff exactly where she would have stood had the owner hired no guard, so neither subpart holds and the claim fails on its own terms.

Courts ordinarily presume reliance where the public can see the security program and the owner advertises it. Capture the marketing materials, the entrance signage, the lease representations, and the website language in the first week, before somebody changes them. Subpart (b) requires no proof of increased risk or reliance, so if the guard company took on the owner's duty the defense argument never reaches it. Plead subpart (b) first.

The facts answer the increased risk argument more often than the doctrine does. A guard on the property changes what other people do. Staff stop calling police because security is handling it. A supervisor sends an employee toward a disturbance instead of locking a door. In the hotel case the desk clerk called the guard off his parking lot patrol and sent him blind to a disturbance on the eighth floor. Hiring that guard did not leave the hotel where no guard would have; it changed the decisions everyone else made, and changed them for the worse.

The deputy stayed outside, and the lesson runs backwards

Scot Peterson served as the Broward County Sheriff's Office school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. On February 14, 2018, an attacker killed seventeen people and wounded seventeen more in the 1200 building. Peterson responded and remained outside through the shooting.

The state arrested him in June 2019 on eleven counts: seven of neglect of a child, three of culpable negligence, one of perjury. Jury selection began May 31, 2023, and on June 29, 2023, after four days of deliberation, the jury acquitted him on all counts. On January 9, 2025, a panel of Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal let the civil suits proceed, rejecting his summary judgment position without a written opinion. He had argued sovereign immunity and no legal duty; the plaintiffs argued a police officer who knows a murderer is shooting carries a mandatory operational level obligation to respond. With no written opinion there is no appellate holding on duty, and the case simply goes to trial.

Security managers and defense lawyers cite that acquittal for the proposition that nobody can hold a guard who stays outside responsible. It is not a holding that no duty exists. It is a jury's refusal to convert a duty into a felony on those facts, in a trial where defense counsel argued the deputy could not locate the shots. The public duty doctrine, sovereign immunity, qualified immunity, and the constitutional rule that a government actor owes no federal duty to protect a private person from private violence: none of them reaches a private contractor. A private company's duty comes from its contract, its voluntary undertaking, and ordinary negligence, and no immunity blocks any of them. The mandatory operational level obligation argument is an artifact of governmental immunity analysis with no counterpart in a private case. The private question is what the post orders required and whether the officer did it.

The post order equivalent there was the agency's active shooter policy, the training records, and the radio traffic. In a private guard case those three categories carry the entire failure to act claim, and they go under the preservation letter first.

Chapter 20

The Contract and the Policy

Two documents decide who pays, and neither sits in the liability file. The contract between client and guard company decides which defendant carries the loss; the insurance decides whether anything remains to collect. Get both in the first written discovery.

Indemnity moves the loss to the small company

Three forms appear, in increasing breadth.

Anti-indemnity statutes, most written for construction contracts but many broad enough to reach service contracts, void or limit agreements indemnifying a party for its own negligence. Check the local statute, and whether it reaches security services, because most are ambiguous on that second question. The research for this book did not verify a state list.

The typical guard services agreement carries a broad or intermediate indemnity running from the guard company to the client, sometimes with a carve out for the client's sole negligence. The owner, with the deeper pocket and better insurance, tenders the entire case to a small guard company with a modest policy, then drops out of the economics while remaining a named defendant.

Additional insured status, and what the certificate is worth

Five questions decide what the status is worth.

1. The certificate of insurance is evidence of nothing. A broker prepares it, it is routinely wrong, and it disclaims itself on its face.
2. Get the endorsement itself, by form number and edition date. A certificate saying additional insured with no endorsement behind it is a common gap.
3. Read the trigger language. Insurers revised the standard endorsements to limit coverage to liability caused in whole or in part by the named insured's acts, narrower than the older wording, which reached liability arising out of its work. The narrowing matters where the owner's own negligence is the theory. The research for this book did not verify the form numbers and edition dates. Confirm them against the industry form library.
4. Determine whether the coverage is primary and non contributory or excess. If it is excess, the owner's own carrier pays first, and the endorsement loses its whole point.
5. Check for a waiver of subrogation in favor of the client.

A limitation of liability clause does not cap plaintiffs

Guard services agreements routinely cap the company's liability at the contract fees, or at a fixed low figure, and disclaim consequential damages. Courts usually enforce them between the contracting parties in a commercial setting, but not against an injured third person, a stranger to the contract. They matter to the client's indemnity and contribution claims. Correct any defendant who suggests otherwise, on the record, early.

A clause declaring the guard company an independent contractor and disclaiming any agency targets the theories in Chapter 18. A clause requiring the client to approve post orders shows it controlling the manner of the work.

The assault and battery exclusion decides what you collect

Commercial general liability policies for taverns, nightclubs, apartment complexes, hotels, and security contractors, especially in the excess and surplus lines market, carry an endorsement excluding bodily injury arising out of assault or battery. Well drafted versions exclude the claim whoever committed the assault and whatever theory the plaintiff pleads, naming negligent hiring, training, supervision, and failure to provide security. A variant replaces the exclusion with a sublimit, commonly twenty five thousand or fifty thousand dollars per occurrence, inside a policy whose stated limit is one million dollars.

An assailant attacked a woman in April 1991 in a building a housing company owned, and she sued the owner for negligent supervision and management, not for assault. The policy excluded any claim based on assault and battery, whether or not committed by or at the direction of the insured. In Mount Vernon Fire Insurance Co. v. Creative Housing Ltd., 88 N.Y.2d 347, 668 N.E.2d 404, 645 N.Y.S.2d 433 (1996), the New York Court of Appeals held the exclusion unambiguous and applied a but for test.

if no cause of action would exist but for the assault, the claim is based on assault

Mount Vernon Fire Insurance Co. v. Creative Housing Ltd., 88 N.Y.2d 347 (1996)

Recasting the claim as negligence does not defeat the exclusion, and where this rule applies every theory in Part four fails the but for test. Negligent security, hiring, retention, training, supervision, entrustment: without the shooting none states a claim.

What to demand, and in what order

Punitive exposure comes from the paperwork, not the shot

A guard with limited English approached a man near a store exit. The man explained he wore a colostomy bag under his shirt; the guard, not understanding, grabbed and pulled it, causing a prolapse that required surgery. In Wackenhut Corp. v. Canty, 359 So.2d 430 (Fla. 1978), the Florida Supreme Court held a trial judge may not set aside a jury's punitive award merely because he finds it excessive, and that an employer answers for compensatory and punitive damages an employee causes within the scope of employment, even where it did not cause the harm directly.

Four routes lead to punitive exposure against a guard company, in order of strength:

1. Direct corporate fault. The company knew of prior violent conduct by the same guard and kept him on post, the New Mexico case from Chapter 17 exactly.
2. Systemic falsification. Fabricated training certificates, backdated firearms qualification records, officers on post without the state required license, post inspection reports signed for visits that never happened.
3. Pricing below the cost of compliance, where the contract price cannot pay for licensed armed officers, training, and supervision, and internal documents show the company knew.
4. Vicarious punitive liability, open under the Florida rule and restricted under the Restatement complicity rule, which requires the principal to have authorized the act, ratified it, or acted recklessly in employing an unfit servant in a managerial capacity. That split is wide, and the research for this book did not verify the section number or the state list.

Check the state's punitive damages statute for a pleading gate. Many require leave of court and a proffer of clear and convincing evidence before a plaintiff may add a punitive claim. Develop the first three routes before that motion, not after.

Damages, and the elements left on the table

A fatal shooting produces two claims, and they are not interchangeable. The wrongful death claim is statutory in every state and belongs to the beneficiaries rather than the decedent, compensating their losses: loss of financial support and services, loss of society, companionship, and consortium, in many states their mental anguish, and under most statutes funeral and burial expenses. Identify the proper party plaintiff early, because many statutes vest the claim only in the personal representative and void a suit an heir files directly.

The survival claim is the decedent's own, brought by the estate, and it holds conscious pain and suffering between the shot and death. It requires proof of consciousness and an appreciable interval: time stamped body worn camera and surveillance video, the emergency medical services run report and its time entries, bystander testimony to movement or speech, the autopsy wound path and the medical examiner's opinion on survival time, and dispatch audio. Pre-death medical expenses and lost earnings between injury and death also belong here. Some states allow only one of the two claims, some allow both while barring double recovery of the same loss, and the pleading must track the local statute exactly.

For a victim who survives, lawyers underdevelop these elements:

• past and future medical expenses, the largest number in a spinal cord or brain injury case, requiring a life care plan and an economist;
• past and future lost earnings and lost earning capacity;
• past and future physical pain and mental anguish;
• physical impairment and disfigurement, separate elements in many states, covering scarring and the loss of the use of a limb or organ;
• loss of household services;
• spousal consortium, and in some states parental or filial consortium;
• a retained bullet or fragment, independently compensable, with its ongoing infection risk and repeated surgeries;
• post-traumatic stress disorder, which a treating clinician should prove rather than a retained expert wherever possible.

Screen for the bystander claim in every case with family present. A family member who watched the shooting may plead negligent infliction of emotional distress under the local zone of danger or foreseeability rule. It also sometimes survives an assault and battery exclusion, because nobody assaulted the bystander.

Five collateral issues change the number more than the liability facts do:

• comparative fault of the person shot, which in most states bars recovery entirely at fifty or fifty one percent;
• criminal conduct by the plaintiff during the shooting, which some states treat as a complete statutory bar;
• workers' compensation liens where the person shot was working, the ordinary situation when the plaintiff is the guard;
• medical liens and subrogation, particularly hospital liens, which in a limited policy case can consume the entire recovery;
• set off for settlement with a co-defendant.

Run all five before quoting a client a number.

Chapter 21

The First Seventy Two Hours

Nearly everything unique to a guard shooting has a short natural life and no legal retention requirement. Video and radio recordings overwrite. The vendor purges guard tour data. The company wipes the officer's phone and reissues it. He resigns and his personnel file goes to an offsite archive. Somebody cleans the weapon and reissues or sells it, cleans the scene, replaces the burned out lamp, re-aims the camera. A supervisor rewrites the post orders, now that he understands what they should have said.

The first seventy two hours stop that loss. Write the right entities, name the right systems, and prove each received the instruction.

Seventy two hours is a machine deadline

No general United States law requires a private property owner to keep surveillance video for any period. Drive capacity divided by write rate sets recording length; channel count, resolution, frame rate, compression, and motion triggered recording set the write rate. The same recorder holds two weeks at four frames per second and three days at thirty. When the drive fills, the system overwrites the oldest data, the factory default on nearly every digital video recorder and network video recorder sold.

The Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence, whose documents forensic video examiners follow, says it plainly: recorder recordings perish, so acquire them as soon as possible.

The one retention period this book states as documented fact comes from a court, not a vendor. In Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge, the Supreme Court of Texas described a grocery chain's system as recording in a loop that erased footage after approximately thirty days.

The other short life systems are worse than video. Private guard companies keep radio recordings thirty days or less, sometimes zero, because the console records nothing. Neighboring businesses and residential doorbell cameras hold days. Carrier detailed call records live briefly, and the request goes to the carrier, not opposing counsel. The public safety agency usually keeps 911 audio and computer aided dispatch records ninety to one hundred eighty days.

The letter is an element of the claim

Surveillance video is electronically stored information, so Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), amended in 2015, governs in federal court:

If electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, and it cannot be restored or replaced through additional discovery, the court: (1) upon finding prejudice to another party from loss of the information, may order measures no greater than necessary to cure the prejudice; or (2) only upon finding that the party acted with the intent to deprive another party of the information's use in the litigation may: (A) presume that the lost information was unfavorable to the party; (B) instruct the jury that it may or must presume the information was unfavorable to the party; or (C) dismiss the action or enter a default judgment.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), as amended 2015

Negligent loss gets curative measures no greater than necessary. The sanctions that decide cases, the adverse inference instruction, dismissal, and default, require intent to deprive. Under Brookshire Brothers, a Texas spoliation instruction requires the subjective purpose of concealing or destroying discoverable evidence, which includes willful blindness, allowing destruction while knowing the evidence is relevant.

A guard company whose recorder quietly overwrote the incident on day fourteen, before anyone contacted it, acted with neither intent to deprive nor subjective purpose. Routine loop overwrite alone earns an adverse inference instruction nowhere.

You get there by proving a person at that company knew the footage mattered and let it go anyway, and a specific, dated preservation letter supplies that knowledge. Send it by a method proving receipt, and keep the transmittal, the arrival date, and the signer's name.

Ten recipients, and what only each one holds

The recorder normally belongs to the property owner, not the guard company. Tour records sit on a software vendor's servers, alarm and access control events with an integrator. The officer wearing one company's patch may work for another entirely, because companies subcontract constantly and the name on the uniform is often not the name on the paycheck.

In Silvestri v. General Motors Corp., the Fourth Circuit held that a party who cannot preserve evidence he neither owns nor controls must still give the opposing party notice of access. The letter to the third party custodian discharges your duty and puts knowledge on the other side at once.

Generic letters fail, so name the system

A company that overwrites video after a letter demanding it preserve all relevant evidence will argue it did not understand you. Nobody answers a specific letter that way. Demand the native proprietary format export from the network video recorder serving cameras four, seven, and eleven, with the manufacturer's player and codec, from midnight on a stated date through the end of the following day.

What else the first seventy two hours requires

Identify every camera on the property and next to it. Neighboring businesses, residential doorbell cameras, traffic cameras, transit cameras, and dashcams belong to third parties who keep only days and have no reason to keep anything. Walk the block, photograph each camera and its aim, and knock that day.

Get the guard's own account in a form that will survive. Demand the incident report system's audit trail, not the printed report, and note the time of writing. Chapter 22 works that metadata. This field contests the practice of delaying an involved officer's statement.

Send public records requests the same week. The state regulator's licensing file is the case's one public records source, obtainable without a subpoena for officer and company alike. Ask the police agency in parallel for the address's calls for service history, which sits in no private file.

Within weeks somebody replaces the lamps, foliage grows, vehicles move, and adjacent businesses change signage, so photograph the site at the incident's hour, lighting, and weather before anything changes. Determine the property's ownership and management structure and the security service's subcontracting chain, because the entity you sue and the entity holding the evidence are frequently different.

Preserve your own client's evidence to the same standard. Flury v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., the dismissal case in Chapter 23, punished a plaintiff's loss of evidence. Plaintiffs in guard cases lose the decedent's clothing and phone, and the scene.

On when the duty to preserve attaches and what a hold must cover, work from The Sedona Conference, Commentary on Legal Holds, Second Edition: The Trigger and The Process, June 2019. Download it; do not work from memory.

Chapter 22

The Documents Only This Case Has

A police shooting has a standard document set: the use of force report, the internal affairs file, the body camera video, the training academy record, the district attorney's review. A guard shooting's set is different. Private parties hold most of it, no public records law reaches it except one file, custodians destroy much of it on a short cycle, and nobody preserves any of it unless someone demands it by name.

Post orders prove what the company authorized

Chapter 21 sets out the demand: the version in effect on the incident date, every prior version with date and author, and this guard's signed acknowledgment page. Add the site specific supplements, temporary orders, pass down instructions, and the client's input, including any client request that changed them.

They prove authorization: whether that post allowed him to carry at all, whether he was to observe and report or to intervene, pursue, detain, leave his post, enter the parking structure, and what he was to do when he saw a weapon.

Chapter 4 lists the subjects post orders routinely omit, from use of force through shooting at a fleeing person. Compare them against the company's general policy manual and the state licensing requirements, and build the list of things nobody ever told this officer.

The contract shows what the client bought

Chapter 21 names the contract documents to preserve. Add the insurance and indemnity provisions and all post incident correspondence between client and vendor.

The contract proves five things:

1. Whether the client bought armed or unarmed service. Unarmed service plus an officer carrying a gun is a case by itself; armed service means the client chose the risk.
2. What the client paid, because nobody screened, trained, or supervised an armed officer billed at an unarmed rate to the level the assignment required.
3. Whether the guard company staffed the post to contract, because one officer covering a post designed for two is why he was alone.
4. How indemnity and additional insured provisions drive the tender fight, deciding whether owner and guard company stand together or against each other.
5. Whether the client directed the officer's work, the borrowed servant and joint employer question.

Daily activity reports are the notice evidence

Chapter 21 sets the window at ninety days before the incident, for every officer at that post. Add the reports for the same post after it.

Officers who logged trespassers, drug activity, prior assaults, a broken light, or a broken gate for months gave the property owner and the guard company notice. The incident shift report proves what the guard did before the encounter and whether he logged it at all. Later reports show what changed, subsequent remedial measure territory but discoverable and useful. Identical entries shift after shift, the copy and paste log, prove the officer never patrolled and the supervisor never read, a supervision claim.

Attack incident reports on metadata, not content

Beyond the drafts and the platform version history Chapter 21 demands, ask for the supervisor's report, the field supervisor's notes, the client incident notification, the report the company sent its insurer, and any statement the officer gave the company or its lawyer.

Four points of attack decide these reports:

1. The time of writing. A report written hours later, after the officer spoke to a supervisor and a lawyer, is different evidence, and the file metadata carries the answer.
2. The revision history. Reporting platforms keep it and a printed copy hides it, so demand the platform's audit trail.
3. Authorship. Supervisors write these reports, and it shows when you compare the report's vocabulary to the officer's handwriting samples and deposition speech.
4. Chronology. Whether the narrative is possible at all against the reconciled timeline the next chapter builds.

Guard tour data records where the officer physically was

The oldest generation is the mechanical watchclock, a wind up clock the watchman carried, with numbered keys chained at fixed stations. Turning a station key punches a mark on a paper disc inside the sealed clock, at the angular position matching the time. The disc is a physical original, and nobody edits it without leaving traces. Its value depends on how confidently a reader can say where the man was and when.

The second generation is the contact memory button and pen system, Deggy the main current example. The officer touches a steel handheld pen reader to buttons or fobs at checkpoints, and the reader stores checkpoint identity and time, then uploads to the company's control software from a download station. Deggy also sells a smartphone application offering real time checkpoint verification and what it markets as patrol validation, meant to eliminate ghost patrols.

The third generation is the full workforce management platform, TrackTik and Silvertrac the current examples. They carry checkpoint management, mobile patrol and dispatch, incident reporting, scheduling, activity reporting, and a command center consolidating alarm monitoring and guard dispatch. The officer verifies a checkpoint with a near field communication tag, a quick response code, or the mobile device. The platform runs offline and synchronizes when connectivity returns.

Accept no summary report. Demand:

• the raw checkpoint scan log with device identifier, checkpoint identifier, and timestamp to the second, for the incident shift and ninety days before;
• the audit log showing edits, deletions, and manual entries;
• missed checkpoint and exception reports, which prove nobody ran the patrols;
• photographs with their exchangeable image file format metadata intact;
• the retention policy and deletion schedule in writing.

Global positioning system breadcrumb data, which phone based systems usually collect, shows where the officer was and how fast he moved, and its satellite derived time makes it the best reference clock for the next chapter's timeline work. Name the offline synchronization record second: these platforms buffer events when connectivity drops and upload later, so event timestamp and upload timestamp are separate fields, and falsification hides in the difference. Ask for both.

Radio logs put the company in the causal chain

Chapter 21 puts the dispatch log, the radio recordings, and the radio system event log in the first letter. Add the client's control room log and any recorded telephone lines.

A dispatcher who told him to handle it puts the company squarely in the causal chain. One telling him on a recording to stand by is the guard company's best document. Retention is short either way, so this goes in the first preservation letter or it does not exist.

Access control logs answer where everybody was

Demand the access control system's raw event log, not a report: badge reads granted and denied, door forced and door held open alarms, elevator calls, gate cycles, and alarm points, with panel identifiers.

They prove whether the officer actually secured the door he says he secured, and whether anyone authorized the subject's entry. They anchor the master timeline, because a door that logs an event is usually a door a camera sees. Panel clocks drift and controllers buffer events, so establish the offset before trusting a timestamp.

The state licensing file is public and ignored

Nearly every state licenses private security through a board, a department of public safety, a department of state, or the state police, and a public records request gets the file without a subpoena.

For the officer, request six things:

• the registration or license, its class, its issue and expiration dates, and whether it was current on the shooting date;
• the armed endorsement or firearms permit, a credential separate from the guard registration in most states;
• the application, with criminal history disclosure and employment history;
• the background check results and fingerprint submission date;
• the training certificates the state accepted, with dates and instructor names;
• the complete complaint and disciplinary history.

For the company, request the agency license, the qualifying agent or qualified manager and whether that person's own credential was current, the bond and insurance filings, and all prior administrative actions, consent orders, fines, and suspensions.

The recurring individual finding is a guard carrying a gun on a valid unarmed registration. A pattern of prior administrative violations, particularly for unlicensed or undertrained officers, is the backbone of a negligent hiring, training, retention, and supervision claim, and notice predating the incident that no defendant dismisses as hindsight.

Firearms qualification records usually do not exist

Demand:

• every qualification score sheet for this officer across his tenure, with dates;
• the course of fire he actually shot, in writing, with distances, round counts, time limits, target, and passing score;
• the range officer or instructor's name, credentials, and certification expiration;
• the range facility, the date, and the sign in sheet for everyone who shot that day;
• the qualification ammunition and whether it matched duty ammunition, and the qualification weapon by serial number and whether he carried it;
• every record of failure and remedial training.

Five findings recur:

• qualification with a different gun than the duty gun;
• a course of fire the company wrote for itself, with no low light stage, no movement, no decision making, no malfunction clearing;
• impossibly perfect scores, identical scores across many officers, or scores dated to a day the range never opened, which is why you check the range's records against the company's;
• annual qualification, the statutory floor in many states, far below what skill retention requires and often below the company's own policy;
• no documentation at all.

Ask for the curriculum, not the hour certificate

Demand the complete personnel and training file. Beyond certificates and sign in sheets, ask for every test and answer key, each course's curriculum and lesson plans, the instructor's credentials, the field training record, the policy acknowledgment forms, and every performance evaluation, counseling memo, and disciplinary action.

The training claim turns on the difference between the hour certificate and the curriculum. A certificate proves only that someone recorded this officer sitting for a stated number of hours; the defect lives in the lesson plan and the slide deck. A use of force block that is a video and a quiz. A deadly force module with no decision making scenarios. No weapon retention block, no low light content, no instruction on when to disengage. Ask for the deck.

The sign in sheets carry their own evidence. Signatures in one hand, courses whose stated hours exceed the hours the facility stayed open, unproctored online courses with impossible completion times, and certificates dated before the class all appear regularly, and paper proves each.

Prior site incidents drive foreseeability and punitive exposure

Demand all incident reports at this site for a defined period, three years a reasonable opening position, plus all client complaints, all prior claims, lawsuits, and demand letters involving this site, the site's own security or risk assessment if one exists, and all prior use of force incidents by any officer here. Get the police calls for service at the address separately, by public records request.

Then demand the same company wide: all prior use of force and firearm incidents by this officer at any post, all prior firearm discharges by any officer of this company for a defined period, and any internal review, root cause analysis, or corrective action after each.

A company wide pattern of discharges with no internal review drives punitive damages, because failing to investigate what already happened is a conscious disregard argument that never requires proof the company predicted this shooting.

Chapter 23

Video, Clocks, and the Timeline

The video will not settle it, and the times printed on the documents are not the times things happened.

Why the video is gone, mechanically

Chapter 21 sets out the mechanics and quotes the Scientific Working Group on Digital Evidence: drive capacity divided by write rate sets retention, the loop overwrite is the factory default, and the recordings perish.

Four defects wreck the video even when it survives

Four technical facts limit what surviving video proves, and the working group documents all four. Examiners follow them, and several sit on the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Organization of Scientific Area Committees registry, the strongest general acceptance showing available in an admissibility fight.

Frame rate leaves gaps a shooting fits inside

The working group's technical overview of digital video files defines frame rate as the display rate in frames per second and names the artifacts of lossy compression: blocking, pixelation, jerky motion, inaccurate frame timing. A camera at four frames per second leaves a two hundred fifty millisecond gap. A handgun string fires faster, and a whole shooting can happen inside two or three frames. No weapon in the surviving frames does not prove the weapon was never in the decedent's hand, and a raised arm in one frame does not show how long he held it.

Interframe compression makes frames reconstructions, not photographs

The same document explains that temporal, or interframe, compression cuts the data in a frame by eliminating redundancy between similar areas in adjacent frames, so the encoder misses small changes, and adds that group of pictures structures may not capture quick transitions well and may put errors in the video. Many displayed frames are therefore reconstructions, not photographs, and an expert testifying to a hand position from a predicted frame is testifying to an interpolation. On cross, ask which frames the encoder wrote independently.

The timestamp burned into the frame is a claim

The working group's acquisition document tells the examiner to record the frame rate setting, check system time and date against real time, compute the offset, and never alter the device's time settings. In practice, inexpensive recorders drift minutes per month, nobody synchronizes them to a time server, and installers leave them in the wrong time zone or never adjust for daylight saving. The number in the corner of the frame is a claim, not a fact.

A thumb drive export is not the original file

The working group favors the native proprietary format over an open format for legal authenticity, because it sits closest to the original recording. It tells the examiner to get the matching player and codec from the device or manufacturer and to take a secondary open format export only if time allows, and warns that consumer grade extraction loses information, including metadata and multiple camera streams, and degrades raster size and frame rate. Bandwidth limits downgrade a network transfer.

That is what a property manager or responding officer does with a thumb drive, and a bystander with a phone aimed at the monitor. The file reaching your office is different evidence than the one on the recorder, which is why Chapter 21's letter demands the native file, the player, the codec, and, in a death case, the recorder itself.

A surveillance system is a sampling device, not an eyewitness

It is a sampling device with a known sample rate, a lossy encoder, an unsynchronized clock, and a fixed field of view chosen by whoever mounted it, recording what happened inside its cone of coverage at the instants it sampled, through an algorithm built to discard what it predicts you will not notice.

In a report and in testimony, say the video is consistent or inconsistent with a proposition, at a stated frame interval, subject to a stated clock offset. The camera's field of view is not the shooter's, and a study of active duty officers measured the gap between where they looked in a use of force response and what the body worn camera captured.

What the lost video is worth in sanctions

Chapter 21 quotes Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e) in full and sets out its two tiers. The 2015 committee note adds three things for the motion: reasonableness over perfection, proportionality, and a direction to courts to ask first whether other discovery can restore or replace the information.

The Supreme Court of Texas decided Brookshire Brothers, Ltd. v. Aldridge on July 3, 2014. A customer fell in a store in September 2004. The system erased on an approximately thirty day loop, and a store manager preserved about eight minutes showing the customer entering and falling; when plaintiff's counsel asked for roughly two and a half additional hours nearly a year later, it was gone. The court held that submitting a spoliation instruction abused discretion, ordered a new trial, and called the instruction among the harshest sanctions available, one courts should use cautiously. A narrow exception permits an instruction for negligent spoliation only where the loss irreparably prevents a party from presenting any meaningful claim or defense.

The company keeps the ninety seconds showing the subject being aggressive and lets the twenty minutes of the guard escalating roll off. Under that standard, choosing which segment to save is itself evidence of subjective purpose: somebody watched the footage, judged what mattered, and consciously did not save the rest.

Three federal cases fill out the frame. Silvestri v. General Motors Corp., 271 F.3d 583 (4th Cir. 2001), carries Chapter 21's notice of access holding. On dismissal it makes the court weigh conduct and prejudice both, and find either conduct so egregious it forfeits the claim or an effect so prejudicial the other party could not defend. Residential Funding Corp. v. DeGeorge Financial Corp., 306 F.3d 99 (2d Cir. 2002), sets three elements for an adverse inference: a duty to preserve, a culpable state of mind, which knowing or negligent destruction satisfies, and relevance, meaning the missing evidence would support the requesting party's claim. It predates the 2015 amendment and Rule 37(e)(2) now constrains it for electronically stored information, but it still governs non electronic evidence, several state courts follow it, and lawyers argue inside it. Flury v. Daimler Chrysler Corp., 427 F.3d 939 (11th Cir. 2005), upheld dismissal where no lesser sanction could cure the prejudice, weighing whether it occurred, whether anything could cure it, how much the evidence mattered, the spoliator's good or bad faith, and the potential for abuse if expert testimony proceeded unchecked.

Every source has its own clock and none agree

A defensible timeline is not a list of times copied out of documents. Choose one reference clock, establish an offset for every other source against it, and restate every event in reference time. Skip the offset step and the timeline comes out confidently wrong by minutes.

That table sets the order of preference. Take satellite derived time from a vehicle telematics unit or a phone location record first, the 911 or computer aided dispatch system second, a recently docked body camera third. Never the video recorder.

What cellular data cannot do for a timeline

The working group's recommendations for historical cell site analysis carry two points for every timeline report.

On time, carriers report call detail records in varying time zones: local device location, switch location, or coordinated universal time. The analyst must account for daylight saving, because not all jurisdictions observe it and some areas mix time zones. Never accept a carrier timestamp at face value; get the carrier's key or certification stating the time zone convention for that production.

On location, cell site and sector information cannot pinpoint a device at a specific date and time, meaning a specific intersection or address, and cannot conclusively show who used it. Sector angle boundaries are not the absolute edge of sector coverage, and carrier supplied precise location estimates, which proprietary algorithms produce, do not claim an exact location. Cellular data puts a phone in a general area and orders events in sequence. It cannot put a man at a doorway.

What the reconciled timeline usually proves

Five findings come out of this work often enough to plan for them:

1. The gap between the first sign of trouble and the first call for help, the negligent response claim. In the hospital matter that gap ran more than an hour, with five incident reports already sitting in two systems.
2. The gap between the officer's first contact and the first shot. Short intervals support a failure to de-escalate or disengage, long intervals a reasonable fear theory.
3. Whether he called it in before or after he fired, which goes to whether he perceived a threat or created one.
4. Whether the incident report's story is chronologically possible at all.
5. The shot to shot interval, which feeds Chapter 25's reaction time analysis and usually comes off audio.

Chapter 24

The Firearm, the Holster, and the Discharge

Three questions decide the firearms half of a guard shooting. Could someone have taken the weapon. Did he fire it on purpose. Were the gun, the holster, and the ammunition the guard company's choice or his own.

Nobody certifies a holster retention level

No national standards institute, materials testing organization, federal justice institute, or ammunition industry standards body defines Level I, Level II, or Level III retention for a duty holster. Manufacturers define them, and manufacturers market them.

Safariland is the reference in practice, the dominant duty holster maker whose scheme other makers copy. Its published definitions, as its website read in August 2026:

Level I Retention holsters must pass a simulated five second adversarial "grab and snatch" test making them popular for military and competition.

Safariland, Level 1 retention holsters product collection

Level II Retention holsters add a lock to level I Retention. With the initial lock disengaged the holster must then pass the same 5 second "grab and snatch" test.

Safariland, Level 2 retention holsters product collection

Level III retention adds a pivoting hood to Level II retention. The third layer of security makes this popular for patrol and general duty use.

Safariland, Level 3 retention holsters product collection

A level counts independent retention devices, each of which a grabber must defeat before the underlying five second adversarial grab and snatch test applies. It measures no pull force in pounds. One maker's Level II holster does not necessarily equal another's. An expert who testifies that nobody can defeat a Level III holster claims more than the manufacturer claims.

That matters when a post order or contract specifies a Level II retention holster, because whoever wrote it wrote against a marketing taxonomy, not a tested standard. Ask in deposition who wrote it, what he understood it to mean, whether he had read the manufacturer's definition, and who checked this officer's holster against it. Two open questions belong on the punch list, not in a report. Does any state regulator require a retention level for armed private security, which would make a cheap open top nylon holster a violation on its face. And does any published test procedure document the five second test. The research for this book confirmed neither.

A subject takes the officer's weapon during a struggle. Or the officer carries in a twenty dollar soft nylon holster with no retention device, at a post where he supplies his own gear and the post orders say nothing about holsters. Arming a man who works alone, in close contact with the public, without a retention holster and without weapon retention training, creates a foreseeable disarming hazard.

What a disarm attempt looks like in the evidence

A grab at the weapon leaves physical traces, and their absence is worth as much as their presence.

The card later in this chapter sets the photography and preservation sequence. Beyond it, examine the retention devices for damage, deformation, or a hood pivoted out of position. Check the belt, keepers, and loops for stretching or tearing, because a hard pull on a holstered gun transmits into it. Document torn uniform seams and displaced equipment, and photograph the officer's hands, forearms, and knuckles the same day. Ask whether his account describes a two handed struggle that would have left something on the gun. Compare all of it to the video frame interval and shot to shot timing, because a struggle takes seconds and a sampling camera caught some of it.

Disarming is real; the number everyone quotes is not

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted program reports weapon takeaways in the narrative of its officers feloniously killed topic page each year. Three years, read directly from the Bureau's own pages, use its wording: officers had their weapons stolen, and officers were killed with their own weapons.

Disarming happens. The Bureau tracks it nationally as its own category, so the federal government treats it as a distinct and recurring hazard. The foreseeability argument needs no large percentage, only a known hazard, and this data proves it.

Most unintentional discharges happen during routine handling

O'Neill, O'Neill, and Lewinski, in Applied Ergonomics in 2017, analyzed one hundred thirty seven unintentional discharge reports from seven United States law enforcement agencies covering 1974 through 2015, and built an antecedent, behavior, and consequence taxonomy from them. Their headline finding, in their own words: over fifty percent of unintentional discharges occurred in contexts with low threat potential while engaged in routine firearm tasks. The rest fell into elevated or high threat contexts involving muscle co-activation, unfamiliar firearm tasks, contact with inanimate objects, and medical conditions.

If most happen during routine handling rather than a fight, the questions are administrative. When and where does this company require loading and unloading. Does it provide a clearing barrel or safe loading station, and where. Does the shift change procedure make him handle the weapon at all. Many guard companies require loading at the start of every shift and unloading at the end, in a parking lot, with no clearing barrel and no supervision: a designed in hazard, and this data supports saying so.

Four mechanisms are worth pleading and testing in a guard case:

• sympathetic or interlimb response, where gripping or pulling hard with the support hand contracts the firing hand;
• a loss of balance or a startle, producing a clutch reflex on the grip;
• a finger inside the trigger guard during movement, drawing, or holstering;
• an object inside the holster mouth, a drawstring, a folded garment, or debris, pressing the trigger as the officer seats the weapon, which is why you photograph the holster before the gun comes out.

Trigger finger discipline decays without practice, so pull the officer's live fire record and count the months since he last fired a gun.

Keep the two striker fired pistol allegations separate

The SIG Sauer P320 and its military variants, the M17 and M18, appear in guard cases because they are common, capable, and inexpensive for their capability. When a guard says the gun just went off, the weapon's identity becomes a threshold question. Two separate allegations attach to it: the manufacturer addressed one, and the other remains unresolved.

The drop fire issue, which SIG addressed

On July 31, 2017, the Dallas Police Department told personnel to stop carrying the P320 over concerns it could discharge if dropped at a thirty three degree angle, the suspected mechanism trigger inertia on impact. On August 8, 2017, SIG Sauer announced a voluntary upgrade program, describing an alternate design that reduces the physical weight of the trigger, sear, and striker while adding a mechanical disconnector.

No formal recall issued. SIG called it a voluntary upgrade program and offered a free retrofit of early pistols. Use that term in a report or a deposition, because recall carries a regulatory meaning that does not apply here: statute puts firearms outside Consumer Product Safety Commission jurisdiction, so no federal agency holds recall authority over handgun design. Confirm the exact statutory citation for that exclusion before printing it, because the research for this book did not verify it.

The uncommanded discharge allegation, still unresolved

The second allegation is that the pistol has discharged without a trigger pull, in the holster or on the belt. In April 2023, a joint Washington Post and The Trace investigation documented more than one hundred people who said their P320 discharged with no trigger pressure, at least eighty of them wounded, including thirty three law enforcement officers across eighteen agencies. At least thirty five of those incidents involved pistols that had already taken the post 2017 upgrade.

By April 2023, six United States law enforcement agencies had discontinued the pistol, including Milwaukee, Dallas, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority in Philadelphia. In August 2024 the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Ballistic Research Facility published a critical technical evaluation of Michigan State Police M18 and P320 pistols. Obtain that first, a federal technical evaluation rather than a litigation position. On July 9, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement to discontinue operational use, and on July 28, 2025, that agency renewed its P320 contract through 2027. In June 2025 SIG Sauer sued the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission after it banned the pistol from its ranges, following a 2024 instructor report that a trainee's pistol fired without a trigger pull. On July 31, 2025, the International Defensive Pistol Association banned it from competition, citing reports and videos of alleged uncommanded discharges while acknowledging no direct knowledge of any technical defect.

Air Force Global Strike Command paused M18 use in July 2025 after a shooting death. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations concluded human error, not a weapon malfunction, which produced an involuntary manslaughter charge. The command then inspected 7,970 M18 pistols in August 2025 and reinstated the pistol, finding no discharge incidents attributable to equipment failure. Militaries keep adopting the design. The United States Army selected a customized P320 as its Modular Handgun System on January 19, 2017 and fielded it to the 101st Airborne by November 17, 2017, planning 421,000 pistols across the services. In December 2025 the P320 replaced the SIG P220 as the Swiss Army service pistol.

The litigation record, all in the District of New Hampshire unless noted: a September 2019 class action survived dismissal in March 2020, and the court denied certification in 2022. A November 30, 2022 action brought twenty plaintiffs from thirteen states alleging over one hundred incidents. A March 26, 2025 action brought twenty two plaintiffs from sixteen states on negligence and product liability. A Loudoun County deputy whose holstered pistol discharged in February 2018, breaking her femur, settled on the second day of jury trial, May 29, 2019. A court dismissed a Puerto Rico officer's suit in March 2025 after the plaintiff admitted the pistol has no defects and does not discharge without a trigger pull, SIG's eighteenth dismissed unintentional discharge lawsuit.

SIG Sauer's stated position, on March 7, 2025, is that the P320 cannot, under any circumstances, discharge without a trigger pull, that this is a fact, and that the allegations are nothing more than individuals seeking to profit or avoid personal responsibility. Its defense positions: most of these are negligent discharges, other pistols have comparable incident rates, the pistol meets the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute and North Atlantic Treaty Organization standards, and nobody has reproduced an uncommanded discharge on demand.

Identify the exact pistol by model, serial number, and date of manufacture, and ask the manufacturer, from that serial number, whether anyone performed the voluntary upgrade. Preserve it unfired and uncleared where the law allows. Get the round count and the condition of the striker, sear, and disconnector, and ask whether the guard company ever inspected the weapon and on what schedule.

Ammunition selection is an employer decision and discoverable

When a round passes through the intended target or a wall and strikes a bystander, four questions follow. What did the guard company specify. What was the officer carrying. Who checked. What did the company know about how that load penetrates in that environment. In a mall, an apartment complex, a hospital, or a school, interior wall construction is a known feature of the site and a foreseeable backstop.

Demand the written ammunition specification by manufacturer, product number, bullet weight, and construction, with purchase records and lot numbers; the ammunition the officer carried and any policy on personally purchased ammunition; the date the company last replaced the duty ammunition, because carried ammunition degrades and repeated chambering sets bullets back; and any internal correspondence about overpenetration, backstops, or shooting inside occupied buildings. Ask whether he qualified with what he carried.

Handgun bullets that expand reliably shed velocity faster and penetrate less than bullets that do not. Full metal jacket rounds do not expand, and no hollow point expands reliably: expansion depends on impact velocity, the medium, and whether the cavity plugs with clothing or wallboard. Overpenetration has no fixed numeric definition; it is a judgment whether a round kept enough energy after leaving the target to injure someone beyond it. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's handgun ammunition test protocol is the benchmark and the document to obtain. The research for this book did not verify its penetration window or its list of test events, so print neither from memory.

What to document when you first handle the weapon

Chapter 25

What the Evidence Can and Cannot Prove

Experts lose cases by reaching one step past their evidence: the casing that supposedly fixes where the shooter stood, the wound path that proves the decedent was fleeing, the negative residue test that proves he was unarmed, the reaction time study that excuses six rounds.

Casing location gives a tentative estimate and nothing more

The controlling study is Lewinski, Hudson, Karwoski, and Redmann, in the Investigative Sciences Journal, 2010. They fired eight semi-automatic pistols in common law enforcement use from eleven positions, 7,670 rounds, controlling for weapon type, firearm positioning, and ammunition. More than twenty five percent threw casings outside the assumed zone to the right and rear of the shooter, so shooter location from the spent cartridge case alone yields only a tentative estimate.

Casings establish that somebody fired a semi-automatic, how many rounds came from that weapon on an undisturbed scene, and, through firing pin, breech face, extractor, and ejector marks, which weapon fired them. Toolmark identification of casing to gun is well established, and a different question from where the shooter stood.

Casings cannot establish shooter position from location alone, or shot order. They roll and bounce off walls, vehicles, and people; responders kick them, medics move them, bystanders pick them up. Indoors or beside a vehicle, where guard shootings happen, deflection is worse than in the study's controlled conditions.

Physics allows almost no shot sequencing

In almost any case, no reliable physical method puts a series of handgun shots in order. Cartridge cases carry no sequence information. Magazine order does not survive, because nobody marks the rounds and the magazine empties. Bullet damage does not encode order.

Four sources sometimes supply the order:

• Audio, the good one. A recording with an adequate sample rate gives shot to shot intervals to a few milliseconds, and multiple synchronized recordings sometimes give shooter position from differences in time of arrival. It comes from 911 calls, body cameras, dashcams, doorbell cameras, business surveillance, and bystander phone video.
• Intersecting wound paths, where tissue displacement or an inconsistent limb position shows one path preceded another, a medical examiner's opinion and an uncommon one.
• Video, only within Chapter 23's frame rate limits.
• Sequential damage to intervening objects. Radial fractures in glass that stop at fractures from an earlier shot allow genuine fracture sequencing, an accepted technique.

Gunshot residue proves less than either side wants

Examiners analyze residue by scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, which identifies characteristic particles by their elemental combinations. Forensic chemists call it the most powerful tool available for the purpose. A published standard guide governs the protocol.

Persistence decides most residue fights. Inorganic residue usually stays on hands four to six hours, and washing or wiping removes it; organic residue hides as little as an hour after firing. In a guard shooting paramedics handle the subject and carry him out, somebody bags his hands late or not at all, and an emergency department may wash him. Residue also transfers between people, so the protocol must block transfer from responding officers, who carry guns themselves and usually handcuff, roll, and search the subject. A third contamination source stands right there: the officer who fired.

Residue cannot prove a specific person fired a gun, and cannot prove he did not: a negative result does not exclude discharge, and confirmed suicides sometimes show none. Particles from other sources, including fireworks, mimic its morphology and composition.

Distance determination is a different and more useful examination, run on the target, usually the clothing, rather than on hands. The modified Griess test develops nitrite residues from propellant and supports a muzzle to target distance estimate; the sodium rhodizonate test detects lead and confirms a hole is a bullet passage, without a distance. The controlling limit: residue particles travel only about three to five feet from the muzzle, and past that range the examination distinguishes only distant from not distant, six feet looking the same as sixty. It also requires test firing the actual weapon with matching lot ammunition into material matching the target. Without the gun and the right ammunition, an examiner reports residue present or absent and converts it to no distance.

Contact and near contact wounds, showing muzzle imprint, searing, soot, and subcutaneous gas expansion, destroy a story about a subject charging from fifteen feet. Intermediate range stippling brackets the distance within a few feet. Beyond that, residue says nothing and distance comes from video, the scene, and trajectory.

A wound path is a direction, not a trajectory

The medical examiner reports a path as front to back, left to right, and upward or downward, against standard anatomic position with the body erect and facing forward. It does not give the shooter's position, because a downward path can mean an elevated shooter, or a subject bent forward, kneeling, falling, or running. Nor does it give the subject's posture at the shot, which must come from video or the scene, or shot order, or distance unless the wound is close enough for range indicators.

Combining path with scene evidence does more. Where a round passed through the body and struck a wall at a measurable point, and you know the entry wound location, the line between them constrains the body's position and orientation, once you assume the subject's posture. The assumption does the work, so say it out loud. A reconstruction photographing trajectory rods without disclosing it presents an argument as a measurement.

State the shot in the back problem correctly. A posterior entry wound proves the bullet entered from behind, not that the subject was fleeing or that the officer knew he faced away. Defense counsel answers with the movement and reaction time literature, plaintiff's counsel with the shot to shot interval and the number of posterior wounds.

Why the guard could not identify what he shot

The research for this book located no peer reviewed study of target identification error rates by light level, so this chapter cites none, and you should cite no study you have not pulled. Settled visual physiology carries the point, on a textbook citation.

At the light levels of an unlit lot or stairwell, the human retina runs on rods alone: no color vision, no fine detail, and a functional blind spot at the point of fixation, because the fovea holds only cones. Full dark adaptation takes twenty to thirty minutes, and a bright light destroys it in seconds. A guard stepping from a lit lobby into a dark lot is blind for a period he almost certainly cannot describe, and a weapon mounted light destroys his dark adaptation every time he switches it on. Those mechanisms drive the recurring case in which a phone, a wallet, or a hairbrush became a gun.

Chapter 23 makes the companion point: the camera's field of view is not the officer's, in either direction.

The autopsy answers fewer questions than the file assumes

The National Association of Medical Examiners publishes the forensic autopsy performance standards, with a 2025 edition, and runs an inspection and accreditation program. Obtain the current standards and the accreditation checklist. The checklist tells you what the office should have done, and any deviation is the cross examination. The research for this book did not read the current edition, so work from the document, not a summary.

Establish the institutional facts early. A coroner system, not a medical examiner system, works many of these deaths, and in some counties the coroner is an elected layperson with no medical training who contracts the autopsy out. Determine which system handled the case, whether the office holds accreditation, whether the pathologist holds board certification in forensic pathology from the American Board of Pathology, and how many autopsies he performed that year. An office over its caseload standard is a defensible attack on the examination's quality.

The autopsy establishes range of fire at the near end, on the same indicators and with the same three to five foot ceiling as any other residue based method. It establishes the number of wounds, which floors the number of shots that hit; which wounds were survivable and which immediately incapacitating, bearing on how many rounds arrived after the subject stopped being a threat; and defensive wounds or their absence, and whether the injury pattern fits the decedent holding a weapon.

It usually does not sequence the wounds, and neither does internal trajectory reconstruction. Vital reaction, hemorrhage into a wound track, can sometimes show the heart still beat when the round arrived, distinguishing perimortem from postmortem without ordering the shots. A probe or rod shows a straight line between entry and exit, and bullets deviate on bone, so a single rod through a body that struck a rib is a picture, not a measurement. Toxicology establishes the presence and concentration of substances, not behavior: a blood alcohol or drug concentration does not prove the decedent was aggressive.

Demand the records around the autopsy too. The emergency medical services run sheet carries independent timestamps and is one of the better reference clocks for Chapter 23's work. The trauma team's initial assessment frequently records a wound count and location differing from the autopsy, and somebody has to explain that. Get the record of who and what touched the body, the input to the residue contamination analysis.

The two light measurements to take at the scene

A lighting opinion runs on the Illuminating Engineering Society's Guide for Security Lighting for People, Property, and Critical Infrastructure, designated G-1-22 and published in 2022, which separates security lighting from safety lighting. Its annexes on physical security surveys, illumination measurement protocols, crime analysis, and crime prevention through environmental design carry the method authority for a site inspection. Buy the document, follow the annex, cite it. Print no recommended foot candle value from memory or from this book, because the research here did not obtain the recommended values.

Illuminance in international units is the lux, one lumen per square meter. In United States customary units it is the foot candle, one lumen per square foot. One foot candle equals 10.764 lux. Use that factor and show it. Never write about ten.

Method matters as much as the number. Use a calibrated illuminance meter with a cosine corrected and color corrected photopic sensor, and record its make, model, serial number, and calibration date. A phone application is neither cosine nor color corrected. Measure at the incident's time of night, season, and weather, or document every difference. Record which lamps burned and which were out, photograph each fixture, record fixture type, mounting height, and lamp type, and note moon phase and cloud cover.

Take vertical illuminance first, meter face vertical at about five feet, facing the direction of approach: it decides whether a viewer can identify a face or see an object in a hand. Horizontal illuminance, meter face up, tells you about the pavement. Take uniformity second. Grid the area, record the spacing, photograph the grid layout, report maximum, minimum, and average, and compute the maximum to minimum and average to minimum ratios. A lot with an adequate average and poor uniformity has dark pockets.

Sight lines, distances, and what the cameras missed

Measure distances with a laser rangefinder or a total station, never by pacing: from the guard's position to the subject's at each key moment, and to each camera and light fixture. Stand where the guard stood, at his eye height, photograph what he could see with the obstructions in place and in the same lighting, and document what he could not. Vehicles, dumpsters, landscaping, columns, and signage move between the incident and the inspection, which is why date stamped incident day photographs matter.

Chapter 21 lists the camera configuration data to demand. On the inspection, record each camera's mounting height, tilt, and pan, plot its coverage boundaries on a site plan, and map the gaps. Photograph everything with a scale in frame, keep a photo log with times, and shoot a walk through video with continuous audio narration. Where the scene will support a three dimensional reconstruction, preserve the raw laser scan or photogrammetry data, not only the derived model, because the model is an opinion and the scan is the measurement. Do Chapter 23's synchronization work while you stand there, because nobody can do it later.

Reaction time, where the science and the law meet

Counsel fight over reaction time where the decedent took rounds in the back, where the round count is high, or where video appears to show shots continuing after the threat ended.

The Force Science Institute dominates the field, describing itself as the leading authority on human performance factors in use of force and critical incidents. William J. Lewinski, a retired psychology professor who never held a psychologist's license, founded it in 2004. His doctorate came from the Union for Experimenting Colleges and Universities in 1988, in a self designed police psychology major that lacks American Psychological Association recognition. That credential history alone excludes nothing.

The admissibility fight turns on which journal a study ran in. Several institute studies ran in genuinely peer reviewed journals with independent co-authors: Psychological Science, Human Movement Science, Law and Human Behavior, Applied Ergonomics, and Ergonomics. The strongest single citation is Hope, Lewinski, Dixon, Blocksidge, and Gabbert on physical exertion and recall and recognition, in Psychological Science, with Lorraine Hope, an independent academic, as first author. Other work, including the stop shooting line and the selective attention study, ran in Law Enforcement Executive Forum, a practitioner publication no referee ever reviewed. Know which is which before citing one.

Lisa Fournier, editor of the American Journal of Psychology, testified in two cases that Lewinski's work lacked basic elements of legitimate research, drew conclusions unsupported by data, and was pseudoscience. Arien Mack, co-originator of inattentional blindness, called applying her construct to police shootings completely inappropriate. Christy Lopez, a former Department of Justice Civil Rights Division attorney, called it pseudoscience justifying excessive force. Journalists and plaintiff side lawyers say the same in harder words, mostly about the institute's advocacy for delaying an officer's statement. Institutions have acted. British Columbia's Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner questioned his bias and said it would not rehire him, and the Los Angeles Police Department, Ohio State University, and the Rochester Police Department canceled training engagements. The institute also hosted more than twenty articles promoting excited delirium, a term major medical bodies have abandoned and pathologists dispute as a cause of death in restraint cases, a live issue in any guard case involving a restraint death rather than a shooting.

Simple visual reaction time in healthy adults runs about two tenths of a second, and choice reaction time longer. A pistol at four to five rounds per second puts one to two rounds downrange inside any plausible stop decision interval. That is defense counsel's core point, and plaintiff's counsel should bound it rather than deny it. The science explains one or two rounds after the threat ended. It does not explain six, a pause followed by more fire, or a change in the shooter's position between shots.

Get the round count, the hit count, and the shot to shot timing, taking the timing off audio wherever audio exists. A single string at consistent intervals of two to three tenths of a second is one decision. A string with a gap of a second or more is two, and the jury judges the second on the facts that existed at the gap. Then ask what the guard company trained this officer to do about stopping. Most private security firearms curricula teach shooting until the threat stops, and almost none teach or measure a stop shooting drill. That gap is a negligent training claim.

Assign each disputed fact to exactly one discipline

List the disputed facts, assign each to one discipline, and confirm that discipline can prove it.

Chapter 26

Experts, Daubert, and What a Jury Can Hold

No statute says how many officers a shopping mall needs, whether they should be armed, or what a post order must contain. The standard of care comes from consensus documents, the defendant's own written policies, and what comparable operators do, and all three arrive through an expert. Courts exclude the expert who was the wrong discipline for the disputed fact, or whose opinion rests on nothing but his experience. Counsel decides both at the retention call.

Pick the discipline before you pick the expert

A guard shooting combines a premises liability case, an employment case, a firearms case, and a homicide investigation in one file. Table 25.1 in Chapter 25 lists thirteen disciplines and what each can and cannot prove. Read it before the retention call, and never put two experts on one point, because courts exclude cumulative testimony.

An expert reaching past his field, commonly a security consultant offering firearms or medical opinions, fails on qualification and fit at once, and the court decides fit on the papers, before anybody hears him testify.

A security expert is not a police practices expert

A security operations expert testifies about the company: screening, licensing, training content and delivery, supervision, post orders, staffing levels, arming decisions, equipment, and the assessment that should have driven all of it. His authorities are the consensus documents, the contract, the client's policies, and comparable operators' practice, and he is the right expert for negligent hiring, training, supervision, security, or entrustment of a firearm.

A police practices expert testifies about the moment: whether drawing, pointing, and firing met generally accepted principles of force, whether the tactical approach created the jeopardy, and whether alternatives existed. His authorities are law enforcement training doctrine and consensus policy alone.

Retaining the police practices expert to carry the standard of care against a guard company imports a framework that does not reach the defendant. Graham v. Connor, 490 United States 386 (1989), holds that "all claims that law enforcement officials have used excessive force" in a seizure fall under the Fourth Amendment's objective reasonableness standard, and the Fourth Amendment constrains government, not private parties. The state's justification statutes and the civil privilege of self defense judge a private security officer, so an expert calling his conduct objectively unreasonable under the Graham factors offers an opinion that does not fit, a ground for exclusion separate from qualification and reliability. The reverse error, a security operations expert opining on shot sequence or wound survivability, fails the same way.

How you lay a foundation for a standard that is not law

A consensus standard comes into evidence through the expert, on a four part foundation. First, identify the document precisely: issuing body, designation, title, edition year. Second, establish the process behind it, which separates a committee standard from a trade brochure. Third, establish that the edition in force on the date of the conduct said what you say it said, because that day's document judges the defendant. Fourth, establish that experts in the field rely on it, the predicate for an opinion built on material the court never admits.

Under the federal learned treatise rule, counsel may establish a published treatise, periodical, or pamphlet as reliable authority and read it into evidence on direct or cross, though it never becomes an exhibit and never goes to the jury room. That route matters when the opposing expert will not concede a standard is authoritative; where the document is well known, the court may take judicial notice, or another witness may establish it.

The fifth step, scope, shows the standard applies to this defendant. A management system standard for private security companies in complex environments does not automatically govern a two officer contract at a strip mall, though its requirements for documented rules on use of force, weapons authorization, screening, training, and incident investigation translate cleanly. The expert says why in the report.

A guide is advisory, a standard is mandatory

In the National Fire Protection Association's own hierarchy a guide is advisory and uses non mandatory language, a standard carries mandatory provisions, and it labels its documents codes, standards, guides, and recommended practices, each a different grade of obligation. ASIS International, the professional body for security management, whose letters are its legal name and no longer stand for anything, publishes and labels both American National Standards and guidelines. Read the label before the content.

Getting admitted is one job, staying admitted is another

The federal rule on expert testimony, amended effective December 1, 2023, puts the burden on the party offering the expert, who must show it more likely than not that the opinion applies his methods reliably to the facts. The drafters wrote it to stop courts admitting weak opinions on the reasoning that the problems go to weight rather than admissibility, so assume that reasoning is gone. Many states apply a general acceptance test instead, a few their own hybrid; confirm the local rule before writing the motion or the report.

Every opinion in the report ties to one of three anchors. A document is a post order, training file, contract, incident report, dispatch log, licensing file, or email. A measurement is a light reading in footcandles, a distance in feet, a timestamp, or a frame interval. A published standard is an entry in Table 26.1, cited by designation and edition. Write each opinion in that order, the opinion, the anchor, then the inference connecting them, and delete any opinion with no anchor.

Staying admitted takes three more habits. Disclose the limits of your own opinions in the report rather than conceding them on cross, state the assumptions behind any reconstruction, and say which questions your discipline cannot answer and which discipline can.

How the defense destroys these opinions

The opinion that rests on the expert's own say so

"In my thirty years I have never seen a company do it that way" becomes a standard of care opinion only attached to a written policy, a contract term, a consensus document, or the practices of named comparable operators.

The standard that does not apply to this defendant

A healthcare security guideline applied to a hotel, an accreditation requirement applied to a company the accreditor does not reach, a law enforcement consensus policy applied to an unarmed contract officer. The court strikes each on fit alone, without reaching reliability. Where the standard crosses sectors, the report says why the hazard is the same hazard, in writing, before the deposition.

The opinion that outruns the record

The report says nobody trained the officer on de-escalation, and the training file shows a four hour block. It comes from writing the report before the document production closes. Where the file has a hole, say so and name what would fill it.

The causation opinion that overclaims

Assume the defendant should have staffed two officers and staffed one. The opinion that two officers would have prevented the shooting predicts human behavior in a world that never happened. The defensible version states what the untaken measure would have changed on the timeline, against documented intervals: the warning reaches the officer at this minute, the pat down starts at that minute. Let the jury draw the last inference.

What a jury can actually hold

Reduce the case to three or four concrete facts, each a number, a document, or a sentence somebody said out loud. Write the sentences first, then ask what document proves each and whether the discipline offering it can carry it, then build the report to deliver them and leave nothing hanging that the cross can pull.

The three sentences carry no adjective, no characterization of the company, and no claim that a different decision would certainly have changed the outcome. The standard of care testimony sits underneath them: an organization that knows a visitor is probably armed tells the officer sitting beside that visitor before it tells anyone else.

Chapter 27

Defending the Case

Defense counsel in a guard involved shooting makes a stack of arguments. The early ones dispose of the case without a jury; the later ones only reduce a number.

No duty, because the crime was not foreseeable

A judge decides no duty as a question of law, and it ends the case before a jury sees a photograph. Chapter 16 gives the four approaches and the leading case under each, and the forum's approach decides the motion: the five factor crime grid that wins a Texas motion under Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Inc. v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749 (Tex. 1998), is not the record that wins a totality of the circumstances motion. Build the crime grid before plaintiff's counsel does. Pull the calls for service, the offense reports, and the property's incident logs, geocode and code them by offense, then show the court a history of disorderly conduct, theft, and trespass with no violent crime against a person. Similarity decides these motions, and a hundred property crimes do not make a shooting foreseeable.

The criminal act was a superseding cause

A third person's deliberate criminal act is the classic superseding cause, and in a shooting case the defendant did not fire the shot. It has real force in three settings: where the assailant arrived with a formed intent, because no measure short of a fortress stops a person determined to kill a specific target; where the attack bypassed the measure plaintiff's counsel says the defendant owed, which is why it beats a lighting claim in a daylight shooting; and where the untaken measure deters rather than blocks, because deterrence assumes a person still deciding, and the assailant here had already decided.

It is weak in the case that recurs most often here, the shooting that grew out of an ordinary administrative contact the defendant's own staff started. When a company sends a security officer to enforce a house rule and someone shoots him, the criminal act is not extraordinary; it is the risk the post exists to manage, and the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission has already found, on a contested record, that stranger violence is a recognized hazard of security officer work.

We complied with every requirement, which is persuasive and not conclusive

Say so where the company held a current state license, the officer held a current registration and armed permit, the file documents the training hours, and he passed a current qualification. Prove each from the regulator's file rather than the company's, and put that file in front of the jury early.

State the limit before plaintiff's counsel does. A state minimum is a floor, not a ceiling, and compliance shows the absence of a violation, not the presence of adequacy. Every state course of fire examined for this book tests marksmanship at static paper on a known signal and no judgment. Concede the compliance defense and argue the floor was never the question.

Compliance is close to conclusive in one place: where plaintiff's counsel argues a specific credential, screening step, or training block was missing and the regulator's file shows it present and current on the date, that theory is over. Kill it on the papers, not at trial.

The officer exceeded his own training and his own post orders

Four documents prove this defense, which separates the company from the officer. The post order stating what the officer was not to do proves the rule existed. His signed acknowledgment proves he had it. The training record showing the company taught the same rule proves he understood it. Any prior counseling or discipline on the same subject proves the company enforced it, and enforcement is what plaintiff's counsel attacks.

It fails where the post orders are generic, the acknowledgment undated, the training record buries the topic in a block titled "general duties," or the file shows other officers broke the same rule without consequence. It fails hardest where the company's own supervisor directed the conduct, which is why the radio traffic and text messages come before the personnel file.

It costs something: arguing the officer went outside his training concedes the conduct was outside the standard of care, which leaves the company defending on scope of employment and the officer alone. See the last section of this chapter.

Attempt comparative fault in three situations, not in the rest

Attempt it where the plaintiff was the aggressor or was committing a crime, which some states treat as a complete statutory bar rather than a reduction. Attempt it where the plaintiff is a security officer suing the premises, because the training file proving negligent training also supplies the argument that he broke his own post orders, approached without cover, failed to call for backup, or carried a weapon nobody qualified him on. And attempt it where the goal is the percentage, not the defense verdict: the jury in Del Lago came back 51 percent against the resort and 49 percent against the injured patron, one point from zero in a modified comparative negligence state.

Do not attempt it against a decedent's family on thin facts.

Causation, tested on the reconciled timeline

Assume every liability fact plaintiff's counsel alleges: no orientation, no site specific post orders, a radio nobody answered, no warning about what was on the eighth floor. None of it changed the outcome. The desk clerk sends the guard to the same floor, the shooters fire the same rounds, any warning arrives after the contact, and a second officer stands on the far side of the property.

Chapter 16 works that answer. It is strongest where the untaken measure is diffuse, a program, a policy, or a culture, and weakest where it is a single act with a knowable duration, so defense counsel keeps the plaintiff's untaken measure abstract, because an abstract measure will not go on a timeline. Build the reconciled timeline first: line up the surveillance clock, the dispatch records, the telephone records, the medical response times, and any body worn camera, and find out whether the interval plaintiff's counsel needs exists at all.

When the plaintiff is the guard, two doctrines end the case

In almost every state, an officer shot on post has no negligence claim against his employer, however badly it behaved. No orientation, no post orders, no radio, no vest, and no warning about the known threat are all ordinary negligence, which exclusivity bars. Chapter 15 works the exceptions, and a company that merely failed to plan meets none. Plead exclusivity in every officer plaintiff case.

Special employment destroys the guard's case, because after exclusivity the client premises is usually the only defendant left. Chapter 15 states the three part test and the factor overlay. Defense counsel builds the record out of the site manager's own conduct: the client set the post, the hours, the patrol route, and the response protocol, and directed the officer on the day.

The same client control that makes the client a special employer supports the officer's negligence theory against it. Prove too much control and you win immunity, too little and you win on duty. Pick one before the site manager's deposition.

Close the three escapes from the firefighter's rule

The argument that a security officer cannot recover because confronting violence is what the company hired him to do fails against most defendants and succeeds against one. Chapter 15 works both sides. Neighbarger v. Irwin Industries, Inc., 8 Cal.4th 532 (1994), holds that the rule does not bar a private safety employee's claim against a negligent third party, because a stranger never paid to escape the ordinary duty of care. Gregory v. Cott, docket number S209125 (Cal. 2014), holds that a worker hired to manage a hazardous condition may not sue his client over the very risk the client hired him to confront. The research for this book could not verify that decision's parallel citations. Confirm them before filing.

Defense counsel closes three escapes: the specific risk fell outside what the company hired the officer to confront, the client concealed a known specific threat, and the client created the hazard. The doctrine varies by jurisdiction more than any other here. New Jersey abolished it by statute for public safety officers, and some states never adopted the professional rescuer doctrine. Confirm the local rule before briefing it.

The insurance defenses decide whether there is anything to collect

Chapter 20 works the assault and battery endorsement, the sublimit variant, and the order to demand the coverage documents in. Mount Vernon Fire Insurance Co. v. Creative Housing Ltd., 88 N.Y.2d 347 (1996), supplies the test: "if no cause of action would exist but for the assault, the claim is based on assault." Pleading negligence does not defeat that test, and in a jurisdiction following it every theory in this book fails.

Defense counsel takes three points. Find the endorsement before the first mediation, because a sublimit is a number to negotiate against and an exclusion is a wall. Read its definition of assault and battery, since many reach only intentional acts, and a discharge the officer calls accidental or justified may fall outside a narrow one. Run the same analysis on the contract, where the typical guard services agreement runs a broad or intermediate indemnity from the guard company to the client, letting a property owner with a deep pocket tender the whole case to a small guard company with a modest policy.

Correct one contract argument early. Courts generally enforce a limitation of liability clause capping the guard company's exposure at the fees paid between the contracting parties, and generally do not enforce it against an injured stranger to the contract, so it does not cap the plaintiff's recovery.

The criminal case, and why an acquittal decides nothing

Self defense, defense of others, defense of property, and use of force in making an arrest are justification defenses. In most states the officer carries a burden of production, some evidence raising the defense, and the prosecution must then disprove it beyond a reasonable doubt. Ohio Revised Code section 2901.05(B)(1) states that allocation cleanly, but it is not universal: Martin v. Ohio, 480 United States 228 (1987), holds that a state may constitutionally put the burden of persuasion on the defendant. Check the allocation state by state. Several stand your ground states add a pretrial immunity motion with its own burden allocation.

An acquittal does not decide the civil case, for three reasons. The standards differ: a criminal jury that could not exclude self defense beyond a reasonable doubt says nothing about a civil jury weighing a preponderance. The parties differ: the guard company and the property owner never appeared in the prosecution and its outcome binds neither. The questions differ: the criminal case asks whether the officer committed a crime in that second, the civil case whether the company built a system that put him there uninformed. Chapter 19 works the Scot Peterson acquittal, which defense counsel cites for the opposite proposition, and which is now headed to a civil trial.

A conviction is powerful civil evidence, admissible in most states and preclusive in some on the facts necessarily decided. Where prosecutors have charged the officer, defense counsel usually cannot settle the civil case until the criminal case resolves. The officer will assert the privilege against self incrimination in his civil deposition, and that silence can support an adverse inference against him.

Defending the officer himself, who usually has nobody

The officer is the least resourced party in the room. He earns near the bottom of the security wage scale and is often the only party without his own counsel. The company's insurer defends him only while his interests align with the company's, which stops the moment the company argues he exceeded his training. He may face a criminal charge, a civil suit, a state proceeding to revoke his registration, and a termination at once, all out of the same forty seconds.

Four things matter, all first week work. His own lawyer, and somebody to tell him plainly that the company's lawyer is not his lawyer. The criminal exposure resolved or stabilized before he gives a statement to anyone, including his employer's investigator, because the investigation file is discoverable and a compelled statement outlasts the case. Someone in the licensing proceeding, which moves faster than the civil or criminal case, because a revoked registration ends his career whatever the lawsuit does. And the record of what anyone told him and did not, which plaintiff's counsel wants too, because in most of these cases the officer's best defense and the plaintiff's best theory are the same fact.

The officer who did not know there was a gun in the room is not the company that built the system that kept it from him.

Chapter 28

The Program That Prevents the Next One

Every case in this book had a program. The hospital had a workplace violence policy, a security department, an emergency code system, and two incident reporting systems. The hotel had a contract for security services, a front desk, and a radio. None of it reached the officer standing in front of the danger at the moment he needed it.

The assessment that drives staffing, arming, and hours

The hotel chose its own coverage, one unarmed guard eight hours a day. It rented rooms without proof of identity, issued electronic keys as codes a guest could forward by text message, and ran no cameras in the elevators or hallways.

A written security risk assessment should drive coverage instead. Table 26.1 lists the current American National Standard, SRA-2024, the Security Risk Assessment Standard, covering establishing context, planning, conducting the assessment, and post assessment activities. It answers three questions in writing: the credible threats at this property, what the current measures cover, and what coverage those threats require. A client who declines to fund the recommended coverage puts that refusal in writing, and the assessment refreshes after any serious incident, not on the annual calendar.

The arming decision comes out of the assessment rather than into it, because an armed post changes the property's threat profile. Attackers hit the visible security post first. Tell any client considering one so, in writing, before the post exists.

Post orders that answer the question the case turns on

The one page program below sets out, item by item, what a usable post order answers for that site.

Post orders are site specific by definition, so a corporate template with the property name typed into the header is not a post order.

Site orientation before an officer works a post alone

The guard at the hotel was two weeks into the assignment. The hospital had borrowed the officer from another campus that morning. Nobody who knew either property had walked either man through it.

An officer who cannot say where the nearest exit from the eighth floor is has no orientation. The one page program below sets out the walk.

The dispatch rule: tell him what you know before you send him

The desk clerk called the guard off his parking lot patrol and sent him to a disturbance on the eighth floor without telling him anything about it. The elevator opened on a hallway full of people shoving and yelling. Two people fired into a room, shots came back out, and a round went through the guard's knee.

Whoever sends an officer tells him what he knows before the officer goes, on the six points in the one page program below. A sender who does not know says so, which is itself information.

A disturbance that may involve weapons is a law enforcement call, not a security call. The officer calls, holds cover, keeps people away, and directs arriving police; he does not walk into it. Write that into the post orders in those words.

The threat information rule: it reaches the officer first

What the organization knows about a threat reaches the officer at the point of contact first, before administration and before the shift log.

At the hospital, five incident reports about a visitor who had escalated for three days went into two reporting systems and reached nobody who made security decisions. The guards found two firearms and ammunition in a duffel bag in his room. Twenty six minutes later a guard told other employees there was a ninety nine percent chance the visitor was armed, and nobody told the officer sitting beside him.

The escalation and exclusion rule, and the policy you do not enforce

Almost every property in this book had a written zero tolerance policy for violence, threats, or weapons, and almost none enforced it. An unenforced policy becomes the measure of the operator's own departure, and plaintiff's counsel never has to prove what a reasonable operator would have done, because this defendant wrote it down and then did not do it.

The triggering events in these shootings are administrative. Appendix B lists them: a drink carried out of a bar, an occupancy limit, a refusal of entry, a trespass warning, a shoplifting stop, an open door alarm. Not one incident in that casebook began with an officer answering a reported violent felony in progress. A supervisor excludes a person who has already threatened someone, with law enforcement present, at a time the property picks, and a lone officer does not confront him at the moment he picks.

Training that tests judgment, not marksmanship

No state course of fire located for this book tests judgment. Table 3.2 in Chapter 3 sets out the courses the states prescribe by rule, every one fired at static paper at 3 to 25 yards on a known signal. None tests target discrimination, shoot or do not shoot decisions, movement, use of cover, or performance under stress, and only one state includes any low light rounds.

A company that treats the state qualification as its firearms training has trained nothing any case here turned on, and the one page program below lists the five additions that matter. Before each range qualification, California requires one classroom hour on the law of deadly force and one on avoidance and de-escalation, the only state verified to require a standalone recurring classroom de-escalation block at every armed requalification. Use California as the benchmark whatever state you operate in, and add the two topics no state tests and every case needs: what the officer does when someone tells him a person may be armed, practiced as a scenario, and the medical response below.

Equipment, and a radio somebody answers

The guard at the hotel radioed the front desk four times and got no answer. He rode the elevator down with a gunshot wound through the knee and crawled into the lobby to ask for first aid.

The program names the position that monitors the radio, bars it from collateral duties during covered hours, sets an answer time standard, and audits the console log rather than anyone's recollection. Test coverage at stairwells, elevators, the basement, and the far corners of the lot, and record the dead zones in the orientation document.

No state located for this book requires body armor for armed private security officers, sets a holster retention level, or specifies duty ammunition. The absence of a rule is not the absence of a duty: where the state is silent, the standard of care comes from the employer's policy, the client contract, the consensus documents, and what comparable operators do.

The emergency medical plan that covers the officer himself

Nobody at the hospital rendered aid to the shot officer for eight minutes. The site's medical plan, where one existed, covered patients and the client's own employees. It did not contemplate an officer bleeding in a corridor or a parking lot.

Chapter 13 quotes the federal medical services regulation and the 2007 letter of interpretation, which reads near proximity as three to four minutes where bleeding runs uncontrolled and tolerates fifteen minutes in a low hazard workplace such as an office. A post where a gunshot wound is foreseeable is not an office, so either emergency medical services reach it in three to four minutes, or somebody on site carries the training and the gear: a trauma kit with a tourniquet, pressure dressing, and hemostatic agent within reach of the post, not in a supervisor's vehicle; training on it for every officer and the client's staff; and the measured emergency medical services response time to that address, which the fire district will give you.

Document the program, because opposing counsel will discover it

Every element above produces a record the company will hand over in the case that follows the next incident, so write accurately and date everything. Eleven records decide these cases: the assessment and its recommendations; the client's written response to any recommendation it declined to fund; the post orders and their revision history; the signed, dated orientation and post order acknowledgments; the training curriculum and rosters, with content attached rather than a topic title; the firearms qualification records with scores and dates; the daily activity reports; the incident reports; the radio console logs; the supervisor post inspection records; and the licensing file.

A fabricated or backdated record turns a negligence case into a fraud case: a training certificate for a class nobody held, a qualification record for a date the range was closed. A company that does not know its own video retention interval loses the footage of the event it most needs to explain.

Post incident review, and what it must change

The officer documents every use of force, and a supervisor reviews it, along with every incident involving a weapon, whether or not anyone used force. The healthcare use of force guideline in Table 26.1 requires that documentation and a defined notification and review process for each event.

The review asks five questions, in writing. What did the organization know before the contact, and when. Who knew it, and who did not. What did the officer know at the moment of contact. Which written rule governed, and did it answer the situation. What changes in the assessment, the post orders, the training, or the equipment as a result.

Four months after a fatal shooting at the hotel, nothing on that property had changed. A review that changes nothing proves the operator knew and chose not to act.

The hospital case as a single list

The visitor escalated for three days. Five reports went into two systems and reached nobody with authority. A nurse hit a panic alarm and nobody decided anything. The hospital borrowed an officer from another campus and gave him no orientation. The guards found guns in the visitor's room and the finding did not move. Nobody called an emergency code, because the lead guard who could call one did not know how. Forty two minutes later the officer began a pat down of a visitor nobody had told him was armed. The visitor shot him in the neck, and nobody rendered aid for eight minutes.

No single one of those failures kills anybody. The officer died because all of them held at once, in the same building, on the same afternoon, and because each had held for a long time before it without anyone noticing.

Appendix A

Case Intake Card

Print this on one sheet, front and back, and keep it in the file jacket.

Front. The first call

Back. The first week

Appendix B

Casebook of Documented Incidents

Every incident here comes from public reporting and public filings. An entry states a disposition only where the sources confirmed one; otherwise it says so and gives what the record does show. These are teaching cases, not legal authority, so do not cite one to a court without pulling the underlying record.

The officer fired

Jeanne Assam stops Matthew Murray. New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado. December 9, 2007

At about 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday, as services let out, Matthew John Murray, 24, opened fire near the east entrance of the New Life Church campus, killing two sisters and wounding three. Roughly twelve hours earlier, seventy miles north, Murray had killed two staff at the Youth With a Mission training center in Arvada, Colorado. Jeanne Assam, a church safety team volunteer and former Minneapolis Police Department officer, met him inside that entrance and fired a Beretta 92FS, hitting him repeatedly, including the femoral and carotid arteries; news accounts put ten rounds in him. Murray, disabled, shot and killed himself, a distinction to state precisely rather than the shorthand that Assam killed him.

Disposition. Prosecutors charged Assam with nothing. Colorado Springs Police, state authorities, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated. No civil action reported.

Lesson. The campus had roughly twelve hours of warning that a killer was moving through the region, and nobody called between the two sites.

Deputy Louis Campbell shoots Shelly Frey. Houston, Texas. December 2012

Harris County Sheriff's Deputy Louis Campbell worked an extra job as store security at a Walmart off the North Freeway and West Road in north Houston. He confronted three women at the exit over a shoplifting. One hit him with her purse, and all three ran to their car. Campbell followed, and as the car pulled away he stood between the door frame and the driver and fired, saying afterward that he thought the car would run him over. The round killed Shelly Frey, whom police found dead in a car at an apartment complex off Greens Parkway. Prosecutors charged Tiasa Andrews with robbery and assault of a public servant, Yolanda Craig with robbery.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. The sheriff's office put Campbell on three days of paid leave under its standard protocol. Its Homicide Unit, the Office of the Inspector General, and the District Attorney's Office investigated and set the matter for a grand jury. The grand jury result, any civil outcome, and the exact December 2012 date all remain unconfirmed.

Lesson. Establish whose policy governed the shot into the moving vehicle, the sheriff's office or the store's.

Donald Vincent Ciota the Second shoots Jonathan Hart. Hollywood, California. December 2, 2018

At about 8:00 p.m., Ciota, 28, an armed contract officer at the Walgreens at Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street, accused Jonathan Hart, 21, of shoplifting, and the two fought. Prosecutors alleged Ciota shot Hart in the back as Hart ran, the round striking his neck. Hart was homeless, his friends called him Sky and disputed the shoplifting, and defense counsel Mark Geragos asserted Hart and two others were committing a robbery and that one of the three hit Ciota in the face first. Ciota worked for American Protection Group, Inc. Hart's family also named a second firm, S.E.B. Security Services, as a civil defendant, and Walgreens terminated the security firm after the shooting.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Prosecutors charged Ciota with one count of murder, alleging he used a firearm as a deadly and dangerous weapon. The court set bail at 3 million dollars, Ciota faced 50 years to life, and he pleaded not guilty. The sources carry no verdict, plea, or dismissal. Hart's mother, his sister Psykssyanna Hart, and the estate sued in Los Angeles Superior Court for 525 million dollars, and Judge Stuart M. Rice overruled every demurrer on June 8, 2021. Final outcome unconfirmed.

Lesson. Develop the arming decision rather than the shot, and read what the client's own risk assessment said about theft loss against deadly force exposure.

Jonathan Morales fires at the Poway synagogue attacker. Poway, California. April 27, 2019

On the last day of Passover, an attacker opened fire during services at Chabad of Poway. His rifle malfunctioned and two congregation members ran at him. Jonathan Morales, an off duty United States Border Patrol agent and a congregation member, fired and hit the attacker's car several times. The attacker drove away uninjured, and police arrested him about two miles away. Morales held no security assignment and no private security license.

Disposition. The sources report no charge against Morales. Afterward the California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1548, creating the California State Nonprofit Security Grant Program in 2019, which awards up to 200,000 dollars a year to nonprofits, including religious institutions.

Lesson. Morales fired at a fleeing vehicle in a residential neighborhood with no assigned sector, lawfully, and hit only the car.

Contract guard and deputy exchange fire. STEM School Highlands Ranch, Colorado. May 7, 2019

Two students attacked the kindergarten through twelfth grade charter school in Douglas County. Kendrick Castillo, 18, died charging one of them, and a security guard confronted the other, who surrendered on command. The sources also record a friendly fire exchange between a private security guard and a Douglas County Sheriff's deputy. The school assigned no police officer and used private security instead.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. They give neither the guard's name nor his employer, and do not say whether he held a license or campus carry authority, whether he hit anyone, or whether he or his company faced charges or suit. State nothing beyond the friendly fire exchange itself without the Douglas County Sheriff's Office incident report and the school's security contract.

Lesson. Where a school buys private security instead of a school resource officer, ask for the deconfliction plan with the responding agency and any record that the two trained together.

Jack Wilson shoots Keith Kinnunen. West Freeway Church of Christ, White Settlement, Texas. December 29, 2019

During the communion portion of a Sunday service, before a congregation of roughly 250, Keith Thomas Kinnunen, 43, of Tucson, Arizona, entered in a false beard and a long coat, sat in a pew, then stood, produced a shotgun, and fired. He killed Anton Wallace, 64, serving communion, and Richard White, 67, a volunteer security team member who had drawn his own weapon. Jack Wilson, 71, headed that team, taught firearms, and had served as a reserve deputy sheriff in Hood County, Texas. He fired one round at Kinnunen from roughly fifteen yards, about six seconds after Kinnunen's first shot. The church was livestreaming, so the whole event is on video.

Disposition. Kinnunen died at the scene. Prosecutors charged Wilson with nothing, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott and state officials publicly called the response lawful and justified. No civil action reported.

Lesson. Wilson's response took six seconds, inside any arrival time from outside the building. White died drawing into a shotgun already up.

Kegia Mitchell shoots Thomas Martin. Las Vegas, Nevada. August 26, 2020

Mitchell, armed, worked the door of a 7-Eleven convenience store enforcing pandemic era occupancy limits. Thomas Martin, 56, angry that she was letting other customers in ahead of him, cursed at her, threatened her, and forced his way in. They fought inside, Mitchell put him out of the store, and she then shot him outside. The sources give neither her employment status, contract or in house, nor her license status.

Disposition. Prosecutors charged Mitchell with murder with use of a deadly weapon, then with voluntary manslaughter with use of a deadly weapon and assault with a deadly weapon. She entered an Alford plea, acknowledging the state had evidence sufficient to convict without admitting guilt, and the court sentenced her to 5.5 to 14 years in prison. The sources give no sentencing date and record no civil action.

Lesson. The client handed Mitchell an occupancy rule it could not physically enforce and left her alone at the door to apply it. Get the written occupancy directive and the staffing decision behind that single officer post.

Matthew Dolloff shoots Lee Keltner. Denver, Colorado. October 10, 2020

At dueling rallies near Civic Center Park in downtown Denver, Dolloff, working armed and in plainclothes on a media protection detail, shot and killed Lee Keltner. The contracting chain ran three layers deep: 9NEWS, through TEGNA Inc. and Multimedia Holdings Corp., hired Pinkerton Consulting and Investigations, Inc., Pinkerton subcontracted to Isborn Security Services, LLC, and Isborn put Dolloff on the 9NEWS crew. Dolloff held no Denver security guard license, which the municipal code required, and Pinkerton told Denver licensing officials it did not know that. The District Attorney's own account has Keltner threatening and assaulting Dolloff as the initial aggressor before Dolloff shot him.

Disposition. Prosecutors charged Dolloff with one count of second degree murder. He pleaded not guilty in May 2021 and demanded trial. On March 21, 2022, District Attorney Beth McCann moved to dismiss and Judge Brian R. Whitney dismissed, McCann stating Dolloff had no duty to retreat and acted with legal justification. The sources do not say whether the dismissal ran with or without prejudice. Denver Excise and Licenses cited Isborn and Pinkerton on November 4, 2020. Isborn surrendered its Denver license in early December 2020 and agreed not to reapply for five years. Executive Director Ashley Kilroy rejected a hearing officer's recommended six month suspension, revoked Pinkerton's Denver private security employer license in June 2021, and barred the company for five years. Pinkerton appealed, outcome unconfirmed. In Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated., Colorado Court of Appeals No. 23CA0436, decided June 13, 2024, the court reversed as to 9NEWS's direct negligent hiring, retention, and supervision and affirmed as to vicarious liability, holding that placing armed security at a volatile public event is an inherently dangerous activity making the duty non delegable. Remanded, final outcome unconfirmed.

Lesson. Three companies touched this assignment, and not one confirmed that the man they sent out armed and in plainclothes held the license the city required. Put the verification step in the post order, not the master services agreement.

Logan Conrad Gimbel shoots Freddy Nelson. Portland, Oregon. May 29, 2021

Freddy Nelson, 49, sat in his truck in a Lowe's parking lot near Delta Park. Gimbel, 30, working private security and armed, sprayed Nelson with mace and shot him in the truck. The District Attorney's release does not name Gimbel's employer, and no source gives his license status.

Disposition. Multnomah County Circuit Court tried the case April 25 to May 8, 2023, before Judge Christopher Marshall, Amanda Nadell and Todd Jackson prosecuting. On May 8, 2023 a twelve person jury found Gimbel guilty of Murder in the Second Degree with a Firearm, Unlawful Use of a Weapon with a Firearm, and two counts of Unlawful Use of Mace in the Second Degree, and not guilty of Recklessly Endangering Another Person. The court sentenced him to life with parole possible after 25 years. No civil action reported.

Lesson. The jury convicted Gimbel on two chemical agent counts as well as murder, so develop the whole escalation sequence, not the shot alone.

A hospital police officer wounds Nestor Hernandez. Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Dallas, Texas. October 22, 2022

Nestor Oswaldo Hernandez, 30, a parolee on an ankle monitor, had his parole officer's permission to attend the birth of his child. On the fourth floor labor and delivery unit he accused his girlfriend of infidelity, pistol whipped her, and said whoever entered would die, then shot and killed Katie Annette Flowers, 63, a nurse, and Jacqueline Ama Pokuaa, 45, a social worker, as the two women came in. A Methodist hospital police officer, an in house commissioned officer rather than a contract guard, shot Hernandez in the leg as he reloaded and moved to leave, ending the attack. Hernandez surrendered after a short standoff.

Disposition. Prosecutors charged Hernandez with two counts of capital murder on a three million dollar bond. The state convicted him, and the court sentenced him to life without parole on November 9, 2023. Texas holds him at the Preston E. Smith Unit in Lamesa. No civil suit reported.

Lesson. A man on parole carried a firearm from the curb to a labor and delivery floor and nothing detected it. Get the hospital's weapons screening policy and the entrance screening equipment records.

Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony shoots Banko Brown. San Francisco, California. April 27, 2023

At about 6:30 p.m. at the Walgreens at 825 Market Street, Anthony, an armed contract officer for Kingdom Group Protective Services, confronted Banko Brown, 24, over roughly 14 to 15 dollars of candy. He wrestled Brown to the ground inside the store, then let him up. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott's account has Brown stepping outside, turning back, spitting at Anthony, and raising an arm, Anthony then drawing and firing. Brown carried no weapon, investigators recovered no knife, and no witness corroborated an anonymous account that Brown had threatened to stab Anthony.

Disposition. Police booked Anthony on suspicion of murder and released him. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins declined charges on May 15, 2023, citing insufficient evidence to overcome self defense. California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office reviewed that declination in June 2024 and found no abuse of discretion. In July 2023 the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services fined Anthony 1,500 dollars for uniform and firearm regulation violations and Kingdom Group Protective Services 5,000 dollars for filing an incident report late. On May 26, 2023, John Burris sued Walgreens, Anthony, and Kingdom Group for wrongful death for Brown's family, seeking 25 million dollars and alleging the two companies encouraged armed officers to use force to detain suspected shoplifters. Civil outcome unconfirmed.

Lesson. The fight was over, and Anthony re engaged over an insult. The 5,000 dollar fine establishes that the regulator found the company's incident reporting deficient before any plaintiff did.

Kevin Henley Junior shoots Zulma Calderon Pacheco. Stone Park, Illinois. Reported March 2025

Just after 1:30 a.m. at Mansion Live Nightclub, 3801 West Lake Street, a fight broke out inside. Henley, 34, of Chicago, an armed contract officer, says he was stopping a man from groping a woman when several men surrounded and hit him. He drew and fired one round, killing Zulma Daniela Calderon Pacheco, 21. The state involuntarily dissolved the security firm days later. The year rests on the publication date of the reporting reviewed; confirm it against the court file.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Prosecutors charged Henley with one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon, and Judge ShawnTe Raines-Welch granted him pretrial release on electronic monitoring. Calderon Pacheco's family sued Mansion Live Nightclub for wrongful death, alleging inadequate security, and their counsel intends to add Henley and the security firm. Outcome unconfirmed.

Lesson. The security firm dissolved days after the incident, so identify and preserve the venue's insurance, the staffing agency, and the individual licensees in week one.

Joseph Mills shoots two suspected burglars at a cannabis dispensary. Sacramento, California. May 8, 2026

At about 4:30 a.m. in the 8500 block of Thys Court, in the industrial area near Florin Perkins Road, police suspected two men of breaking into a closed licensed cannabis facility. Mills, 55, armed, shot both, killing one and leaving the other in stable condition. The sources name neither man and give neither Mills's employment status, contract or in house, nor his license or firearms permit.

Disposition. Pending and unconfirmed. Homicide detectives arrested Mills on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter, prosecutors charged him with that and other weapons counts, and his attorney has publicly asserted self defense. About three months later, prosecutors charged three Bay Area men in the May break in, so both prosecutions run at once. No civil action reported.

Lesson. Get the post order and the client's written loss prevention directive, and read them against each other.

An armored car guard shoots two teenagers. Houston, Texas. August 2026

On Bellaire Boulevard in the Gulfton area of southwest Houston, suspects approached an armored vehicle during a cash in transit stop and sprayed the driver with bear spray, on the Houston Police Department's account. The guard fired and hit two teenage suspects. The coverage located does not name the cash in transit company.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Those sources carry no charging information, and confirm only the headline facts above.

Lesson. Get the cash in transit company's post orders and read whether they address a chemical irritant attack on the crew.

The officer was shot

Richard Ridgell killed and disarmed. Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. September 16, 2013

Ridgell, 52, worked as a contract security officer at the Building 197 front entrance, carrying a 9mm Beretta M9. Aaron Alexis entered with a shotgun, shot and killed him, and took his pistol, which extended the attack. Alexis killed twelve people in all. He held a Secret level clearance granted in March 2008 and valid for ten years, and the federal personnel report supporting it never mentioned that his 2004 arrest involved a firearm. No source names Ridgell's employer.

Disposition. Alexis died. He worked for The Experts, a subcontractor on a Hewlett Packard Enterprise Services contract, and on September 25, 2013 Hewlett Packard fired that firm over its failure to respond to his mental health issues. The sources describe no suit or settlement against a security contractor.

Lesson. Alexis took Ridgell's pistol and kept killing with it. On any single officer armed post, get the weapon retention training records and the issued holster's retention level.

Jesus Campos shot at Mandalay Bay. Las Vegas, Nevada. October 1, 2017

At about 10:05 p.m., dispatch sent Campos, an unarmed in house MGM Resorts International hotel security officer, to an open door alert on the 32nd floor, a nuisance grade call suggesting no threat. He found a stairwell door that would not open, because someone had screwed an L shaped bracket into the door and frame, reported it, then heard what he took for drilling inside room 32-135 and moved toward it. Stephen Paddock fired roughly 35 rounds through his own suite door into the hallway and hit Campos in the right thigh. Campos radioed the hotel, met maintenance worker Stephen Schuck, and warned him to take cover, and Schuck called dispatch and summoned police.

Disposition. Police first said Campos arrived after Paddock began firing on the concert crowd, then said Paddock shot him six minutes earlier, relying on a 9:59 p.m. hotel security log entry. That timestamp marked when Campos reached the barricaded door, not when Paddock shot him. MGM Resorts International settled with victims for 800 million dollars, announced October 3, 2019, and a judge approved it on September 30, 2020. That settlement resolved victim claims broadly, and the sources do not say what Campos received, if anything.

Lesson. Dispatch understated the call, and nobody reclassified it when Campos found defeated door hardware. Post orders need an explicit stop and escalate trigger for a found barricade and for drilling sounds.

The bouncer at the door. Borderline Bar and Grill, Thousand Oaks, California. November 7, 2018

During a college country night at 99 Rolling Oaks Drive, Ian David Long, 28, a Marine Corps veteran, arrived and opened fire, shooting the bouncer at the entrance first. Thirteen people died, including Long and the bouncer, and sixteen more took wounds. The source reviewed gives the bouncer's age as 48, does not name him, and does not say he carried a weapon. Other outlets publish his name. Take it from the coroner's record, not from memory.

Disposition. Long died. No civil action reported.

Lesson. Measure the illuminance at the entry and in the lot the door host faces, and get the written justification for one unarmed officer on that post.

Jemel Roberson killed by police. Manny's Blue Room Lounge, Robbins, Illinois. November 11, 2018

At about 4:00 a.m., a man opened fire inside the bar and wounded four people. Jemel Roberson, 26, worked security there and held a carry license. He subdued that man and pinned him in the parking lot. Midlothian police officer Ian Covey, roughly seven years on the job and a special weapons and tactics team leader, arrived and shot Roberson less than five seconds after ordering him to drop the gun, on witness accounts, with bystanders shouting that Roberson was security. The prosecutor's memorandum records that Covey had gone inside and met and acknowledged two other security guards who identified themselves, and that when he came on Roberson outside, Roberson's clothing carried no sign of a guard.

Disposition. The Cook County State's Attorney declined charges on October 2, 2020, concluding that Covey's use of deadly force was not unreasonable under the totality of the circumstances. Roberson's mother sued the Village of Midlothian and Covey for federal civil rights violations on November 12, 2018, and that case settled in July 2022 for 7.5 million dollars. The sources do not say whether Covey faced departmental discipline.

Lesson. A guard still holding a gun when police arrive has to be identifiable from a distance, in low light, from behind, and in a ground fight. The post order also has to say what he does with the weapon the moment he hears sirens.

Thurman Bailey killed outside Sound Bar. Chicago, Illinois. March 8, 2019

Shortly after midnight outside Sound Bar at Franklin and Ontario Streets in River North, as many as fifteen people fought. Bailey, 28, an armed guard at the club, drew his weapon when that group began fighting with Sound Bar security. Prosecutors said Armond Williams saw Bailey's gun, pulled his own, and started shooting, hitting Bailey and another man, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital pronounced Bailey dead.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Prosecutors charged Michael Matthews, 41, with first degree murder and mob action, on a 500,000 dollar bond with electronic monitoring; Armond Williams, 37, with first degree murder, held without bail; and Jon Poole, 34, with two counts of first degree murder, held without bail. The city ordered the club closed as a public safety threat. No civil action reported.

Lesson. On the prosecutors' account, Williams fired because he saw Bailey's drawn gun. Get the post order on drawing during a crowd fight.

Jo Acker killed. Boise Towne Square Mall, Boise, Idaho. October 25, 2021

At about 1:50 p.m. on a Monday, Jacob Bergquist, 27, walked up to Jo Acker, 26, a security officer on the first floor of the enclosed mall, and shot her, the first person he shot, and she died. He kept moving through the mall and firing, killed a second person, and wounded four more, including a Boise police officer who exchanged fire with him outside a nearby business about three minutes after the first call. Bergquist died at a hospital later that morning. The sources do not say whether Acker carried a weapon and do not name her employer.

Disposition. Bergquist died, so no prosecution followed. The sources could not confirm a reported Occupational Safety and Health Administration case against the guard company. Describe that case only after you pull the inspection record.

Lesson. Get the mall post order and read whether it sent the officer to contact a reported armed subject or to observe, report, and shelter others.

Aaron Salter Junior killed at Tops Friendly Markets. Buffalo, New York. May 14, 2022

On a Saturday at the Tops Friendly Markets on Jefferson Avenue, Payton Gendron, 18, arrived in body armor and carrying a rifle. Aaron Salter Junior, an armed store security officer and retired Buffalo Police Department officer with decades of service, met him inside and fired, and his rounds did not penetrate the armored vest. Gendron returned fire and killed him, killing ten people in all, eleven of the thirteen he shot Black.

Disposition. Prosecutors tried Gendron separately for the killings. No civil action reported against the store or its security provider.

Lesson. Put the armor question in the armed post risk assessment, because one officer with a handgun and no vest is no countermeasure against a rifle and hard armor.

Anthony Egeonu killed at a pharmacy. Reported January 2025

Egeonu, 39, worked as an armed contract officer in a protective vest for a third party security company the reporting does not name. He tried to stop two teenagers shoplifting at a CVS on Main Street, and the three struggled. Police Chief Michael Igo said the 13 year old drew a gun, fired several shots at him, and fled in a white Kia. Two sources spell Egeonu's surname differently, so verify the spelling, the city, and the date against the police report.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Prosecutors charged a 13 year old and a 15 year old with capital murder and withheld their names because of their ages. No civil action reported.

Lesson. Weigh the merchandise against a life, then read whether the client's contract required the stop at all.

Montine Wiley Junior killed at Green Door Distillery. Kalamazoo, Michigan. April 2025

Outside the Green Door Distillery on North Street near Porter Street, during a large event expecting a crowd of Western Michigan University students, a door guard refused entry to Kaiden Cole, then a high school senior. Cole argued, told him to meet him in the parking lot, and walked away. Montine Wiley Junior, 27, a contract officer for a private security company the source reviewed does not name, took a gun from another guard and walked out to Cole, who shot and killed him.

Disposition. Prosecutors charged Cole, of Battle Creek, with first degree murder, felony firearm, and carrying a concealed weapon. His conviction came in March 2026, and the court sentenced him to a minimum of 30 years. His age at the time of the offense made him ineligible for life without parole. A second outlet framed the sentence as up to 62 years, consistent with a Michigan indeterminate term, but the research verified only the 30 year minimum. No civil action reported.

Lesson. The weapon stays with the person licensed and assigned to carry it, and a patron who walks away after a refusal is a resolved problem, not a pending one.

Aland Etienne and Didarul Islam killed. 345 Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan, New York. July 28, 2025

Shane Devon Tamura, 27, of Las Vegas, entered the lobby of a Class A office tower whose tenants included the National Football League. He shot Didarul Islam, 36, an off duty New York Police Department officer working lobby security, first, then sprayed the lobby with gunfire and shot Aland Etienne, 46, an unarmed building security guard, at the elevators. Tamura rode to the 33rd floor and killed Julia Hyman, 27, after she stepped out of a fortified panic room, then barricaded himself and shot himself. He killed four people besides himself, fired nearly fifty rounds, left a note blaming the league for a brain injury, and had taken the wrong elevator bank to reach its offices.

Disposition. Tamura died. Islam's widow sued the building's owner, alleging security failures, and the Hyman family retained attorney Alex Spiro to investigate a claim. The sources give no defendants, court, or filing dates for either matter, and no source names Etienne's employer.

Lesson. One unarmed contract guard, one armed off duty officer, street sightlines, and a turnstile line were the whole lobby access control. Hyman died stepping out of the building's own panic room, because that refuge had no link to tell the people inside when it was over.

An armored car guard shot at a Chase Bank. Balch Springs, Texas. First quarter of 2026

At about 8:30 a.m. on a Wednesday at the Chase Bank at 12338 Lake June Road near Balch Springs Road, southeast of Dallas, a robber shot a cash in transit employee servicing the branch from an open parking lot, then fled with an undisclosed amount of cash. Surveillance showed a masked person in black, wearing gloves. The guard remained in critical condition, and police withheld his name. The reporting names no armored car company and gives no exact date.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Police had made no arrest at the time of the first reporting. A later article indicates federal agents arrested a man in Fort Worth in connection with the shooting, but the research could not retrieve it, so the defendant's name, the charges, and the arrest date all remain unconfirmed.

Lesson. Get the armored car company's service schedule for the branch, the route records, and everyone at the bank who knew the service time.

A bar security officer critically wounded. Hat Trick's Sports Bar, Covington, Kentucky. May 17, 2026

Early in the morning outside the bar on Madison Avenue, at closing, the security officer took a drink out of a woman's hand as she tried to leave carrying it. Someone then shot him three times, including once in the head. As of August 2026 he was still in a rehabilitation hospital, relearning to walk, and had lost an eye and his sight. The article does not name him and does not say whether he carried a weapon or worked on contract or in house.

Disposition. Pending. Franklin Smith, 44, evaded arrest for more than two months. Police took him at a Sharonville hotel on July 24, 2026, and prosecutors charged him with assault and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. The court set bond at 200,000 dollars on August 4, 2026 with a no contact order, and the next hearing for August 24, 2026. Covington revoked the bar's liquor license. No civil action reported.

Lesson. A guard who enforces a liquor rule by taking property out of a patron's hand turns an administrative rule into physical contact, in a parking lot, at closing. Get the post order and the bar's written liquor license compliance procedure.

Gregory Thomas the Third shot on Peachtree Street. Midtown Atlanta, Georgia. July 30, 2026

At about 10:00 p.m. on a Thursday, on a stretch of Peachtree Street fronted by restaurants, Thomas, 27, armed and working security nearby, asked a man to leave a property. The man grew angry and shot him in the chest, inches from his heart. By his own account he returned fire and counted roughly sixteen or seventeen rounds. Bystanders performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation on him, and the gunfire shattered nearby restaurant windows. The sources give neither his employment status, contract or in house, nor his assigned property.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Those sources report no arrest, no charge, and no civil action.

Lesson. Get the post order on trespass warnings, the training records of the officer who gave this one, and the pay rate and tenure for that post.

Security present, and what it did not change

Off duty officer working club security exchanges fire. Pulse nightclub, Orlando, Florida. June 12, 2016

In the early hours of Latin night, near closing, Orlando Police Department Officer Adam Gruler worked extra duty at the club, armed. He saw Omar Mateen shooting two patrons trying to escape through an emergency exit, fired at him, shouted that the gunman was on the patio, and fired again a minute later. Mateen himself held a state armed guard license and worked for G4S Secure Solutions, one of the largest security contractors in the world.

Disposition. Mateen died. Florida's regulator fined G4S over lapses in psychological testing connected to Mateen's employment. The sources do not establish the finding, the fine amount, or the date, and do not detail the negligent security litigation against the club or G4S.

Lesson. Ask for the psychological screening instrument, the evaluator's name, and the date, because a form somebody signed is not an evaluation somebody ran.

Emantic Bradford Junior killed by a police officer working the mall. Riverchase Galleria, Hoover, Alabama. November 22, 2018

On Thanksgiving night during Black Friday weekend hours, a fight at the enclosed mall turned into gunfire that wounded two people. Hoover Police Department officers working the mall approached and shot Emantic Fitzgerald Bradford Junior, 21, who died at the scene. Bradford carried a weapon during the fight and was not the shooter. A sworn Hoover officer, not a contract guard, shot him, and the mall staffed its security with off duty and on duty sworn officers working retail.

Disposition. Not confirmed in the sources reviewed. Those sources carry neither the Alabama Attorney General's review nor any federal or civil resolution. A Birmingham activist group, Justice League, organized protests and called for a boycott of the Galleria and for release of the body camera footage.

Lesson. Same failure as Jemel Roberson at Manny's Blue Room Lounge eleven days earlier. Put that risk in the written armed post justification, for every armed guard and armed citizen the client permits on the property.

Armed volunteers performing a security function. Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, Seattle, Washington. June 20 and June 29, 2020

Armed volunteers ran access control inside an occupied protest zone with no vetting, no chain of command, and no link to police or fire. On June 20, 2020, Marcel Long, 18, shot Horace Lorenzo Anderson Junior, 19, four times. Volunteer medics gave Anderson cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the Seattle Police and Fire Departments failed to coordinate, delaying the response, and the medics drove him to a hospital themselves, where staff pronounced him dead at 2:53 a.m. On June 29, 2020, an early morning shooting killed Antonio Mays Junior, 16, and wounded a 14 year old. Video caught twelve or thirteen shots and then eighteen more as a Jeep crashed into a barricade, and a volunteer medic who saw it said the zone's own armed volunteers fired at the Jeep after the crash. The emergency services again failed to coordinate, and Mays died in the transport vehicle.

Disposition. Police arrested Long a year after he shot Anderson. He pleaded guilty to murder in 2023 and received 14 years. The sources state no comparable criminal disposition for the Mays shooting. Seattle settled the Anderson wrongful death claim for 500,000 dollars, approved April 2022. As of February 2026, the court had awarded Antonio Mays Sr. 26 million dollars and the estate of Antonio Mays Junior 4 million dollars, a combined 30 million dollars.

Lesson. The 30 million dollar award followed a record in which the defendant could not say who carried weapons, who authorized them, or what the rules were.

No security in the published account. Saint Francis Hospital, Tulsa, Oklahoma. June 1, 2022

On the second floor of the Natalie Building, an outpatient orthopedic clinic on the Saint Francis Hospital campus, Michael Louis, also reported as Michelet Louis, 45, opened fire with a rifle he had bought hours earlier. He had had back surgery there and had complained of continuing pain. He killed the surgeon who operated on him, a second physician, a medical assistant, and a patient's husband. Police took the call at about 4:56 p.m., and responding officers heard gunshots and moved to the second floor. The last shot, at about 4:58 p.m., was probably Louis killing himself.

Disposition. Louis died. No civil action reported, and the published account says nothing about hospital security personnel or any security response.

Lesson. Ask which buildings the security plan covers, who stands post in each, what hours, and whether the clinic buildings ever entered the risk assessment.

An armed customer, not a guard. Greenwood Park Mall, Greenwood, Indiana. July 17, 2022

Jonathan Douglas Sapirman opened fire in the food court. Fifteen seconds after his first shot, Elisjsha Dicken, a legally armed 22 year old from Seymour, fired ten rounds from a Glock 19 at about forty yards and hit Sapirman eight times. The source reviewed says nothing about the mall's security arrangements, so check the mall's own policy before asserting either way.

Disposition. Sapirman died. The sources describe no lawsuit.

Lesson. Read this entry next to Boise, where Bergquist killed Acker as she approached him. Stop treating anecdotes about who happened to carry a gun as evidence of what a client should buy.

Screening policy written but not performed. Fete lounge, Boston, Massachusetts. March 7 to 8, 2025

At the Fete lounge on Kingston Street in downtown Boston, the venue's own written security policy required metal detectors or wanding for every patron. The guards patted patrons down instead, and an armed patron walked in. The civil suits also allege neither the club nor the guards tried to break up the fight before the gunfire. The plaintiffs named Mass Protection Services of Malden: Samuel Higginbottom of Dorchester sued in October 2025, and Hassaun Daily of Dorchester on July 29, 2026.

Disposition. Civil outcome pending. On the criminal side, Eliezer Quinones of Brattleboro, Vermont, faces two counts of armed assault with intent to murder, four counts of assault and battery with a firearm, unlawful firearm possession, and accessory after the fact, and sits on house arrest in Swampscott awaiting trial. Jahleel Sanders-Williams of Lynn pleaded guilty on May 12, 2026 to unlawful firearm possession, drew seven years, and is appealing the sentence.

Lesson. A screening policy the company writes and never executes hands the plaintiff the breach element in the defendant's own words.

An armed guard detains a shooter without firing. Westfield Wheaton, Wheaton, Maryland. July 31, 2026

At about 6:00 p.m., near the children's play area and the Cinnabon, a 17 year old fired a handgun inside the mall and hit a 13 year old boy in the ankle, whom a hospital treated and released. The 17 year old ran through the mall, and an armed security guard stopped him near Dick's Sporting Goods, ordered him to the ground, and held him until police arrived without firing. Montgomery County Police Commander David Smith said his department had run active shooter training with mall security within the previous two months, and credited the guard's observation for the arrest. The sources do not say whether the guard worked on contract or in house.

Disposition. Pending. Prosecutors charged the 17 year old as an adult with attempted second degree murder, first degree assault, use of a firearm in the commission of a violent felony, carrying a loaded handgun, and possession of a firearm by a minor.

Lesson. The joint training record the STEM School entry demands, here in the guard company's favor.

What the set shows when you read it end to end

The trigger was trivial and administrative in six of the thirty four incidents. A drink carried out of a bar in Covington. A pandemic occupancy limit at a Las Vegas convenience store. A refusal of entry at a Kalamazoo door. A trespass warning on Peachtree Street. Fifteen dollars of candy in San Francisco. An open door alert on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas hotel.

The officer was the first person shot in five of the thirty four. Bergquist shot Jo Acker, the first to die at the Boise mall. Tamura shot Didarul Islam first at 345 Park Avenue. Alexis killed Richard Ridgell at the Building 197 entrance and used Ridgell's pistol to keep killing. Long shot the Borderline bouncer at the door. Paddock shot Jesus Campos before firing on the crowd. Tell any client considering an armed post so, in writing.

Information held at the site did not reach the officer in three of the thirty four. Dispatch sent Campos to a nuisance grade open door alert and nobody reclassified it when he found a barricaded stairwell and a man drilling for a rifle. New Life Church sat on roughly twelve hours of notice from Arvada and nobody connected the two. At the STEM School, a contract guard and a sheriff's deputy who had never trained together fired in the same building.

Visual identification or equipment failed in three of the thirty four. Roberson had the shooter pinned when Covey shot him, and the prosecutor's memorandum records no sign of a guard on his clothing, though Covey had acknowledged two uniformed guards inside minutes earlier. Bradford carried a weapon, was not the shooter, and an officer working a mall killed him. Salter was identifiable and it did not matter, because his rounds could not defeat Gendron's armor. The visual signature and the equipment both have to work.

The employer dissolved, or no source named it, in nine of the thirty four. Illinois involuntarily dissolved the Stone Park security firm days after the shooting. No public account names the employer in Boise, Balch Springs, Kalamazoo, Atlanta, Wheaton, or the Dallas CVS, where the reporting says only that a third party security company employed the officer, and none names Aland Etienne's employer at 345 Park Avenue or Richard Ridgell's at the Navy Yard. Identifying and preserving the employer belongs in the first week.

Every recovery in this casebook ran against a premises owner or the contracting chain rather than the officer. Eight hundred million dollars from MGM Resorts International after Mandalay Bay. Thirty million dollars combined in the Seattle awards of February 2026. Seven and a half million dollars from the Village of Midlothian for Jemel Roberson. A widow's suit against the owner of 345 Park Avenue. Against that, the officer's own exposure in these entries is a criminal charge. The Colorado Court of Appeals said the same in Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated. when it held the duty to place armed security at a volatile public event non delegable.

Nobody counts these, and that is a finding

No one in the United States counts security guard involved shootings. Not the federal government, not the major journalism databases, not the guard companies. Say that plainly rather than reaching for a number that does not exist.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries is the closest federal series. Its calendar year 2024 release counted 5,070 fatal work injuries across all occupations and 470 workplace homicides, up from 458 in 2023, homicides making 64.1 percent of the violence and other injuries by persons or animals category. Protective service occupations recorded 281 fatalities in 2024, up from 276 in 2023, homicides 34.5 percent of those, or 97. The protective service fatal injury rate per 100,000 full time equivalent workers was 9.4 in 2021, 10.2 in 2022, and 8.2 in 2023. The published summary tables reviewed give security guards and gaming surveillance officers no separate line, so those 97 homicides cover police, firefighters, correctional officers, and bailiffs too, and nobody can attribute them to guards. The series counts guards who died; no federal series counts guards who shot someone.

The national police shooting databases exclude these events by definition, and Appendix E sets out each system and the universe it claims. The Washington Post Fatal Force database, whose coverage begins January 1, 2015, counts only a police officer, in the line of duty, shooting and killing a civilian, so private security falls outside it, and so do off duty sworn officers working extra job security, which removes the Shelly Frey fact pattern from the national count. It captures the Jemel Roberson killing, because an on duty officer shot a civilian, but codes it as a police shooting, so the security dimension disappears. The Gun Violence Archive codes each incident with up to 120 variables, including police action, defensive use, robbery, and brandishing, but its participant types and incident categories include no security guard, so a guard involved shooting lands there as a homicide, a defensive gun use, or a robbery, and counting them would take a full text reading of every narrative rather than a query.

What you do have is a denominator. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook put employment of security guards and gambling surveillance officers at 1,272,400 in its 2024 estimates, with median pay of 38,370 dollars per year, or 18.46 dollars per hour, for security guards and 43,900 dollars per year for gambling surveillance officers. Typical entry level education is a high school diploma or equivalent, most employers instruct on the job, and guards learn the role within a few weeks. Most states require a license, with basic qualifications of age 18, a background check, and training, and armed guards face additional weapons licensing.

A workforce of 1.27 million people, at a median of 18.46 dollars an hour, learning the job in a few weeks, produces an unknown number of shootings every year in both directions, and no agency has the job of counting them.

Appendix C

Glossary

These definitions are the book's own. State law controls the legal terms and varies, so treat each as a starting point and check your jurisdiction's statute and case law.

Access control log

Who entered a controlled space, when, and by what credential.

Additional insured

A party an endorsement adds to another's liability policy, so it defends and indemnifies that party too.

Alter ego rule

A court may disregard a corporation's separate existence and reach its owner where the owner ran it as a personal instrument.

Assault and battery exclusion

Chapter 20 works it: a liability policy provision cutting coverage for any claim arising out of threatened or actual harmful contact with a person, which reaches a shooting pleaded as negligence.

Assumption of risk

A defense that the injured person knowingly accepted the danger that hurt him.

Bill rate

What a guard company charges the client per hour, as against the wage it pays the officer, the spread being what remains for training, supervision, equipment, and insurance.

Body armor threat level

The National Institute of Justice classification of what a vest stops, from soft armor for handgun rounds to hard plates for rifle rounds, neither of which defeats the other.

Borrowed servant

One company's employee working temporarily under another company's direction and control, so the second may answer for his acts.

Calls for service

The local agency's record of every request for police response at an address, the standard proof of prior similar incidents.

Castle doctrine

No duty to retreat before using force in one's own home, and in some states one's vehicle or workplace, which rarely fits an officer working someone else's property.

Citizen's arrest

A private person, not a peace officer, holding someone against his will, which most states allow by statute under narrow conditions; get the conditions wrong and the detention becomes false imprisonment and any force battery.

Clock offset

The difference between a recording device's internal clock and true time.

Color of law

Chapter 10 works it: acting on authority derived from government, whether or not the law authorized the act, which opens federal civil rights liability.

Company police

A private employer's own police force, which the state commissions under a statute granting police powers on the employer's property, held mostly by railroads, hospitals, and universities.

Comparative fault

Responsibility allocated by percentage among the plaintiff and the defendants, reducing or barring recovery by the plaintiff's share, at a threshold that differs by state.

Contract security

Officers an outside company supplies under a services agreement rather than employees of the protected business, a separate defendant with its own insurance, licenses, and records.

Course of fire

The sequence of shots, distances, times, and target scoring an officer must complete to qualify with a firearm; get the course, not the certificate.

Courtesy officer

A person, often an off duty police officer, who takes reduced or free rent at an apartment complex in exchange for a security presence, a label the industry promoted in the 1980s on the theory that calling him a guard implied a legal duty.

Daily activity report

Chapter 4 works it: the shift log where an officer records patrols, observations, and incidents.

Daubert

The shorthand for the federal standard a trial judge applies in deciding whether expert testimony rests on reliable methods reliably applied to the facts. This book prints no reporter citations for the decisions behind it, because the research for this book never verified them.

Deliberate intent

A narrow exception in some states letting an injured worker sue his own employer outside workers' compensation where the employer knowingly exposed him to a specific unsafe condition, on a demanding showing whose elements differ by state.

Distance determination

The forensic estimate of muzzle to target distance, which an examiner makes by comparing residue and powder patterns on the target to test fires from the same weapon and ammunition.

Duty ammunition

What an officer actually carries on post, as against practice ammunition.

Duty to retreat

The rule in some states requiring a person to avoid deadly force by retreating if he can do so safely.

Ejection pattern

Where a firearm throws its fired cartridge cases, which test firing establishes and which surfaces, movement, and people walking through a scene all disturb.

Exclusive remedy

Chapter 15 works it: workers' compensation is the injured worker's only claim against his own employer, and it bars a negligence suit.

Firefighter's rule

A doctrine barring some public safety responders from suing over the hazard they answered, which a few states extend to private security officers and most do not.

Foot candle

One lumen per square foot, the unit in most American lighting standards, about 10.76 lux.

Foreseeability

Chapter 16 works it: whether a reasonable person in the defendant's position should have anticipated this kind of harm.

Frame rate

How many images per second a video system records; a system recording four frames per second can miss the whole draw and fire sequence between two frames, so establish the rate before anyone interprets the video.

Guard tour system

Electronic checkpoints an officer scans on patrol, producing a time stamped record of where he went and of the patrols he skipped.

Gunshot residue

The primer and powder particles a discharging firearm deposits on hands, clothing, and nearby surfaces, whose presence and pattern support distance determination and whose absence proves little, because it transfers and washes off.

Illuminance

The light falling on a surface, in foot candles or lux, which a light meter reads.

Imminence

The threatened harm must be about to happen right now, not later, and distance or the other person walking away ends it.

In presence requirement

The rule in many citizen's arrest and shopkeeper statutes that the private person must have witnessed the offense himself, which an officer acting on someone else's radio call often cannot satisfy.

Indemnification

A contract promise by one party to cover another's losses, whose scope decides who pays a judgment between the client and the guard company.

Initial aggressor

The person who started the unlawful physical confrontation, who in most states loses the right to claim self defense unless he withdraws and communicates the withdrawal.

Interframe compression

A video storage method saving complete images only occasionally and storing the changes between, so rebuilt frames can show artifacts resembling motion or objects that never existed.

Lone worker

An employee working alone, out of sight and earshot of any coworker.

Lux

One lumen per square meter, the unit in international standards, about 0.093 foot candles.

Merchant's privilege

A statutory right letting a store detain a person it reasonably suspects of theft, for a reasonable time, in a reasonable manner, to investigate, which authorizes a detention, not a chase, a takedown, or a shot.

Native file

The original recording in the format the device wrote it, metadata intact, as against an exported clip or a screen recording, which have lost the timestamps and the frame data.

Negligent entrustment

Liability for giving a dangerous instrument to someone the giver knew or should have known was unfit to handle it.

Negligent hiring

Liability for hiring a person whose background made the harm foreseeable, and for failing to check, a direct claim against the employer.

Non delegable duty

A duty an owner cannot escape by hiring a contractor to perform it, which Colorado's appellate court applied to placing armed security at a volatile public event, holding the hiring company answerable for the contractor's officer.

Notice of claim

A formal written demand a claimant must serve on a public entity within a short statutory period before suing it, often running in weeks, jurisdictional in most states, and fatal to the claim whatever the merits if missed.

Observe and report

A post model where the officer watches, documents, and calls for help without intervening physically.

Panic alarm

A fixed or worn device that summons help when a person activates it, worth what its signal route and its listener are worth.

Policy or custom liability

A municipality answers under federal civil rights law only where its own written rule or a widespread unwritten practice caused the violation, not merely because it employed the person who caused it, and a private security firm performing a government function faces the same analysis.

Post orders

Chapter 4 works them: the written, site specific sheet telling an officer what he does at that post, what he handles alone, what he does not, and how he calls for help.

Prior similar incidents

Earlier crimes or events on or near the property that put the owner on notice this kind of harm could happen, on a similarity, nearness, and recency test that varies by state.

Proportionality

The force must match the threat, so deadly force answers a deadly threat and does not answer a theft, an insult, or a shove.

Proprietary security

Officers the protected business employs directly rather than hiring from an outside firm, also called in house security.

Punitive damages

Damages that punish willful, reckless, or grossly indifferent conduct, beyond compensating the loss, which many liability policies do not cover, changing who actually pays.

Qualified immunity

A defense protecting government officials from federal civil rights damages unless they violated a right already clearly established, which generally does not protect purely private security officers.

Requalification

The periodic repeat of a firearms qualification that keeps a carry authority current, on which the state's interval, the employer's, and the dates the officer actually fired often differ.

Respondeat superior

An employer answers for wrongful acts an employee commits within the scope of employment.

Retention holster

A holster with mechanical devices that keep anyone but the wearer from pulling the firearm out, at a retention level counting how many separate releases a grab must defeat.

Scope of employment

Whether the act fell within the duties the employer hired the person to perform, or a personal frolic outside them.

Security vulnerability assessment

A written study identifying a site's threats, weaknesses, and recommended countermeasures, which where the client never acted on it establishes notice, breach, and causation at once.

Shot sequencing

Reconstructing the order of the rounds from wound paths, damage to surfaces, casing positions, and audio recordings.

Silent response button

A concealed control that sends an alert with no audible or visible sign at the scene.

Special conservator of the peace

A private person whom a court or state agency appoints with limited arrest powers over a defined property or jurisdiction, a title existing in a handful of states with widely varying powers.

Special employment

Chapter 15 works it: a doctrine treating a worker as the employee of a second business that directed his work, so both employers may owe duties and hold defenses.

Special police officer

A private security officer to whom a city, county, or state grants limited police powers, usually on one property, under a commission carrying training and oversight requirements the ordinary guard license does not.

Special relationship

A legal status between two people, such as innkeeper and guest or landlord and tenant, creating a duty to protect against third party crime where no general duty would exist.

Spoliation

Chapter 21 works it: the loss, destruction, or alteration of evidence a party had a duty to preserve, commonly overwritten video here.

Stand your ground

A statute removing any duty to retreat before using force where the person is lawfully present, whose terms and procedural effects, including pretrial immunity hearings in some states, differ by state.

Standard of care

What a reasonably careful person or company in the same role would have done in the same circumstances, built in security cases from the client's own policies, the contract, industry publications, and expert testimony, because no national standard exists.

State action

Chapter 10 works it: conduct fairly attributable to government, which federal constitutional claims require.

Sublimit

A cap inside an insurance policy lower than the overall limit and applying to one category of claim, so a one million dollar policy with a one hundred thousand dollar sublimit for assault and battery is a one hundred thousand dollar policy for these cases.

Superseding cause

Chapter 27 works it: an intervening event so unforeseeable that it cuts off the original defendant's liability.

Survival action

A claim the estate brings for the harm the decedent suffered before dying, including conscious pain and suffering, separate from wrongful death and often on a different limitations period.

Totality of the circumstances

Judge a use of force on everything the person knew at that moment, rather than on a single fact isolated afterward.

Uncommanded discharge

A firearm firing without anyone pulling the trigger, from a mechanical defect, damage, or an unsafe design, rare and testable and never to be assumed from the shooter's statement.

Uniformity ratio

The ratio of average to minimum illuminance across an area, which exposes the dark pockets an average light level hides.

Unintentional discharge

A shot the shooter fires by pressing the trigger without meaning to, from startle, grip, or poor holstering, and not an uncommanded discharge.

Vertical illuminance

Light on a vertical plane at about face height, rather than on the ground, which predicts whether a witness or a camera could identify a face.

Voluntary undertaking

A party who chooses to provide a protection it owed no duty to provide must perform it with reasonable care.

Wound path

The route a projectile traveled through the body, by direction and angle.

Wrongful death

A statutory claim surviving family members bring for their own losses from a death, on a statute setting who may bring it, the damages available, and the deadline, all differing by state.

Appendix D

Sources by Chapter

Statutes, rules, standards, and accreditation requirements change, and you try a case against the version in force on the incident date, so check every citation below against the text that governed then, not the current text. Nothing outside this list went into the book.

Introduction, the Mandalay Bay opening

• Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Criminal Investigative Report of the 1 October Mass Casualty Shooting, LVMPD Event Number 171001-3519, released August 3, 2018.
• Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Force Investigation Team report on the same event.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Behavioral Analysis Unit, Las Vegas Review Panel report, January 29, 2019, for the start of gunfire at approximately 10:05 p.m.
• Sheriff Joseph Lombardo, press conferences of October 9 and October 13, 2017, for the revised and corrected timelines, and the MGM Resorts statement of October 12, 2017.
• Nevada Revised Statutes 648.018(4), the proprietary security exemption, and 648.1493, work card requirements. https://www.leg.state.nv.us/nrs/nrs-648.html
• MGM Resorts International settlement, announced October 3, 2019, approved by Judge Linda Bell on September 30, 2020, and the declaratory judgment complaints filed July 13 and 17, 2018.

Chapter 1, the industry and its numbers

• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Table 1. Survey reference date May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/ocwage.t01.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics tables index, 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Security Guards and Gambling Surveillance Officers, 2024 base year. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/protective-service/security-guards.htm
• Bureau of Justice Statistics, Census of State and Local Law Enforcement Agencies, 2018, Statistical Tables, publication number NCJ 302187, published October 19, 2022. Reference date June 2018. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/census-state-and-local-law-enforcement-agencies-2018-statistical-tables
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Summary, 2024, released February 19, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, Table 2, fatal occupational injuries by event or exposure, 2023 and 2024. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t02.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, Table 3, fatal occupational injuries for selected occupations, 2020 through 2024. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.t03.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries chart, rate and number of fatal work injuries in selected occupations, 2024 data. https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/rate-and-number-of-fatal-work-injuries-in-selected-occupations.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries chart, civilian occupations with high fatal work injury rates, 2023 data. https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/civilian-occupations-with-high-fatal-work-injury-rates.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Injuries, Illnesses, and Fatalities factsheet, Workplace Violence, 2021 and 2022, published 2024. https://www.bls.gov/iif/factsheets/workplace-violence-2021-2022.htm
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, case and demographic characteristics news release, publication number USDL-16-2130, reference year 2015, released November 10, 2016. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/osh2.nr0.htm
• National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Workplace Violence Prevention, 2020 data. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/violence/about/index.html
• Robert H. Perry and Associates, United States Contract Security Market White Paper, seventeenth edition, September 2025. https://www.roberthperry.com/uploads/2025whitepaperuscontractsecuritymarket.pdf
• Securitas Aktiebolag, Annual Report 2025. https://www.securitas.com/globalassets/com/files/annual-reports/eng/securitas_annual_report_2025_en.pdf
• Allied Universal, About Us, accessed 2026. https://www.aus.com/about-us
• Center for American Progress, Low Standards Hurt Security Officers, October 1, 2025, citing United States Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division Service Contract Act wage determinations. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/09/SecurityWorkers-brief3.pdf
• University of California Berkeley Labor Center, Demographic and Job Characteristics of New York City's Security Guard Workforce, August 2025, using Quarterly Workforce Indicators data. https://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Demographic-and-Job-Characteristics-of-NYCs-Security-Guard-Workforce.pdf
• Government Accountability Office, report number GAO-13-694, Federal Protective Service: Actions Needed to Assess Risk and Better Manage Contract Guards, September 17, 2013, publicly released October 30, 2013. https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-13-694
• Gun Violence Archive, published methodology, accessed 2026. https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/methodology
• The Washington Post, Fatal Force police shootings database, accessed 2026. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
• Mapping Police Violence, About page, accessed 2026. https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/about
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Expanded Homicide Data Table 15, justifiable homicide by private citizen, Crime in the United States, 2019. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-15.xls
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Expanded Homicide Data Table 14, justifiable homicide by law enforcement, Crime in the United States, 2019. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-14.xls
• William C. Cunningham and Todd H. Taylor, Private Security and Police in America: The Hallcrest Report, 1985, National Criminal Justice Reference Service number NCJ 97942. Listed as the likely origin of the turnover range this book does not print. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/private-security-and-police-america-hallcrest-report
• William C. Cunningham, John J. Strauchs and Clifford W. Van Meter, Private Security Trends 1970 to 2000: The Hallcrest Report II, 1990, National Criminal Justice Reference Service number NCJ 127147. Listed on the same basis. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/private-security-trends-1970-2000-hallcrest-report-ii

Chapters 2 and 3, licensing, training, and consensus standards

• Congressional Research Service Report RL32670, Guarding America: Security Guards and United States Critical Infrastructure Protection, updated January 27, 2005. Its state counts are 2005 vintage, and this book cites them only as history. https://www.everycrsreport.com/reports/RL32670.html
• Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act of 2004, Title Six, Subtitle B, section 6402 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, Public Law 108-458, signed December 17, 2004, at title 34 of the United States Code, section 41106. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=(title:34+section:41106+edition:prelim)
• Title 28 of the Code of Federal Regulations, part 105, subpart C, sections 105.21 through 105.27, implementing the Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-28/chapter-I/part-105/subpart-C
• Interim rule implementing the Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act, 71 Federal Register 1734, January 11, 2006. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2006/01/11/06-223/implementation-of-the-private-security-officer-employment-authorization-act-of-2004
• California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, Department of Consumer Affairs, security guard training requirements page and guard registration fact sheet. https://www.bsis.ca.gov/industries/g_train.shtml and https://www.bsis.ca.gov/forms_pubs/guard_fact.shtml
• California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, firearms permit fact sheet. https://www.bsis.ca.gov/forms_pubs/fire_fact.shtml
• Title 16 of the California Code of Regulations, section 635, Course of Firearm Training, including the fifty round course of fire and the eighty percent passing score. https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/california/16-CCR-635
• Title 16 of the California Code of Regulations, section 633, requalification twice per twelve months at least four months apart. https://regulations.justia.com/states/california/title-16/division-7/article-7/section-633/
• Texas Occupations Code, chapter 1702, Private Security. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/OC/htm/OC.1702.htm
• Texas Occupations Code, section 1702.1675, security officer commission training. https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._occ._code_section_1702.1675
• Title 37 of the Texas Administrative Code, chapter 35, sections 35.141 and 35.144, Private Security Bureau training and examination rules. https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/texas/37-Tex-Admin-Code-SS-35-141
• Texas Department of Public Safety, Regulatory Services Division, Private Security Bureau, training and continuing education pages. https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/private-security/training-and-continuing-education
• Florida Statutes sections 493.6303(4), Class D security officer training, and 493.6105(5), Class G statewide firearm license training. http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0400-0499/0493/Sections/0493.6303.html and http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0400-0499/0493/Sections/0493.6105.html
• New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Office of Public Safety, security guard training courses under the Security Guard Act of 1992. https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/ops/sgtraining/sgpcourses.htm
• New York Department of State, security guard training requirements. https://dos.ny.gov/security-guard-training-requirements
• 225 Illinois Compiled Statutes 447, the Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004, with title 68 of the Illinois Administrative Code, part 1240. https://www.ilga.gov/agencies/JCAR/EntirePart?titlepart=06801240
• Oregon Administrative Rules section 259-060-0120, Department of Public Safety Standards and Training private security training standards. https://oregon.public.law/rules/oar_259-060-0120
• Revised Code of Washington, chapter 18.170, including sections 18.170.030, 18.170.040, and 18.170.105. https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?Cite=18.170&full=true
• Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, private security firearms certificate application packet, July 2023. https://www.cjtc.wa.gov/sites/default/files/2024-06/packet---ps-firearms-certificate-application-(07-2023).pdf
• Arizona Revised Statutes, section 32-2632, and Arizona Department of Public Safety unarmed and armed security guard training syllabi and lesson plans. https://www.azdps.gov/content/basic-page/109
• Rules of the Georgia Board of Private Detective and Security Agencies, department 509, chapter 509-3, including rules 509-3-.02, 509-3-.08, 509-3-.09, and 509-3-.10. https://rules.sos.ga.gov/gac/509-3
• Title 6 of the Virginia Administrative Code, agency 20, chapter 174, Department of Criminal Justice Services private security regulations. https://www.dcjs.virginia.gov/content/what-are-entry-level-training-requirements
• Title 14B of the North Carolina Administrative Code, chapter 16, Private Protective Services Board, including section 14B NCAC 16 .0807. https://www.ncdps.gov/about-dps/boards-and-commissions/private-protective-services-board/frequently-asked-questions
• New Jersey Security Officer Registration Act, New Jersey Administrative Code title 13, chapter 55A, administered by the New Jersey State Police Private Detective Unit. https://www.nj.gov/njsp/info/pdf/pdet/sora-faq.pdf
• Pennsylvania Act 235 of 1974, the Lethal Weapons Training Act, 22 Pennsylvania Statutes section 41 and following, with implementing regulations at title 37 of the Pennsylvania Code, chapter 21, administered by the Pennsylvania State Police. https://www.pa.gov/agencies/psp/programs/law-enforcement-training/lethal-weapons-training-program/frequently-asked-questions
• Nevada Administrative Code section 648.346, firearms training and qualification for registered employees, Private Investigators Licensing Board, under Nevada Revised Statutes chapter 648. https://regulations.justia.com/states/nevada/chapter-648/carrying-handling-and-using-firearms-safely/section-648-346/
• Colorado, absence of statewide licensing for private security officers, with municipal licensing only. Colorado House Bill 25-1262 and its fiscal note. https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/hb25-1262
• Alabama Code, title 34, chapter 27C, Alabama Security Regulatory Board. https://law.justia.com/codes/alabama/title-34/chapter-27c/section-34-27c-8
• ASIS International PSO-2019, Private Security Officer Selection and Training Guideline, 2019 edition. A guideline, not an American National Standard. Also cataloged as ASIS GDL PSOST. https://store.asisonline.org/private-security-officer-selection-and-training-guideline-2019-softcover.html
• ASIS International SRA-2024, Security Risk Assessment Standard, 2024 edition, the current American National Standard, replacing the American National Standards Institute, ASIS International and Risk and Insurance Management Society standard RA.1-2015 and the ASIS International GSRA 2003 guideline. https://www.asisonline.org/security-news/standards-guidelines/security-risk-assessment-standard/
• American National Standards Institute, ASIS International and Risk and Insurance Management Society standard RA.1-2015, Risk Assessment, superseded; this book cites it only for the standard of care between 2015 and 2024. https://webstore.ansi.org/standards/asis/ansiasisrimsra2015
• ASIS International ESRM-2019, Enterprise Security Risk Management Guideline, 2019 edition. https://store.asisonline.org/enterprise-security-risk-management-guideline-2019-softcover.html
• American National Standards Institute and ASIS International PSC.1, Management System for Quality of Private Security Company Operations: Requirements with Guidance, 2022 edition, derived from the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers of 2010 and the Montreux Document of 2008, and internationalized as International Organization for Standardization standard 18788:2015.
• American National Standards Institute and ASIS International PSC.2-2019, conformity assessment and auditing for private security company operations.
• ASIS International WVPI AA-2020, Workplace Violence and Active Assailant: Prevention, Intervention, and Response Standard, 2020 edition. https://www.asisonline.org/publications--resources/standards--guidelines/workplace-violence/
• ASIS International PBSV, Preemployment Background Screening and Vetting Guideline, listed on the current standards and guidelines index. https://www.asisonline.org/security-news/standards-guidelines/
• ASIS International, Protection of Assets, the multi volume professional reference set. A treatise, not a consensus standard. Citation not confirmed, verify before relying: edition and copyright year never established.
• National Fire Protection Association document 730, Guide for Premises Security, 2026 edition, which superseded the 2023 edition. A guide, advisory in that association's hierarchy. The supersession rests on the Fall 2025 revision cycle documents below; confirm the published edition date with the association before citing it, as Appendix E directs. https://www.nfpa.org/product/nfpa-730-guide-for-premises-security/p0730code
• National Fire Protection Association document 731, Standard for the Installation of Electronic Premises Security Systems, 2026 edition. https://www.nfpa.org/product/nfpa-731-standard-for-the-installation-of-premises-security-systems/p0731code
• National Fire Protection Association document 3000, Standard for an Active Shooter and Hostile Event Response Program, 2024 edition, with tentative interim amendment 3000-24-1. https://www.nfpa.org/product/nfpa-3000-standard/p3000code and https://docinfofiles.nfpa.org/files/AboutTheCodes/3000/TIA_3000_24_1.pdf
• National Fire Protection Association, Technical Committee on Premises Security, Fall 2025 revision cycle first revision report, second revision report, public input responses, and final ballot memorandum for document 730. https://docinfofiles.nfpa.org/files/AboutTheCodes/730/730_F2025_PMM_AAA_SD_SRreport.pdf
• International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety, Healthcare Security Industry Guidelines, guideline 02.02.05, Security Officer Use of Physical Force, updated August 23, 2022. That association's website blocks automated access, so chapter 3's description rests on trade coverage and a hospital policy citing the guideline by number. https://www.psqh.com/news/iahss-releases-updated-healthcare-use-of-force-guidelines/
• International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety guideline 02.02.04, Security Officer Training, updated to add de-escalation training. Number and title confirmed; substance and effective date not confirmed, verify before relying.
• International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety guideline 04.05, Weapons Screening in Healthcare. Number and title confirmed; adoption status not confirmed, verify before relying.
• The Joint Commission, workplace violence prevention requirements effective January 1, 2022 for hospitals and critical access hospitals: Environment of Care standard EC.02.01.01, element of performance 17; Environment of Care standard EC.04.01.01, elements of performance 1 and 6; Human Resources standard HR.01.05.03, element of performance 29; and Leadership standard LD.03.01.01, element of performance 9. https://digitalassets.jointcommission.org/api/public/content/0c8d9cd5ed3145b6bc9369920b69ca21
• International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Consensus Policy and Discussion Paper on Use of Force, October 2017, revised July 2020. A law enforcement consensus policy, not a private security standard. https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2020-07/National_Consensus_Policy_On_Use_Of_Force%2007102020%20v3.pdf
• United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Handbook on the Use of Force by Private Security Companies, maritime crime context. https://www.unodc.org/documents/Maritime_crime/19-02086_Private_Security_Company_Handbook_Maritime_Crime_ebook.pdf
• Department of Homeland Security, Office of SAFETY Act Implementation, guidance for use of force programs. Existence confirmed; content, publication date, and binding effect not confirmed, verify before relying. https://www.safetyact.gov/_entity/annotation/fdd581d4-1eca-a0de-b3bf-db21dd4fab3d

Chapters 5 through 9, the law of force

• Graham v. Connor, 490 United States 386, Supreme Court of the United States, decided May 15, 1989.
• Tennessee v. Garner, 471 United States 1, Supreme Court of the United States, decided March 27, 1985.
• Burdeau v. McDowell, 256 United States 465, Supreme Court of the United States, 1921, at page 475.
• Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Company, 457 United States 922, Supreme Court of the United States, 1982.
• Katko v. Briney, 183 N.W.2d 657, Supreme Court of Iowa, decided February 9, 1971.
• Martin v. Ohio, 480 United States 228, Supreme Court of the United States, 1987. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/480/228/
• Chapman v. Higbee Company, 319 F.3d 825, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sitting en banc, 2003.
• Wade v. Byles, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 1996. Citation not confirmed, verify before relying. Two reporter citations circulate, 87 F.3d 241 and 83 F.3d 902.
• Model Penal Code sections 3.04, 3.05, 3.06, 3.07, and 3.09, American Law Institute. https://www.criminallawweb.net/web1/mpc/PART1/snippets/3_04-3_07.htm
• Restatement (Second) of Torts, American Law Institute, sections 63, Self-Defense By Force Not Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm; 65, Self-Defense By Force Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm; 77, Defense of Possession by Force Not Threatening Death or Serious Bodily Harm; and 85, the spring gun provision quoted in Katko. Titles verified. Sections 64, 66 through 76, and 79 are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Texas Penal Code sections 9.32, 9.33, 9.41, 9.42, and 9.43. https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal-code/penal-sect-9-32/ and https://texas.public.law/statutes/tex._penal_code_section_9.42
• Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 14.01(a), warrantless arrest for an offense in the presence or view of the arresting person. https://law.justia.com/codes/texas/code-of-criminal-procedure/title-1/chapter-14/article-14-01/
• Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, section 124.001, detention of a suspected shoplifter. https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/civil-practice-and-remedies-code/civ-prac-rem-sect-124-001/
• California Penal Code section 490.5, merchant's detention privilege. https://california.public.law/codes/penal_code_section_490.5
• California Penal Code section 837, arrest by a private person.
• Florida Statutes section 776.012(2), use or threatened use of deadly force. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2023/0776.012
• Florida Statutes section 812.015(3), retail and farm theft detention. https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2023/812.015
• Florida Statutes section 775.087, mandatory minimum sentencing for firearm offenses, and Florida House Bill 89, signed June 20, 2014, extending the justifications to threatened use of force. https://www.jurist.org/news/2014/06/florida-legalizes-warning-shots-to-attackers/
• Official Code of Georgia Annotated, section 17-4-20, arrest by law enforcement, and section 17-4-80, limited detention by certain private individuals, as Georgia House Bill 479 of 2021 enacted, repealing the prior citizen's arrest statute. https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-17/chapter-4/article-5/section-17-4-80/ and https://law.justia.com/codes/georgia/title-17/chapter-4/article-2/section-17-4-20/
• New York Penal Law section 35.30(4), use of force by a private person effecting an arrest. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/PEN/35.30
• New York Criminal Procedure Law sections 140.30 and 140.35, warrantless arrest by a person acting other than as a police officer. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/CPL/140.35
• New York General Business Law section 218, defense in a detention action brought against a retail merchant. https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/GBS/218
• 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/7-6 and 5/7-8, a private person's use of force in arrest and in preventing escape. https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/fulltext?DocName=072000050K7-6 and https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/fulltext?DocName=072000050K7-8
• 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/16-26, identified in a fifty state survey as the Illinois merchant detention provision. Citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Ohio Revised Code section 2901.05(B)(1), the burden of proof on self-defense. https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2901.05
• Ohio Revised Code section 2935.04, arrest by any person for a felony, and section 2935.041, detention of a shoplifting suspect. https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2935.041
• Revised Code of Washington, section 9A.16.020, use of force. https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.16.020
• Connecticut General Statutes, section 53a-19(b), duty to retreat and its exceptions. https://law.justia.com/codes/connecticut/2019/title-53a/chapter-951/section-53a-19/
• Michigan Compiled Laws, section 338.1080, powers of a licensed private security officer. https://law.justia.com/codes/michigan/chapter-338/statute-act-330-of-1968/section-338-1080/
• Code of Virginia, section 19.2-13, special conservators of the peace. https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title19.2/chapter2/section19.2-13/
• Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations part 1047, Department of Energy protective force use of force, including section 1047.7. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-10/chapter-X/part-1047
• Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 73.55, Nuclear Regulatory Commission physical protection requirements. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-10/chapter-I/part-73/subpart-F/section-73.55
• California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, Power to Arrest proposed text and the firearm discharge incident report requirement. https://www.bsis.ca.gov/about_us/laws/powertoarrest_proposedtext.pdf and https://bsis.ca.gov/consumers/enforcement/incident_report_email.shtml
• Multnomah County District Attorney, statement announcing the guilty verdict against a private security guard who shot and killed a civilian. https://www.mcda.us/index.php/news/update-da-mike-schmidt-announces-guilty-verdict-for-private-security-guard-who-shot-and-killed-a-civilian
• Alameda County District Attorney, Point of View, citizen's arrest article. A training source only, and expressly in tension with California Penal Code section 837. https://le.alcoda.org/publications/point_of_view/files/Citizen.pdf
• Student article on defense of others, 5 Regent University Law Review 153, 1995. Volume, page, and year confirmed from the published portable document format file. Author name not confirmed, verify before relying; the twenty three state list is 1995 vintage. https://www.regent.edu/acad/schlaw/student_life/studentorgs/lawreview/docs/issues/v5/5RegentULRev153.pdf
• Fifty state survey of citizen's arrest and shopkeeper's privilege statutes, a research map only, not a citable source. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/596f60f4ebbd1a322db09e45/t/68237eb2e22d476bfe1edf90/1747156659711/Citizens+Arrest+-+Combined+50+State+Survey+-+051225.pdf

Chapter 10, state action and civil rights

• Title 42 of the United States Code, section 1983, and its criminal analogue at title 18 of the United States Code, section 242.
• West v. Atkins, 487 United States 42, at page 49, Supreme Court of the United States, 1988.
• Lugar v. Edmondson Oil Company, 457 United States 922, Supreme Court of the United States, 1982.
• Marsh v. Alabama, 326 United States 501, Supreme Court of the United States, 1946.
• Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Company, 419 United States 345, Supreme Court of the United States, 1974.
• Rendell-Baker v. Kohn, 457 United States 830, Supreme Court of the United States, 1982.
• Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 United States 991, Supreme Court of the United States, 1982.
• Flagg Brothers, Incorporated v. Brooks, 436 United States 149, Supreme Court of the United States, 1978.
• Adickes v. S.H. Kress and Company, 398 United States 144, Supreme Court of the United States, 1970.
• Dennis v. Sparks, 449 United States 24, Supreme Court of the United States, 1980.
• Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority, 365 United States 715, Supreme Court of the United States, 1961.
• Brentwood Academy v. Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association, 531 United States 288, Supreme Court of the United States, 2001.
• Griffin v. Maryland, 378 United States 130, Supreme Court of the United States, 1964, docket number 6, with the key language at page 135, verified against the Library of Congress scan of the United States Reports.
• Manhattan Community Access Corporation v. Halleck, Supreme Court of the United States, docket number 17-1702, decided 2019. Final pagination citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Romanski v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 428 F.3d 629, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 2005.
• Lindsey v. Detroit Entertainment, L.L.C., 484 F.3d 824, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 2007.
• Payton v. Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center, 184 F.3d 623, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 1999.
• Austin v. Paramount Parks, Incorporated, 195 F.3d 715, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 1999.
• Chapman v. Higbee Company, 319 F.3d 825, United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit sitting en banc, 2003.
• Bracken v. Okura, 869 F.3d 771, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2017.
• Anderson v. Warner, 451 F.3d 1063, at pages 1068 to 1069, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 2006.
• Bustos v. Martini Club, Incorporated, 599 F.3d 458, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 2010.
• Gomez v. Galman, 18 F.4th 769, United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 2021.
• Wyatt v. Cole, 504 United States 158, Supreme Court of the United States, 1992.
• Richardson v. McKnight, 521 United States 399, Supreme Court of the United States, 1997.
• Filarsky v. Delia, 566 United States 377, Supreme Court of the United States, 2012.
• Monell v. Department of Social Services, 436 United States 658, Supreme Court of the United States, 1978.
• Shields v. Illinois Department of Corrections, 746 F.3d 782, United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, 2014.
• People v. Zelinski, 24 Cal.3d 357, Supreme Court of California, criminal docket number 20284, decided May 24, 1979. Parallel citations are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• In re Christopher H., 227 Cal.App.3d 1567, California Court of Appeal, 1991, holding that the Zelinski exclusionary remedy did not survive Proposition 8.
• David A. Sklansky, The Private Police, 46 University of California Los Angeles Law Review 1165, 1999. Author, title, volume, page, and year verified. https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sklanksy-The-Private-Police-46UCLALawRev1165.pdf
• United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Office of Staff Attorneys, Section 1983 Outline, revised 2024. https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/uploads/guides/section_1983/Section-1983-Revised-2024.pdf
• Karen M. Blum, Section 1983: Basic Principles, Individual and Entity Liability, National Sheriffs' Association. https://www.sheriffs.org/sites/default/files/tb/kb-s1983-1-nsa09Blum.pdf
• Athina Pentsou, Assertion of Qualified Immunity by Private State Actors After Filarsky, 43 Southern Illinois University Law Journal 361, 2019. https://law.siu.edu/_common/documents/law-journal/articles-2019/winter-2019/7-pentsou-formatted-jr.pdf
• Massachusetts General Laws, chapter 22C, section 63, special state police officers at colleges, universities, and licensed hospitals.
• North Carolina General Statutes, chapter 74E, the Company Police Act.
• Chicago Municipal Code, chapter 4-340, special policemen. Section titles verified from the municipal publisher; the operative text is citation not confirmed, verify before relying.

Chapters 11 through 15, the duty owed to the guard

• Title 29 of the United States Code, section 654(a)(1), the general duty clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/29/654
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration publication 3148-06R 2016, Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Healthcare and Social Service Workers. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/publications/OSHA3148.pdf
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration compliance directive CPL 02-01-058, Enforcement Procedures and Scheduling for Occupational Exposure to Workplace Violence. https://www.osha.gov/sites/default/files/enforcement/directives/CPL_02-01-058.pdf
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration workplace violence rulemaking, regulation identifier number 1218-AD08, Prevention of Workplace Violence in Health Care and Social Assistance, request for information December 7, 2016. https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=1218-AD08
• Secretary of Labor v. Integra Health Management, Incorporated, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission docket number 13-1124, decided March 4, 2019. https://www.oshrc.gov/wp-content/uploads/Integra_Health_Management_Inc._Docket_13-1124_Combined_post.pdf
• Secretary of Labor v. Professional Security Consultants, Incorporated, Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission docket number 22-0597. https://www.oshrc.gov/professional-security-consultants-inc/
• Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations, section 1910.151, medical services and first aid, and section 1915.84, the shipyard lone worker check provision. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-29/subtitle-B/chapter-XVII/part-1910/subpart-K/section-1910.151
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration letters of interpretation on first aid response time, January 16, 2007 and March 23, 2007, and on lone worker communication, April 18, 2002. https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/standardinterpretations/2007-01-16-0
• California Labor Code section 6401.9, from Senate Bill 553 of 2023, effective July 1, 2024, requiring a written workplace violence prevention plan in general industry. https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-lab/division-5/part-1/chapter-3/section-6401-9/
• Title 8 of the California Code of Regulations, section 3342, workplace violence prevention in health care, and section 3203, the injury and illness prevention program. https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3342.html and https://www.dir.ca.gov/title8/3203.html
• New York Labor Law sections 27-e, the Retail Worker Safety Act, and 27-b, workplace violence prevention for public employers. https://dol.ny.gov/retail-worker-safety and https://codes.findlaw.com/ny/labor-law/lab-sect-27-b/
• Revised Code of Washington, chapter 49.19, workplace violence prevention in health care settings. https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=49.19&full=true
• Revised Code of Washington section 51.24.020, the deliberate intention exception to workers' compensation exclusivity, and Birklid v. Boeing Company, Supreme Court of Washington, 1995. https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/1995/62530-1-1.html
• New Jersey Statutes Annotated sections 26:2H-5.17 through 5.20, the Violence Prevention in Health Care Facilities Act, Public Law 2007, chapter 236. https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-26/section-26-2h-5-20/
• Texas Health and Safety Code chapter 331, sections 331.001 through 331.006, workplace violence prevention for health care facilities. https://statutes.capitol.texas.gov/Docs/HS/htm/HS.331.htm
• Oregon Revised Statutes section 654.305, the Employer Liability Law, and sections 654.412 through 654.423, health care workplace violence. https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_654.305 and https://oregon.public.law/statutes/ors_654.414
• West Virginia Code, section 23-4-2, the deliberate intent exception to workers' compensation exclusivity. https://code.wvlegislature.gov/23-4-2/
• Privette v. Superior Court, 5 Cal.4th 689, Supreme Court of California, 1993.
• SeaBright Insurance Company v. US Airways, Incorporated, 52 Cal.4th 590, Supreme Court of California, decided August 22, 2011.
• Hooker v. Department of Transportation, 2002; Kinsman v. Unocal Corporation, 2005; Sandoval v. Qualcomm Incorporated, 2021; and Gonzalez v. Mathis, 2021, all Supreme Court of California. Reporter citations not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Miller v. Georgia-Pacific Corporation, 294 Or. 750, 662 P.2d 718, Supreme Court of Oregon, 1983.
• Brown v. Boise-Cascade Corporation, 150 Or.App. 391, 946 P.2d 324, Oregon Court of Appeals, 1997. https://law.justia.com/cases/oregon/court-of-appeals/1997/150-or-app-391.html
• Neighbarger v. Irwin Industries, Incorporated, 8 Cal.4th 532, 34 Cal.Rptr.2d 630, 882 P.2d 347, Supreme Court of California, 1994. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/8/532.html
• Marquez v. Mainframe, 42 Cal.App.4th 881, California Court of Appeal, 1996. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/42/881.html
• Gregory v. Cott, Supreme Court of California, docket number S209125, decided August 4, 2014. Parallel citations are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• National Institute of Justice Standards 0101.06 and 0101.07, Ballistic Resistance of Body Armor, the latter announced at 88 Federal Register 83579, November 30, 2023. https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/equipment-and-technology/ballistic-resistance-body-armor-nij-standard-010107
• National Criminal Justice Technology Center of Excellence, compliance testing program information for National Institute of Justice Standard 0101.07. https://cjttec.org/compliance-testing-program/nij-standard-010107-information/
• Judicial Council of California Civil Jury Instruction 473, the firefighter's rule. https://www.justia.com/trials-litigation/docs/caci/400/473/
• Larson's Workers' Compensation Law, the three part borrowed servant test relied on in chapter 15. The section number, 48.00 in older editions and 67.01 in the current one, is citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• British Standards 8484, 7499, and 7858, the lone worker service standards chapter 14 uses as the comparison. Current edition years are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.

Chapters 16 through 20, premises liability, vicarious liability, and insurance

• Cornpropst v. Sloan, 528 S.W.2d 188, Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1975. https://law.justia.com/cases/tennessee/supreme-court/1975/528-s-w-2d-188-2.html
• McClung v. Delta Square Limited Partnership, Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1996, adopting a balancing test and disavowing Cornpropst. Opinion text verified; reporter citation and exact decision date not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Isaacs v. Huntington Memorial Hospital, 38 Cal.3d 112, 211 Cal.Rptr. 356, 695 P.2d 653, Supreme Court of California, 1985. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/38/112.html
• Ann M. v. Pacific Plaza Shopping Center, 6 Cal.4th 666, 25 Cal.Rptr.2d 137, 863 P.2d 207, Supreme Court of California, 1993. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/6/666.html
• Delgado v. Trax Bar and Grill, 36 Cal.4th 224, 30 Cal.Rptr.3d 145, 113 P.3d 1159, Supreme Court of California, 2005. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ca-supreme-court/1167961.html
• Posecai v. Wal-Mart Stores, Incorporated, 752 So.2d 762, Supreme Court of Louisiana, 1999. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/la-supreme-court/1325537.html
• Bass v. Gopal, Incorporated, 395 S.C. 129, 716 S.E.2d 910, Supreme Court of South Carolina, 2011, with the decision below at 384 S.C. 238, 680 S.E.2d 917. https://law.justia.com/cases/south-carolina/supreme-court/2011/27054.html
• Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Incorporated v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749, Supreme Court of Texas, 1998. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-supreme-court/1297971.html
• Del Lago Partners, Incorporated v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762, Supreme Court of Texas, 2010. The exact decision date is citation not confirmed, verify before relying. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/tx-supreme-court/1520389.html
• Piazza ex rel. Piazza v. Kellim, 360 Or. 58, 377 P.3d 492, Supreme Court of Oregon, 2016. The Court of Appeals decision below is citation not confirmed, verify before relying. https://law.justia.com/cases/oregon/supreme-court/2016/s063442.html
• Georgia CVS Pharmacy, LLC v. Carmichael, Supreme Court of Georgia, docket numbers S22G0527, S22G0617, and S22G0618, decided June 29, 2023, with companion captions Welch v. Pappas Restaurants, Incorporated and Welch v. Tactical Security Group, LLC. The official reporter citation is citation not confirmed, verify before relying. https://cases.justia.com/georgia/supreme-court/2023-s22g0527.pdf
• Welsh Manufacturing, Division of Textron, Incorporated v. Pinkerton's, Incorporated, 474 A.2d 436, Supreme Court of Rhode Island, 1984. https://law.justia.com/cases/rhode-island/supreme-court/1984/474-a-2d-436.html
• Gonzales v. Southwest Security and Protection Agency, Incorporated, 100 N.M. 54, 665 P.2d 810, New Mexico Court of Appeals, 1983. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-mexico/court-of-appeals/1983/5845-2.html
• Ponticas v. K.M.S. Investments, 331 N.W.2d 907, Supreme Court of Minnesota, 1983. https://law.justia.com/cases/minnesota/supreme-court/1983/c7-81-1026-2.html
• Lisa M. v. Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital, 12 Cal.4th 291, 48 Cal.Rptr.2d 510, 907 P.2d 358, Supreme Court of California, 1995. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/12/291.html
• Mary M. v. City of Los Angeles, 54 Cal.3d 202, 285 Cal.Rptr. 99, 814 P.2d 1341, Supreme Court of California, 1991. The citation checks out against the California Reports volume index; the research could not reach the opinion page, so this book quotes no language from it.
• Rodgers v. Kemper Construction Company, 50 Cal.App.3d 608, California Court of Appeal, 1975. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/3d/50/608.html
• Doe v. Forrest, 2004 VT 37, 176 Vt. 476, 853 A.2d 48, Supreme Court of Vermont, 2004. https://law.justia.com/cases/vermont/supreme-court/2004/2002-184op.html
• N.X. v. Cabrini Medical Center, 97 N.Y.2d 247, 765 N.E.2d 844, 739 N.Y.S.2d 348, New York Court of Appeals, 2002. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2002/97-n-y-2d-247-1.html
• Peachtree-Cain Company v. McBee, 254 Ga. 91, 327 S.E.2d 188, Supreme Court of Georgia, 1985. https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1985/40959-1.html
• Srithong v. Total Investment Company, 23 Cal.App.4th 721, 28 Cal.Rptr.2d 672, California Court of Appeal, 1994. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/23/721.html
• Puckrein v. ATI Transport, Incorporated, 183 N.J. 257, Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2006. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-jersey/supreme-court/2006/a-117-04-opn.html
• Kitchen v. K-Mart Corporation, 697 So.2d 1200, Supreme Court of Florida, 1997. https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/1997/86812-0.html
• Artiglio v. Corning Incorporated, 18 Cal.4th 604, 76 Cal.Rptr.2d 479, 957 P.2d 1313, Supreme Court of California, 1998. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/18/604.html
• Paz v. State of California, 22 Cal.4th 550, 93 Cal.Rptr.2d 703, 994 P.2d 975, Supreme Court of California, 2000. https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/4th/22/550.html
• Espinal v. Melville Snow Contractors, Incorporated, 98 N.Y.2d 136, 773 N.E.2d 485, 746 N.Y.S.2d 120, New York Court of Appeals, 2002. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/2002/98-n-y-2d-136-1.html
• Palka v. Servicemaster Management Services Corporation, 83 N.Y.2d 579, 634 N.E.2d 189, 611 N.Y.S.2d 817, New York Court of Appeals, 1994. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/1994/83-n-y-2d-579-0.html
• Mount Vernon Fire Insurance Company v. Creative Housing Limited, 88 N.Y.2d 347, 668 N.E.2d 404, 645 N.Y.S.2d 433, New York Court of Appeals, 1996. https://law.justia.com/cases/new-york/court-of-appeals/1996/88-n-y-2d-347-0.html
• Wackenhut Corporation v. Canty, 359 So.2d 430, Supreme Court of Florida, 1978. https://law.justia.com/cases/florida/supreme-court/1978/47442-0.html
• Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated, Colorado Court of Appeals number 23CA0436, decided June 13, 2024. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/col-crt-app-div-vi/116270313.html
• Restatement (Second) of Torts, American Law Institute, section 324A, the undertaking that runs to a third person. Text verified from the case law quoting it. Sections 323, 411, 416, 424, and 425 are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Restatement (Second) of Agency, American Law Institute, section 213, and section 245 on a master's liability for a servant's intended tortious harm. Section 245 and its comment are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• International Risk Management Institute definitions of hold harmless agreement, additional insured, and commercial general liability policy. https://www.irmi.com/term/insurance-definitions/hold-harmless-agreement and https://www.irmi.com/term/insurance-definitions/additional-insured
• Scot Peterson, Broward County, Florida: criminal acquittal reporting and the January 9, 2025 Fourth District Court of Appeal ruling on the state civil track. The federal track is citation not confirmed, verify before relying. https://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/civil-lawsuits-may-continue-against-broward-deputy-accused-of-inaction-during-parkland-school-shooting/3511937/

Chapters 21 through 25, investigation, video, firearms, and forensics

• Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), as amended 2015, with the committee note. https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_37
• Brookshire Brothers, Limited v. Aldridge, Supreme Court of Texas, number 10-0846, decided July 3, 2014. https://law.justia.com/cases/texas/supreme-court/2014/10-0846-1.html
• Silvestri v. General Motors Corporation, 271 F.3d 583, United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, 2001. https://openjurist.org/271/f3d/583
• Residential Funding Corporation v. DeGeorge Financial Corporation, 306 F.3d 99, United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 2002. https://openjurist.org/306/f3d/99
• Flury v. Daimler Chrysler Corporation, 427 F.3d 939, United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, 2005. https://openjurist.org/427/f3d/939
• The Sedona Conference, Commentary on Legal Holds, Second Edition: The Trigger and The Process, June 2019.
• Force Science Institute, publication index, pulled August 5, 2026. Volume and page numbers do not appear on the index; run each one down separately. https://www.forcescience.com/research/
• John O'Neill, Dawn A. O'Neill and William J. Lewinski, Toward a Taxonomy of the Unintentional Discharge of Firearms in Law Enforcement, Applied Ergonomics, volume 63, 2017, analyzing one hundred thirty seven unintentional discharge reports from seven United States law enforcement agencies, 1974 to 2015. Page range not confirmed. https://www.forcescience.com/2017/03/toward-a-taxonomy-of-the-unintentional-discharge-of-firearms-in-law-enforcement/
• John O'Neill, Matthew E. Hartman, Dawn A. O'Neill and William J. Lewinski, Further Analysis of the Unintentional Discharge of Firearms in Law Enforcement, Applied Ergonomics, 2017. https://www.forcescience.com/2017/12/further-analysis-of-the-unintentional-discharge-of-firearms-in-law-enforcement/
• John O'Neill, Functional Behavior Assessment of the Unintentional Discharge of Firearms in Law Enforcement, Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 2018. https://www.forcescience.com/2018/09/functional-behavior-assessment-of-the-unintentional-discharge-of-firearms-in-law-enforcement/
• William J. Lewinski, William B. Hudson, Dean Karwoski and Craig J. Redmann, fired cartridge case ejection pattern study, Investigative Sciences Journal, 2010, testing eight semi-automatic pistols in common law enforcement use.
• Federal Bureau of Investigation, Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted program, officers feloniously killed topic pages for 2017, 2018, and 2019, the only years this book verified. Data after 2019 sits in the Crime Data Explorer. https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka
• Safariland, published definitions of Level One, Level Two, and Level Three retention holsters and the simulated five second grab and snatch test, accessed August 5, 2026. Manufacturer definitions; no standards body defines retention levels. https://safariland.com/collections/level-2-retention-holsters
• Illuminating Engineering Society document G-1-22, Guide for Security Lighting for People, Property, and Critical Infrastructure, 2022, with its annexes on physical security surveys and illumination measurement protocols. https://store.ies.org/product/g-1-22-guide-for-security-lighting-for-people-property-and-critical-infrastructure/
• National Association of Medical Examiners, 2025 Forensic Autopsy Standards, plus the association's manner of death guide and inspection and accreditation materials. https://name.memberclicks.net/assets/docs/2025%20NAME%20Forensic%20Autopsy%20Standards.pdf
• Crime Doctor, Chris McGoey, apartment courtesy officer commentary, practitioner opinion, not authority. https://crimedoctor.com/apartment-courtesy-officer/

Chapters 26 through 28, experts, defense, and program design

• Graham v. Connor, 490 United States 386, Supreme Court of the United States, 1989, in chapter 26 for what it does and does not govern.
• Martin v. Ohio, 480 United States 228, Supreme Court of the United States, 1987, and Ohio Revised Code section 2901.05(B)(1).
• Del Lago Partners, Incorporated v. Smith, 307 S.W.3d 762, Supreme Court of Texas, 2010, and Timberwalk Apartments, Partners, Incorporated v. Cain, 972 S.W.2d 749, Supreme Court of Texas, 1998.
• Delgado v. Trax Bar and Grill, 36 Cal.4th 224, Supreme Court of California, 2005.
• Neighbarger v. Irwin Industries, Incorporated, 8 Cal.4th 532, Supreme Court of California, 1994, and Gregory v. Cott, Supreme Court of California, docket number S209125, 2014, whose parallel citations are citation not confirmed, verify before relying.
• Mount Vernon Fire Insurance Company v. Creative Housing Limited, 88 N.Y.2d 347, New York Court of Appeals, 1996.
• The federal expert admissibility trilogy and the federal evidence rule governing expert testimony. Citations not confirmed, verify before relying. Chapter 26 does not print them.
• ASIS International PSO-2019, SRA-2024, WVPI AA-2020, and American National Standards Institute and ASIS International PSC.1, 2022 edition, as the standard of care spine for a security program.
• National Fire Protection Association documents 730, 2026 edition, 731, 2026 edition, and 3000, 2024 edition with tentative interim amendment 3000-24-1.
• International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety guideline 02.02.05, Security Officer Use of Physical Force, updated August 23, 2022.
• International Association of Chiefs of Police, National Consensus Policy and Discussion Paper on Use of Force, October 2017, revised July 2020.
• Illuminating Engineering Society document G-1-22, 2022, for the lighting benchmark in a program audit.

Appendix B, the casebook

• Denver District Attorney, statement regarding dismissal of charges against Matthew Dolloff. https://www.denverda.org/news-release/statement-regarding-dismissal-of-charges-against-matthew-dolloff/
• Denver revocation of the Pinkerton license, CBS Colorado, and the Denver excise and license hearing coverage by 9NEWS. https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/denver-revokes-pinkerton-license-shooting-unlicensed-security-guard-matthew-dolloff/
• Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated, Colorado Court of Appeals number 23CA0436, decided June 13, 2024. https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/col-crt-app-div-vi/116270313.html
• San Francisco District Attorney declination in the Banko Brown shooting, Mission Local, and the civil filing coverage. https://missionlocal.org/2023/05/banko-brown-security-guard-not-charged-michael-earl-wayne-anthony-brooke-jenkins/
• Charging and civil filing coverage in the Jonathan Hart shooting, National Broadcasting Company News, CBS Los Angeles, and Patch on the June 8, 2021 demurrer rulings. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/security-guard-charged-murder-fatal-shooting-suspected-shoplifter-n953551
• Multnomah County District Attorney, guilty verdict announcement in the Freddy Nelson shooting. https://www.mcda.us/index.php/news/update-da-mike-schmidt-announces-guilty-verdict-for-private-security-guard-who-shot-and-killed-a-civilian
• ABC13 Houston reporting on the shooting of Shelly Frey. https://abc13.com/archive/8911831/
• Cook County State's Attorney, declination memorandum in the killing of Jemel Roberson. https://www.cookcountystatesattorney.org/sites/g/files/ywwepo351/files/document/file/2024-08/Jemel%20Roberson%20Memo.pdf
• CBS News and WSB-TV reporting on Aaron Salter Junior, Tops Friendly Markets, Buffalo, New York. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aaron-salter-jr-security-guard-buffalo-shooting-victim/
• CBS Chicago reporting on the killing of Thurman Bailey outside Sound Bar. https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/thurman-bailey-murder-michael-matthews-charged-sound-bar-nightclub-shooting/
• Contemporaneous reporting on the Boise Towne Square Mall shooting and the death of Jo Acker. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/boise-mall-shooting-suspect-jacob-bergquist-dies/
• Reporting on the Stone Park, Illinois nightclub shooting and the charges against Kevin Henley Junior. https://www.yahoo.com/news/security-guard-accused-stone-park-235924228.html
• Reporting on the Sacramento cannabis dispensary shooting and the charges against Joseph Mills. https://www.aol.com/articles/sacramento-security-guard-charged-shooting-193130121.html
• Reporting on the Las Vegas sentencing of Kegia Mitchell. https://www.yahoo.com/news/las-vegas-judge-sentences-security-192036242.html
• Reporting on the armored car guard shooting in Balch Springs, Texas and on the Houston armored car shooting. https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/armored-car-guard-shot-broad-123004543.html
• Reporting on the shooting of a bar security officer outside Hat Trick's, Covington, Kentucky, May 17, 2026. https://www.fox19.com/2026/08/04/man-gets-200000-bond-after-shooting-security-guard-outside-nky-bar/
• Reporting on the shooting of Gregory Thomas the Third, Midtown Atlanta, July 30, 2026. https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/08/03/like-scary-movie-security-guard-recovering-after-midtown-shooting-july-30/
• Reporting on the death of Montine Wiley Junior at Green Door Distillery, Kalamazoo, Michigan. https://www.aol.com/articles/teen-sentenced-shooting-death-kalamazoo-144930929.html
• Universal Hub reporting on the Fete lounge shooting, Boston, Massachusetts. https://direct.universalhub.com/2026/second-patron-downtown-lounge-who-was-shot-during-gunfire-involving
• The research used encyclopedia entries with footnoted underlying reporting for orientation on the West Freeway Church of Christ, New Life Church, Methodist Dallas Medical Center, Saint Francis Hospital, STEM School Highlands Ranch, Las Vegas 2017, Borderline Bar and Grill, Pulse nightclub, Washington Navy Yard, Poway synagogue, Greenwood Park Mall, Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, Riverchase Galleria, and 345 Park Avenue matters. Where a disposition in Appendix B rests only on one of those entries, the appendix says so. Every one needs the primary record, listed in Appendix E, before anyone repeats it.

Appendix E

Verification Punch List before Publication

The text either used every item below carefully, with its limit stated on the page, or kept it out entirely. None of it counts as settled, and each needs a primary source check before this book goes to print and before any of it goes into a report, a deposition, or a brief.

Introduction, the Mandalay Bay opening

• Read the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department criminal investigative report and Force Investigation Team report directly. Every figure in the opening came from excerpt pages and contemporaneous reporting, because the report files would not load on the research session. Confirm the 8:40 p.m. alarm, the 9:18 p.m. push to the officer's cellphone, room 32-129, the 10:04 p.m. house phone call, and the left calf wound against the documents.
• Confirm whether Jesus Campos held a Nevada work card. The Private Investigators Licensing Board publishes no reachable registrant search, and the proprietary exemption at Nevada Revised Statutes 648.018(4) makes holding one a separate question from needing one.
• The number of rounds fired into the thirty second floor corridor is contested. The sheriff said well over two hundred on October 5, 2017; a New York Times reconstruction put it near thirty five. The book prints no count.
• Confirm the Jemel Roberson settlement amount and date, and the Wright v. TEGNA Incorporated disposition at 2024 COA 64, against the court files.

Chapter 1, the industry and its numbers

• How many of the sixty four security guard work deaths in 2024, and the seventy nine in 2023, were homicides. That figure sits only in the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries spreadsheet tables, which have no hypertext equivalent. Pull Table A-5, fatal occupational injuries by occupation and event or exposure, 2024, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics fatal injuries tables index.
• For guard specific nonfatal violence, pull the row for security guards against the event "intentional injury by other person" from Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses Table R12, detailed occupation by selected events or exposures, 2023 to 2024.
• Confirm every chapter 1 acquisition date, all from secondary sources with citations, against the acquiring company's own announcement before printing it.
• The claim that private security spending exceeds public law enforcement spending. Compare current Census of Governments police expenditure against a private security market figure that discloses whether it includes alarm monitoring, systems integration, and armored transport, which are not guarding.
• The two hundred sixty three billion dollar global security services market figure and its 3.6 percent growth rate. Allied Universal quotes it on its about page and credits a Freedonia Group forecast the research never obtained, so scope and base year are unknown. Buy the study, attribute the number to Allied Universal, or drop it.
• The per capita comparison of about two police officers and 3.1 security guards per one thousand civilians in the Robert H. Perry white paper, which does not identify its source. Ask the publisher.
• Relief factors of 4.5 to 5.0 full time equivalents per around the clock post, used in staffing practice and unsourced here. Check a staffing text before printing a number.
• The twenty to thirty percent payroll burden in the chapter 1 bill rate derivation, an assumption rather than a sourced figure. Replace it with a state specific workers' compensation rate for classification code 7720, guards and patrol, or label it an assumption every time it appears.
• Security guard bill rates. No federal agency publishes a national series. The General Services Administration pricing application at buy.gsa.gov would not load, and the OMNIA Partners and NASPO ValuePoint rate cards were unreachable. Search public procurement awards for guard services.
• What contract security firms spend on training, per officer or as a share of revenue. The research found no traceable published figure, and the Robert H. Perry white paper states none. Ask that paper's publisher, and never fill the gap from a vendor deck.
• The share of armed officers, state by state. Get it by public records request: California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services firearm permit counts, Texas Department of Public Safety commissioned officer registrations, Florida Class D and Class G license counts, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services armed registrations, and Oregon Department of Public Safety Standards and Training armed certifications.
• A June 2026 national newspaper report that security officers earning about eighteen dollars an hour often supply their own protective gear. The research could not retrieve it. Pull it from the paper's archive.

Chapters 2 and 3, licensing, training, and consensus standards

• Pennsylvania Act 235 basic course hours, widely reported as forty, and whether the five year certificate term carries requalification: check title 37 of the Pennsylvania Code, chapters 21 and 22, and 22 Pennsylvania Statutes section 41 following.
• Florida Class G annual requalification, universally reported and absent from Florida Statutes section 493.6105. Check Florida Statutes section 493.6113, Florida Administrative Code rules 5N-1.132 and 5N-1.140, and the Division of Licensing firearms training manual.
• Texas Level II hours, reported as six, and the handgun proficiency course of fire: check the Department of Public Safety Level II curriculum and the current private security statutes and rules booklet.
• New Jersey Security Officer Registration Act initial hours, reported as twenty four, and how an officer arms himself in New Jersey. Check New Jersey Administrative Code title 13, chapter 55A, New Jersey Statutes Annotated section 45:19A-1 and following, and section 2C:39-6.
• North Carolina Administrative Code section 14B NCAC 16 .0807, the armed guard course, in full, after the rules site would not deliver the file.
• The Virginia handgun qualification minimum passing score, at 6VAC20-174-370, -380 and -390 and the Department of Criminal Justice Services compulsory minimum training standards manual.
• Arizona Revised Statutes section 32-2632 in full, including minimum age and training deadlines, after the legislature's site returned a rate limit error on August 5, 2026.
• Minimum ages for armed and unarmed work: the research verified only California, Washington, and Nevada, and every other state in the chapter 2 table stands unverified on age.
• Firearms requalification intervals for Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey, and Alabama, none of the six verified against a primary source. Pull each state's own regulation.
• The fourteen hour California firearms course figure that circulates in trade writing, against the blocks enumerated in title 16 of the California Code of Regulations, section 635, which sum to roughly ten hours plus examination and range time. Pull the state's current publication.
• The twelve state list of jurisdictions with no statewide security licensing: build it from fifty regulator websites, not an aggregator, since only Colorado and Pennsylvania hold up, Pennsylvania only for unarmed work, and the circulating list places Alabama wrongly.
• Which states have declined the Private Security Officer Employment Authorization Act under title 34 of the United States Code, section 41106(d)(3), and which State Identification Bureaus actually process requests. Ask the Federal Bureau of Investigation Criminal Justice Information Services Division and each state bureau.
• What ASIS International PSO-2019 actually says. Nobody outside knows whether it addresses post orders, site specific assignment, communications equipment, or any training hour count, because the association paywalls it. Buy the 2019 edition and read it before citing it for anything operational, and confirm its supersession language for the 2004 and 2010 editions.
• Whether ASIS International WVPI AA-2020 supersedes the 2011 workplace violence prevention and intervention standard, and whether American National Standards Institute approval attaches to the 2020 edition. The 2011 predecessor was an American National Standard.
• The clause numbers in the 2022 edition of the private security company operations standard that address use of force, weapons, and incident investigation. Do not cite clause numbers without the document.
• The current edition, copyright year, and volume titles of ASIS International's Protection of Assets reference set. Check the association's bookstore.
• Chapters 26 and 28 state that the 2026 edition of National Fire Protection Association document 730 superseded the 2023 edition. Only the Fall 2025 revision cycle report in Appendix D supports that, not the association itself. Confirm the published edition date, and any tentative interim amendment on documents 730 and 731, against the association's own codes and standards catalog.
• International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety guidelines. That association's site blocks automated access. Buy the current guidelines book and confirm the guideline number on weapons security officers carry, the substance and effective date of the de-escalation update to guideline 02.02.04, the adoption status and content of guideline 04.05, and the exact credential names, post-nominal letters, manual editions, and prerequisites of the basic, advanced, and supervisory certifications.
• The Joint Commission national performance goal on preventing workplace violence: confirm its effective date, whether it supplements or replaces the January 1, 2022 elements of performance, and the issue number and date of the announcing R3 Report.
• Department of Homeland Security, Office of SAFETY Act Implementation guidance for use of force programs. Confirm the content, the publication date, and whether it binds applicants or merely advises them, because a conforming program is a defense argument.
• The "Tier One" and "Tier Two" terminology in Illinois security training marketing, which appears nowhere in 225 Illinois Compiled Statutes 447 or title 68 of the Illinois Administrative Code, part 1240. If a source surfaces, run it down before anyone uses it in a report.
• Whether any state requires psychological or medical screening for armed private security, none found. Check each state's licensing regulation before anyone states that negative in a report.
• Chapter 2 states that Colorado licenses private security at the municipal level only. Confirm what Denver, Aurora, Colorado Springs, and Lakewood each require, and whether any issues an armed endorsement, from each city's municipal code and licensing office.
• The Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission firearms certificate term and recertification interval. Check title 139 of the Washington Administrative Code, chapter 139-30.

Chapters 5 through 9, the law of force

• Confirm the reporter citation for the Seventh Circuit private guard case, Wade v. Byles; two citations appear in secondary sources, 87 F.3d 241 and 83 F.3d 902, both dated 1996. Pull the Federal Reporter volume.
• The exact titles and text of Restatement (Second) of Torts sections 64, 66 through 76, and 79, including the section commonly cited for defense of a third person. The American Law Institute asserts copyright and no free source reproduces them, so get the bound volume.
• The publication status and section numbering of the Restatement (Third) of Torts covering intentional torts to persons, which the institute has approved and which will supersede the self-defense sections above. Check whether your section is still current.
• The author of the defense of others article at 5 Regent University Law Review 153, 1995, and whether its twenty three state list and its identification of Ohio as the last alter ego holdout still hold, the survey being thirty years old.
• Whether any section of Texas Occupations Code chapter 1702 states a substantive use of force standard, chapter 5 having drawn its conclusion from a mirrored table of contents because the state's statute and rule sites were unreachable. Also confirm whether title 37 of the Texas Administrative Code, section 35.7, firearm standards, exists.
• Whether a contract officer's assigned post counts as his place of business or employment under Texas Penal Code section 9.32(b), or his place of work under Model Penal Code section 3.04(2)(b)(ii) and Connecticut General Statutes section 53a-19(b), where the client owns the property. The research found no case applying either to a contract guard. Run the case search.
• The California citizen's arrest rule. California Penal Code section 837, subdivision 3, requires a felony in fact, while a published prosecutor training article describes practice as requiring only probable cause. Resolve it against People v. Sjosten and its progeny, and verify the pinpoint citation to People v. Garcia, 274 Cal.App.2d 100, at page 105.
• The text of 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/16-26, taken here from a fifty state survey only. Pull the section from the Illinois General Assembly's own compiled statutes.
• Missouri regulation 17 CSR 20-2.105, weapons, a state rule touching armed private security that the research never retrieved. Pull the current text from the Missouri Secretary of State's Code of State Regulations before describing the state either way.
• The current text of Florida Statutes section 776.032 and the allocation of the burden on a pretrial immunity motion after the 2017 burden shifting legislation.
• The volume, page, and year of the Georgia State University Law Review article on House Bill 479, the repeal of Georgia's citizen's arrest law. The article file returned an access error; the research confirmed only the landing page.
• Connecticut Office of Legislative Research report 2012-R-0172 on the castle doctrine and stand your ground, which would supply a useful multi-state list. The legislature's site failed on August 5, 2026.
• Whether any published decision holds, in so many words, that Graham v. Connor does not supply the standard for a private security officer's use of force. The chain of authority in chapter 5 supports the proposition, but the research found no opinion stating it as a holding.
• Two secondary reports about private arrest practice: that Pennsylvania courts bar private arrests for summary offenses, and that North Carolina frames the private power as detention rather than arrest. The research verified neither against a primary source.

Chapter 10, state action and civil rights

• The parallel citations for People v. Zelinski, whose California Reports citation, court, year, and docket number the research verified. A commercial listing gives 155 Cal.Rptr. 575 and 594 P.2d 1000; one automated read returned a garbled set. Check the bound reporters.
• The final United States Reports pagination and the Supreme Court Reporter citation for Manhattan Community Access Corporation v. Halleck, which displayed as blank on the source consulted. The docket number and term hold.
• The parallel citations for Griffin v. Maryland. The United States Reports citation and the page for the key quotation check out against the Library of Congress scan; the Supreme Court Reporter and Lawyers' Edition citations come from a commercial listing only.
• Two no state action decisions the text cites nowhere for that reason: a Ninth Circuit case holding that off duty officers drinking in plain clothes who never identified themselves were not state actors, and a Seventh Circuit case holding that an officer who merely reported a crime was not one. The research found only commercial database citations of unknown precedential status. Get the reporter citations.
• The circuit designation for Marcus v. McCollum, 394 F.3d 813, 2004, which a defense survey lists as Third Circuit while the reporter volume and subject matter suggest Tenth.
• The year of Neuens v. City of Columbus, 303 F.3d 667, Sixth Circuit, which one outline gives as 2003 while the reporter volume suggests 2002.
• The Massachusetts provisions for municipal special police officers and for railroad police, commonly cited as Massachusetts General Laws chapter 41, section 98, and chapter 147, section 10, of which the research verified only the special state police provision at chapter 22C, section 63. Pull the current text before printing section numbers.
• The characterization that the six hundred thousand dollar remitted punitive award in Romanski was roughly sixty percent of the casino's daily revenue. Confirm it against the opinion before repeating it.
• Whether Romanski discusses qualified immunity, Wyatt, or Richardson, and whether the opinion states the basis of the casino's liability. Two automated reviews reported that it does not, a negative finding from machine review. Read the opinion end to end.
• The eight circuit cases and pin cites on the private party qualified immunity split, taken from a law journal article rather than the reporters, and almost entirely from the prison health care context. Verify each and look for developments after 2019 before presenting the split as current.
• The phrase "aorta of corruption," widely attributed to the Department of Justice findings letter on the New Orleans Police Department paid detail system and absent from the 2012 consent decree press release. Locate the findings letter itself before quoting it.
• The operative text of Chicago Municipal Code sections 4-340-020, 4-340-030, 4-340-070, and 4-340-080, the special policeman licensing, bond, and badge provisions, of which the research confirmed only the titles.
• Whether any circuit has both found state action and reached corporate policy liability on the merits against a private security company employing commissioned officers, the closest being Austin v. Paramount Parks, which assumed state action without deciding it.
• The description of typical municipal police professional liability exclusions and commercial general liability assault and battery exclusions in the off duty employment discussion. That is a synthesis, not a sourced finding, so verify it against actual policy forms.
• A dozen private security state action decisions collected from practitioner outlines and never pulled from the reporters, including the Georgetown University special police case, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority case, the Sixth Circuit mall and stadium security cases, and the Ninth Circuit landlord and civil commitment cases. Pull each before citing it.

Chapters 11 through 15, the duty owed to the guard

• Whether any published California decision applies the Privette or SeaBright line to a contract security officer specifically, none found. Run the search in the California Appellate Reports.
• The reporter citations for Hooker, Kinsman, McKown, Gonzalez v. Mathis, and Sandoval, all from a law firm summary rather than the opinions.
• Whether any court outside California extends the firefighter's rule or professional rescuer doctrine to private security officers, Neighbarger and Marquez both being California. Run a fifty state check before any general statement.
• New Jersey's statutory abolition of the firefighter's rule, believed to be New Jersey Statutes Annotated section 2A:62A-21. Verify the number and its scope.
• The parallel citations for Gregory v. Cott, likely 59 Cal.4th 996, 331 P.3d 179, and 176 Cal.Rptr.3d 1, 2014, on which chapter 27 also relies. The docket number and decision date hold.
• The reporter citation for Bock v. Vigor Works LLC, 343 Or App 514, 580 P3d 353, 2025, taken from a firm alert, and the current status of Oregon Supreme Court review.
• The caption for the Oregon employer liability decision at 169 Or.App. 469, 10 P.3d 268, 2000, which one source returned as George v. Myers and another as George v. Kelly.
• The section number in Larson's treatise on workers' compensation for the borrowed servant test, section 48.00 in older editions and 67.01 in the current one. Confirm against the edition you cite.
• Standard Oil Company v. Anderson, 212 United States 215, 1909, cited for the history of the borrowed servant doctrine from knowledge rather than the reporter. Pull the opinion.
• The submission thresholds in Revised Code of Washington section 49.19.080, which a secondary summary describes as twice yearly for smaller hospitals and quarterly for others, against the text effective January 1, 2026.
• The five deliberate intent factors of West Virginia Code section 23-4-2, which chapter 15 states and the legislature amended in 2023. Pull the current text from the West Virginia Legislature's code site and confirm which version governs an injury on or after July 1, 2023.
• New Jersey Public Law 2023, chapter 48, which chapter 12 describes as amending the health care violence prevention scheme. Confirm its effect, section numbers, and effective date against the enacted chapter law on the New Jersey Legislature's site.
• Whether Massachusetts rejects borrowed servant exclusivity for client companies, a statement resting on a secondary fifty state survey only. Confirm it against a Massachusetts appellate decision.
• New York's body armor purchase restrictions and whether licensed security guards fall within the exempt eligible professions. Check the current General Business Law and Executive Law text.
• The February 2025 chapter amendment to New York Labor Law section 27-e, its chapter number, and the precise scope of the change to the panic button requirement between the enacted bill and the amended version.
• Chapter 14 states that New York Labor Law section 200 reaches work other than construction while sections 240 and 241(6) do not. Read the scope language of all three in the current consolidated laws before repeating that distinction.
• Chapter 11 relies on the savings clause at title 29 of the United States Code, section 653(b)(4), for the proposition that the federal occupational safety act does not displace state common law duties. Pull the section text from the United States Code before that argument goes in a brief.
• Chapter 15 cites Restatement (Second) of Torts section 414 for retained control, and chapters 15 and 19 cite sections 413, 416, and 427 on the duties of one who hires an independent contractor. Confirm the numbers and operative text against the bound American Law Institute volume, which no free source reproduces.
• The July 2008 publication date for National Institute of Justice Standard 0101.06, which the agency page for the 0101.07 standard does not restate. Take it off the cover of the 0101.06 document itself.
• The current edition years for British Standards 8484, 7499, and 7858, which chapter 14 cites as the lone worker comparison. Confirm with the British Standards Institution.

Chapters 16 through 20, premises liability, vicarious liability, and insurance

• The caption, all three parallel citations, the date, and the quoted rule of Nallan v. Helmsley-Spear, Incorporated, the leading New York case on the abandoned lobby post, believed to be 50 N.Y.2d 507, 429 N.Y.S.2d 606, 407 N.E.2d 451, 1980. No accessible source would load the opinion.
• The reporter citation and exact decision date for McClung v. Delta Square Limited Partnership, which two publisher listings give as 937 S.W.2d 891, 1996, and one automated read returned as 913 S.W.2d 150, 1995. Confirm against the official reporter.
• The official Georgia Reports and South Eastern Reporter citation for Georgia CVS Pharmacy, LLC v. Carmichael, likely 316 Ga. 718, 890 S.E.2d 209, 2023. One automated read returned a volume chronologically impossible for a 2023 decision. Also confirm the final outcome on remand.
• The quoted passages from Mary M. v. City of Los Angeles. The citation checks out against the California Reports volume index, but the opinion page returned repeated access errors, so chapter 18 quotes no language from it. Pull the quotations from the official reporter.
• The exact decision date of Del Lago Partners, Incorporated v. Smith, whose reporter citation and opinion text hold while the April 2, 2010 date came from memory.
• The Oregon Court of Appeals citation below Piazza v. Kellim, believed to be 271 Or.App. 490, 354 P.3d 698, 2015, the Supreme Court citation holding.
• Everything about Easley v. Apollo Detective Agency, believed to be 69 Ill.App.3d 920, 387 N.E.2d 1241, First District, 1979, including whether the caption carries the corporate suffix. No accessible source carries the opinion.
• Hermitage Insurance Company v. Trance Nite Club, Incorporated, believed to be an Eleventh Circuit assault and battery exclusion decision from 2002 and absent from the volume searched, so the citation or the case name is wrong. Do not use it.
• The exact text of Restatement (Second) of Torts sections 323, 411, 416, 424, and 425. Case text verifies section 324A and a quoting opinion verifies section 411's operative sentence, so chapter 19 paraphrases the rest.
• The text and comment of Restatement (Second) of Agency section 245, on a master's liability for a servant's intended tortious harm. Chapter 18 quotes it from knowledge, not the volume.
• Chapter 18 uses Restatement (Third) of Agency sections 7.07 and 7.08 on scope of employment and the aided in agency theory. Confirm the text against the bound American Law Institute volume, and build the list of states adopting or rejecting 7.08 from the reported decisions rather than a treatise summary.
• McHaffie v. Bunch, 891 S.W.2d 822, Missouri, 1995, and a current list of states barring direct negligence claims once a defendant admits respondeat superior. The rule is real and the trend is against it, and the list moves every legislative session.
• The holding language of Sturbridge Partners, Limited v. Walker, 267 Ga. 785, 482 S.E.2d 339, 1997, cited from the reliable Georgia CVS slip opinion by someone who never read the opinion itself.
• Chapter 20 states that punitive exposure can reach a principal. Confirm the complicity rule at Restatement (Second) of Torts section 909 against the bound volume, and build the state split on vicarious punitive liability from the reported decisions, because it moves.
• Which states have anti-indemnity statutes reaching security service contracts, and whether each stops at construction. The insurance sources confirm that some states void broad form hold harmless agreements but do not name them.
• The Insurance Services Office additional insured endorsement form numbers, commonly cited as CG 20 10 and CG 20 26, and the 2004 revision that narrowed "arising out of" to "caused in whole or in part by." The narrowing is real; confirm the form numbers and edition dates.
• The federal track of the Scot Peterson civil litigation: the district judge, the 2018 dismissal holding no substantive due process duty to protect, and the Eleventh Circuit affirmance. The state track holds through the January 9, 2025 appellate ruling.
• Sharon P. v. Arman, Limited, believed to be 21 Cal.4th 1181, 1999, which chapter 16 takes from inside a quoted passage of Delgado rather than from the reporter. Confirm it against the official California Reports before citing the case in its own right.

Chapters 21 through 25, investigation, video, firearms, and forensics

• Every number in the 2014 start and stop shooting study by Lewinski, Hudson and Dysterheft: the mean reaction times, the sample size, and the rounds fired after the stop stimulus. The full text sits behind a private distribution link.
• The Tobin and Fackler item in Wound Ballistics Review, 1997, and the quarter second figure attributed to it. Confirm the citation and the number.
• The 2015 national newspaper investigation of the Force Science Institute: author, headline, and date, which any cross examination using it will need.
• Volume and page numbers for every Force Science publication chapter 25 cites. The publisher's index does not carry them.
• Whether any standards body or state regulator defines holster retention levels, whether the National Institute of Justice ever published a holster standard, whether any published test procedure documents the five second grab and snatch test, and whether any state mandates a retention level for armed private security, which matters most, because a state requirement plus a twenty dollar open top nylon holster is a violation on its face.
• Officers killed with their own weapon for years other than 2017, 2018, and 2019. Build any long run percentage from the full Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted table series, whose data after 2019 lives in the Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer.
• Any development after December 2025 in the pistol uncommanded discharge litigation in chapter 24. Check the District of New Hampshire docket, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the continuing reporting. Also pull the trial transcript of the cross examination in which the pistol's designer reportedly conceded that United States industry safety standards are not stringent.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation Ballistic Research Facility evaluation of the M17 and M18 pistols, August 2024. Obtain the document.
• The statutory citation for the Consumer Product Safety Commission's firearms exclusion, believed to be title 15 of the United States Code, section 2052(a)(5). Confirm the subsection in the United States Code.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation handgun ammunition test protocol, including the twelve to eighteen inch gelatin penetration window and the list of test events, and the bureau's 2014 memorandum justifying its return to nine millimeter. Request both from the bureau's Ballistic Research Facility.
• The ASTM International designation for the gunshot residue analysis protocol using scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry, believed to be E1588. Confirm the designation and current edition in the ASTM International catalog.
• The gunshot residue persistence intervals of four to six hours for inorganic residue and about one hour for organic, and the three to five foot particle travel limit, which chapter 25 gives as the general forensic understanding. Confirm against the standard guide and a current forensic text before either number goes in a report.
• Any peer reviewed low light target identification or object identification error study. The research found none, so chapter 25 rests on settled visual physiology and needs a textbook citation. Pull one from a standard text on scotopic vision.
• The recommended illuminance values in the paywalled Illuminating Engineering Society document G-1-22, and the current designation and edition of that society's parking facility lighting recommended practice, historically numbered RP-20. Never print a foot-candle number without the document in hand.
• The content of the 2025 forensic autopsy standards from the National Association of Medical Examiners, particularly what they require in gunshot wound cases, and that association's caseload standards, which ground any attack on an over-caseload office.
• The body worn camera adoption rate among United States contract security officers, which no published survey gives. Ask the largest national contractors directly, and ask the state regulators whether they collect it.
• A state by state list of all party consent recording states, noting the oral communication distinction for each. Build it from each state's own wiretap statute, not an aggregator.
• Frequently cited federal district court video spoliation decisions in premises cases, including Managed Care Solutions, Incorporated v. Essent Healthcare, Incorporated, 736 F. Supp. 2d 1317, Southern District of Florida, 2010, none of them confirmed. Pull each from the Federal Supplement.
• A state by state survey of independent spoliation torts, which a few states recognize and most do not, which is why chapter 23 names none. Build the list from the reported decisions.
• The time synchronization standards from the National Emergency Number Association, the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology for public safety answering point and computer aided dispatch timestamps. Request the current document from each of the three.
• Typical closed circuit television retention defaults by sector. Either find a real citation or keep the claim out, which is what chapter 23 does.

Chapters 26 through 28, experts, defense, and program design

• The reporter citations for the federal expert admissibility trilogy and the current text of the federal evidence rule governing expert testimony, none of them verified, which is why chapter 26 prints none. Pull the rule and the controlling decisions in your own jurisdiction.
• Three impeachments waiting in the chapter 26 standards table: the private security officer selection and training guideline is a guideline, not an American National Standard; the 2026 premises security guide superseded the 2023 edition; and the 2024 risk assessment standard replaced the 2015 one. Confirm each edition against the issuing body's catalog before a report goes out.
• Any tentative interim amendment against the 2024 edition of National Fire Protection Association document 3000 after amendment 3000-24-1, the program design benchmark in chapter 28. Check the association's own codes and standards page.

Appendix B, the casebook

• A reported jury award of seven hundred seventy nine million dollars in Gadsden County, Florida to the survivors of a security guard killed at a Havana, Florida internet gambling cafe in 2023, reported around December 2025. Verify the guard's name, the defendants, the negligence theory, the verdict date, the damages breakdown, and whether it survived post-trial motions.
• A reported Occupational Safety and Health Administration case against the guard company from the Boise Towne Square Mall shooting, and whether that company employed Jo Acker at all, neither confirmed. Pull the inspection record from the administration.
• Matthew Dolloff: whether the dismissal ran with or without prejudice, whether the Keltner estate filed a separate wrongful death action and what came of it, whether the Pinkerton license revocation survived appeal, the outcome of the media defendant appeal on remand, and the plaintiff's first name against the court caption.
• Donald Vincent Ciota the Second: pull the Los Angeles Superior Court criminal docket for the disposition and the civil docket for the outcome of the five hundred twenty five million dollar claim.
• Banko Brown: the outcome of the twenty five million dollar civil action against Walgreens, the officer, and Kingdom Group Protective Services. Pull the San Francisco Superior Court civil docket.
• Logan Conrad Gimbel: name the employer and locate any civil action by the Nelson family and its outcome.
• Shelly Frey: the exact December 2012 date, the grand jury result on the deputy, and any civil action against the retailer or the county.
• Thurman Bailey: Appendix B lists charges against three men and no dispositions. Pull the Cook County criminal dockets for all three, and the civil docket for any action against the club.
• Jemel Roberson: Appendix B leaves the discipline of the officer who shot him unconfirmed. Ask the Village of Midlothian for the disciplinary record, which the settlement file may also carry.
• Borderline Bar and Grill: the name of the bouncer killed at the door, which the cached article omits while giving his age. Take it from the coroner's record, not from memory.
• Balch Springs: Appendix B gives the quarter rather than the date, and names no armored car company. Get both from the Balch Springs Police Department incident report and the federal charging documents in the reported Fort Worth arrest.
• Dallas CVS: two sources spell the officer's surname differently, so one is wrong, and the city and the responding agency do not match. Reconcile all three against the police report.
• Washington Navy Yard: Richard Ridgell's employer, and any claim against it. Start with the federal contracting record for the Building 197 guard contract.
• 345 Park Avenue: the surviving spouse's complaint, including defendants, court, index number, filing date, and the security failures it alleges, and the identity of Aland Etienne's employer, which no source named.
• STEM School Highlands Ranch: the Douglas County Sheriff's Office incident report, the contract guard's name and employer, whether he held a license and campus carry authority, whether he struck anyone, and whether he or the company faced charges or suit. State nothing beyond the friendly fire exchange without it.
• Stone Park: the year of the shooting, the name of the dissolved security firm, and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation licensing records.
• Sacramento: Joseph Mills's employer and his California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services registration and firearms permit status.
• Houston armored car shooting: the cash in transit company's name, and the charging decisions on the guard and on the two teenagers. Get both from the Houston Police Department incident report and the Harris County District Attorney.
• Las Vegas: Appendix B states the sentence but not the sentencing date, and does not say whether Kegia Mitchell worked on contract or in house. Pull the Clark County criminal docket and the Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board registration record.
• Pulse nightclub: the Florida regulator's action against the guard company in full, including the finding, the fine amount, and the date, plus the negligent security litigation and its outcome.
• Riverchase Galleria: the Alabama Attorney General's report on the shooting of Emantic Bradford Junior and any federal or civil resolution.
• Mandalay Bay: what, if anything, Jesus Campos received out of the eight hundred million dollar settlement announced October 3, 2019 and approved September 30, 2020.

Figures that circulate without a traceable source

None of the numbers below appears anywhere in this book as fact, and none belongs in a report, a deposition, a closing argument, or in front of a jury. They sit here so the next person who meets one in an opposing expert's report knows what it is and where it came from.

• Turnover in contract security of one hundred to four hundred percent a year, and its variants at one hundred to three hundred percent and up to four hundred percent. The research located no primary survey supporting any version, and neither abstract of the likely origin, the 1985 Hallcrest Report or its 1990 successor, contains the figure. The measurable modern figures, both from Quarterly Workforce Indicators data, are 50.8 percent from the Center for American Progress in 2023 and 77.0 percent from the Berkeley Labor Center in 2024.
• Three private security officers for every police officer, which Bureau of Labor Statistics data does not support. The defensible ratios are 1.91 guards per patrol officer, 1.07 per law enforcement worker, and 1.63 per full-time sworn state or local officer, each depending on the numerator and denominator you pick.
• One in ten officers killed dies by his own weapon. Across the three years this book verified, five own weapon killings out of one hundred forty nine officers feloniously killed, roughly three percent, and one of the three years was zero. The number is small, volatile, and no three year window will characterize it.
• The commonly quoted figures from the 2014 start and stop shooting study: the mean reaction times, the sample size, and the rounds fired after the stop stimulus, all unverified at the source, because the research never obtained the full text.
• Private security spending exceeding public law enforcement spending, repeated by trade writers since the Hallcrest reports and never verified by the research.
• Two hundred sixty three billion dollars for the global security services market growing at 3.6 percent a year. Traceable only to a contractor's own about page, which attributes it to a forecasting firm whose study the research never obtained.
• Any specific percentage of armed security officers, other than the "less than twenty percent" figure a single industry brokerage published for contract firms in 2025, no government counting it.
• Any figure for what security firms spend on training, per officer or as a share of revenue, none existing in published form.
• Relief factors of 4.5 to 5.0 full time equivalents per around the clock post, used in staffing practice and never sourced.
• Typical video retention by sector, usually given as seven days for parking, fourteen for multifamily, thirty for retail, and ninety for hospitality, none of it sourceable. Keep a retention table out of a report.
• A fourteen hour California firearms course, a forty hour Pennsylvania Act 235 basic course, and annual Florida Class G requalification, all three reported everywhere by trade sources and none confirmed against the regulation or the statute.
• The circulating twelve state list of jurisdictions with no statewide security licensing, which its own publisher dates to 2018 and which is wrong in both directions.

What nobody counts

Nobody in the United States counts shootings by private security officers, fatal or nonfatal. Every system that could produce such a count either does not record the shooter's occupation or excludes private security by definition.

• Gun Violence Archive tracks more than one hundred twenty shooting variables and states in its own methodology that it does not collect or distribute subject or suspect characteristics, so the shooter's job is not one of its fields.
• The Washington Post Fatal Force database counts, by its own definition, only a police officer, in the line of duty, shooting and killing a civilian, excluding deaths in custody, killings by off duty officers, and non-shooting deaths. A private security officer falls outside its universe.
• Mapping Police Violence defines its universe as a civilian death at the hands of a law enforcement officer and estimates it captures about ninety two percent of police killings, so private security falls outside it too.
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation's closest proxy is the Supplementary Homicide Report category "justifiable homicide by private citizen," which omits the shooter's occupation, captures only killings the reporting agency calls justifiable, and rests on voluntary, incomplete reporting that stopped being the collection vehicle when the bureau moved to incident based reporting in 2021. In it, a guard's justified shooting looks exactly like a homeowner's.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention systems, including the injury statistics query system and the National Violent Death Reporting System, record whether the victim was at work but not the shooter's occupation.
• The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts guards who die at work, through the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries, but not the people guards shoot, and it separates armed from unarmed officers nowhere in its occupational series.
• No licensing authority this book located aggregates firearm discharge reports from private security companies nationally, and whether a state requires that reporting as a condition of licensure varies. Check the state before arguing the point.

An original count is possible, from four sources: public records requests to every state licensing board that requires firearm discharge reporting; loss data from the insurers who write security guard professional liability and actually count these events; docket sampling of civil complaints naming contract security firms as defendants in shooting cases, by jurisdiction and by year; and medical examiner records joined to the National Violent Death Reporting System and to news reports, the method that built the police shooting databases. Until someone does that work, the honest answer to how often private security officers shoot people is that nobody knows, and no expert on either side should pretend otherwise.

About the Author

Steve Wolf

I am a firearms and security expert witness with more than thirty five years in the work.

I hold a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Class 20 firearms and explosives manufacturing license and a Class 1 federal firearms license. I hold seventeen Federal Emergency Management Agency emergency management certifications, and I am certified by the Association for Challenge Course Technology. I hold a bachelor of arts from Columbia University. I hold eleven patents.

My record at verdict is thirty two of thirty two. I served as a retained expert in all three of the Rust matters.

I am the author of Active Shooter, Investigating and Litigating Paintball and Airsoft Injury Cases, Climbing Gym Zipline Ropes Course Litigation, and Firearms Safety On Set.

Telephone (512) 653-9653. Electronic mail Steve@SteveWolfExpertWitness.com. Web SteveWolfExpertWitness.com.