Private Security Guards Are Filling Gaps in Policing (But Not All of Them)

Bringing down crime is a big part of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s agenda for the year. Nationally, violent crime and property crime fell in 2023 and the first half of 2024, according to FBI figures. But New Mexico’s crime ratesremain consistently above the national average, driven by high crime in Bernalillo County.

A lot of what Lujan Grisham wants to do is pretty familiar, such as increased penalties for firearms and drugs. But the Democrat also calls for something unusual: tax rebates for businesses to hire their own private security. “As burglaries, shoplifting and property damage force businesses of all sizes to hire private security firms,” Lujan Grisham said during her State of the State address. “It’s crushing their bottom lines.”

Use of private security services has been growing across the country, with fears about safety rising and police departments struggling to maintain full forces. By 2021, the number of security guards nationally outstripped the number of police officers.

Businesses have teamed up to hire their own security guards to patrol in areas such as Chicago’s Fulton Market District and certain affluent Baltimore neighborhoods. Even some cities have contracted private guards to compensate for their shorthanded police departments. Beverly Hills, Calif., hired private security to respond to retail robberies, while Santa Monica’s city council created a pilot program in response to safety concerns over crime and homelessness downtown.

But security guards are not a panacea. For one thing, guards can be hard to hire. For its own security guard pilot program, Santa Fe, N.M., wanted 18 guards. Six months later, it still only has 12 to 14. “It’s very easy then for another company to poach someone for 50 cents or 75 cents,” says Randy Randall, Santa Fe’s interim city manager. “These people are not highly paid — they’re probably in the $20 to $21 [an hour] area.”

There are other concerns. Security guards are less regulated and personnel receive less training. There are also questions about how effective they are about fighting crime. “The answer here is we have no idea,” says Ben Grunwald, a law professor at Duke University and co-author of a study on private security and policing. “There are incredibly few studies — empirical studies — that can help us understand whether private security decreases crime [or] has no effect on crime, [or] what kind of social costs it has on the people who interact with private security officers.”

A Police-Like Presence

Guards are supposed to call police when they see a crime happening. They don’t have the authority to make arrests (except for citizens arrests). Where they can really help is as “trained observers of potential crimes,” says Thaddeus Johnson of the Council on Criminal Justice: “Getting license plate numbers, being able to give a proper, concise description of the events that's going on, having access to surveillance cameras to help out the PD [police department] with investigations are a proper role for them.”

At times, guards are deployed with the hope that their mere presence will be a deterrent to crime and make passersby feel safer.

Fairfax, Va., recently piloted a program to send private security guards to patrol a historic commercial district, as well as two parks. Several criminal incidents near the parks had raised concerns. And some businesses in the historic Old Town were worried about trespassing, loitering and petty theft, particularly from people who were being released back into the community from the nearby Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. “If they see what they believe is suspicious activity, or if they see a crime occurring, then they are directed to call our dispatch immediately and only intervene if it's absolutely necessary, if someone’s life is at stake or something like that,” says Sergeant James Lewis.

In some cases, residents seeing uniformed guards may expect them to act like police and stop a crime. But private security using force is risky, Johnson says. Guards who are armed only carry guns, rather than police officers’ typical array of less-lethal options like tasers and pepper spray. They may not have the tools or training to respond with non-deadly force.

Inadequate Training

Although policing shortages may encourage hiring private security guards, the two jobs are far from the same thing and blurring the roles is dangerous, Johnson says. Security guards also tend to have much less training than police and standards vary a lot. “A lot of people think that police officers don't get enough training, but it is way, way, way more training than private security officers,” Grunwald says. Plus “there's lots and lots of states where there's no regulation at all, and then the states that do have regulation, it's pretty minimal.”

Armed guards and specialized units working in high-profile roles tend to get more training, but the average unarmed guard’s training is relatively minimal. Unarmed guards aren’t typically trained on officer survival, radio use or collaborating with police to report crimes. There’s a lot of variability in the number of hours of training they get and the extensiveness of background checks they go through. “Unarmed security … there’s not much you need for that except for a pulse,” says Johnson, who has worked in both policing and armed and unarmed private security.

In his research, Grunwald has found that among the small portion of security guards who were former cops, a quarter had been fired from policing at some point. “That's generally consistent with this concern that private security can be an escape hatch for problematic police officers,” he says.

To prevent confusion over guards’ roles, they need distinctive, clearly non-police uniforms and everyone needs clear information on what to expect from them — and what not, Johnson says.

Santa Fe’s Short-Term Solution

Randall says that the private security program in Santa Fe has been successful. One important factor may be that they’re not expected to act like police or handle crimes.

Last August, Santa Fe launched its program to send security guards to patrol a historic district business area. Their job was to compel people who are homeless or who are causing a disturbance to leave the popular tourist areas. They’re charged with stopping people from asking for money; waking up people sleeping on the library lawn or in doorways to push them to leave the area; ensuring no one’s entering buildings after hours through doors accidentally left unlocked; and getting anyone who may be yelling in public to stop or move on.

“A lot of what we're eliminating is not criminal, it's just unwanted behavior,” Randall says.

It fills a gap, because police are able to respond to crimes but too shorthanded to proactively monitor the area. When there’s a real problem, guards call police.

Randall concedes it’s not a cure for underlying social ills. He described the effort as a short-term way to minimize, but not solve, the real problems. “It hasn’t done anything to resolve the homeless issues,” Randall says. “What it does is it, it kind of moves the issue out of the high visible areas of our historic district.”

The location of the program points to another issue with use of private security. Namely, equity. It’s generally wealthier communities and businesses that can afford private security to supplement public police services.

Addressing such imbalances is an area where Gov. Lujan Grisham’s tax credit proposal might help.

Randall says among local businesses, it’s the big-box retailers and higher-margin jewelry stores that may be able to afford added security inside their own stores, and the small gift stores that cannot.

“A lot of businesses that we have in our historic areas, they’re small one-off, ma and pa, four-employee-type businesses. They don’t have the margins and the resources to have a security guard sitting there,” Randall says. “A tax credit for them … I think would be very meaningful.”