Private security here! Spent eight years as a guard before moving up to corporate level.

I think about this daily. How an armed guard could get not only fired, but potentially blacklisted from the entire industry (at least locally) for pulling their gun at the “wrong” time.

Like it or not, private security have ten times the liability, accountability, damn near any metric you wanna use, that police do. We get fired (or removed from contracts at client request) for tiny shit daily.

There are enough bad apples in our industry that I can’t really argue against the leeriness, ridicule, etc, from the public. I get it; there are a lot of IRL Paul Blarts out there. It means the industry needs to raise standards…meh, I’m getting off topic here.

You’re entirely correct, and I’m glad to see this pointed out. Police get away with shit that would get any guard super-extra-mecha fired, whether it’s a highly trained armed guard working a federal contract or an unarmed kid making $9 an hour to sit in an empty parking lot.

From both sides of the fence, this is not how this should be working.