And there was at least one common element involving the men who are said to have pulled the triggers: the shooter at the Orlando nightclub Pulse last spring and the alleged shooter at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Jan. 7 were employed as security guards.
Incredulous for some, given that armed security guards are usually subject to state licensing, drug testing, and even psychological testing. But while security companies defend their screening processes as stringent, they also complain they can’t access enough background information from federal authorities. Some are implementing more frequent background checks and increasing their monitoring of security guards on the job.
“We’ve heard from clients that ‘we want to avoid similar incidents,’” said John Friedlander, senior director with Kroll’s Security Risk Management in North America, which consults for security companies and lends training support. As a result, some companies are conducting more frequent criminal background checks, which are usually undertaken before a candidate individual is hired, and beefing up the monitoring of security officers.
“We often encourage greater field supervision,” Friedlander said.
But most industry leaders point toward the FBI, saying federal law enforcement and security agencies should share more criminal background and watch-list information with private security employers. The FBI didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Friedlander said the demand for more routine criminal background checks, perhaps annually or semi-annually, is limited to large, prominent customers such as religious institutions or schools. That’s because additional background checks add to the cost of hiring security.
For the most part, screening including criminal background checks and drug panels, are only done before a candidate is hired, Friedlander said.
Florida’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs said the screening process for a “G” license for an armed security guard has not been changed since the Florida shootings.
But the department is moving forward with new oversights, including fingerprint retention, a measure passed by the state Legislature in the last session, said Jennifer Meale, spokeswoman for the department. She said the department is working toward new legislation that would allow access to the Mental Competency Database for class “G” licenses for armed security guards and “K” licenses for instructors. The database identifies persons who are prohibited from purchasing a firearm based on court records that show mental defects or commitments to mental institutions.
Steve Amitay, executive director and general counsel for the National Association of Security Companies in Washington, said his association has been pushing for more watch-list information from federal authorities to be shared with companies. He said some companies are stepping up internal monitoring.
“I think one of the major changes since Orlando are security companies really trying to better engage their supervisors and managers out in the field to be on the lookout for personality changes and odd behavior, Amitay said. “They’re providing training to the managers, recognizing indicators of destructive terrorist activity.”
But if security companies are taking such actions, they’re doing so quietly.
G4S, a worldwide security company that employs 42,655 security guards including about 5,300 in Florida and 2,600 in South Florida, employed Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people at the Pulse nightclub. The company said it has not changed any of its own hiring or screening processes for security guards since the mass killing.
“We have strong controls and processes in place. G4S’s background investigations processes comply with federal, state and local law. In the United States, our background investigations meet or exceed the requirements of U.S. state agencies,” said G4S spokeswoman Monica Lewman-Garcia. “In Mateen’s case, his background investigations were clean and all processes and procedures were followed in accordance with policy.”
Mateen may have been licensed, but G4S was fined $151,400 by the state after the Pulse nightclub shooting because the killer’s license carried the wrong name of the psychologist. G4S called it an “administrative error.”
In the more recent case of Esteban Santiago, the Iraq veteran who is charged with killing five people and wounding six others at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood airport, was employed by an Anchorage, Alaska, franchise that is part of Omaha-based Signal 88.
An office assistant who answered a phone of company co-founder and CEO Reed Nyffelered in Omaha said the company isn’t commenting on the tragedy. The Anchorage franchise’s co-owners Zachary Alsterberg and William Serra were “out of the country,” said manager Travis Steward. When asked about the franchise’s practices in screening and monitoring security guards, Steward said the company “had no comment at this time.”
It is unclear whether Santiago was licensed by Alaska. The state’s Department of Public Safety earlier this month denied the Sun Sentinel’s public information request as Santiago is the subject of an FBI investigation and an active prosecution by the U.S. Attorney in South Florida. Santiago has entered “not guilty” pleas to 22 federal criminal counts in an indictment.
In both cases of Mateen and Santiago, the FBI had either investigated or been aware of possible mental health issues.
Mateen was investigated by the FBI twice, from May 2013 to March 2014, according to a report last year by the Orlando Sentinel. Then the agent and his supervisor concluded that Mateen was not a threat and closed the case.
Santiago, 26, voluntarily entered a psychiatric hospital for treatment in November after he went to the FBI office in Anchorage, and asked for help. At the time, he told agents that his mind was being controlled by the U.S. government, that he was experiencing “terroristic thoughts” and was being urged to watch terrorist propaganda online.
Security company association head Amitay said he asked FBI director James Comey, who was a speaker at the association’s annual conference last September in Orlando, why the agency didn’t inform employer G4S that Mateen was on a terrorist watch list. G4S had employed Mateen as an armed security guard at the Indian River County courthouse until 2013, and later at a residential community in the Port St. Lucie area.
Amitay said Comey cited “privacy concerns.”
“I don’t think there’s a clean answer,” Comey said, according to an article in the Orlando Sentinel. He said the agency wouldn’t want to damage an innocent person’s livelihood, and would also not want to alert someone who is a “bad guy.”
“We have a legal obligation to protect personal information about people were investigating,” the FBI director said.
The Orlando meeting “exposed the lack of communications between the FBI with private employers,” Amitay said.
“Only the states have access to FBI checks; a private company does not,” Amitay said. “We want permission to say, ‘I’d like to know not only does my guy have a criminal record but is he on a terror watch list.’ You would think it would be more accessible but it’s not.”
“If a company is hiring a security officer who is going to work in an armed position, it should know if he’s on a terrorist watch-list or prohibited from owning a firearm.”
G4S said last year it “initiated substantive discussions with federal law enforcement” and was working with the national association on the issue.
“We support, at a minimum, a clearing house or intermediary approach to cooperating with law enforcement when current or potential employees are on a government watch list or under active investigation for potential terrorist activity,” Lewman-Garcia said.
Besides the FBI investigations, another tip-off to Mateen’s state of mind could have been his reports of alleged workplace harassment to his supervisor in late 2013. G4S said its legal and compliance department investigated the allegations.
“The investigation did not reveal any conduct by Mateen that disqualified him from continued employment, so we transferred him to another site,” said Lewman-Garcia.
She said G4S supervisors regularly interact with employees in the work environment “to ensure that they are performing responsibly and acting appropriately” and it encourages employees to report any concerns to the confidential Employee Concerns Hotline, which was in place when Mateen worked for the company. She said the company also receives also encourages and receives feedback from customers.
Patricia Schmitt, president of the Florida Association of Security Companies, said while the Orlando shooting was tragic, she thinks G4S got a bad rap.
“I think (the attention) was unfair from what I know of their hiring practices. They would have never put anybody knowingly in harm’s way,” she said. The fact that the shooter in Orlando was a security guard had nothing to do with G4S.
“It could have been any company,” she said.
“The division of licensing does a really good job of screening people,” Schmitt said. Unarmed security officers in Florida have to go through a 40-hour course and a criminal background check. To be an armed security guard, an individual needs 28 additional hours of training, part of which is on range to become proficient in handling a firearm.
But Schmitt supports the state adding a fingerprint card system so that if a candidate has been arrested, it is brought to the attention of state licensing.
“Then they decide if they’re going to suspend your license based on the outcome of your case,” she said. “Florida Association of Security Companies 100 percent supports that.”
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(This report was supplemented with previous Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel staff reports.)
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