Juveniles DO Target Security Officers
Charlotte NC Oct 14 2017
Rick McCann
Founder-CEO
Private Officer International
On Thursday, Memphis TN police charged a thirteen-year-old boy with aggravated attempted robbery and assault with a weapon for the shooting of a security officer on Sunday evening.
The security officer, on duty and sitting in his vehicle was ambushed and shot when the teen covered his face with a t-shirt, opened the driver’s side door and shot him in attempt to steal his vehicle.
The security officer was able to fire back at the suspect as he fled. Now police say the teen was shot once in the foot.
Violence against security officers by juveniles is not something new and in fact, has been on the rise for at least five years. Fourteen security officers have been shot leaving nine dead, all at the hands of teens under the age of seventeen.
In six of those shootings, teens would later tell police that they just wanted the security officer’s handgun.
In May of this year, two Florida teenagers were arrested for the murder of an auto dealership security officer.
The teens have been identified as Derrick Warren, 15, and Edward Lopez, 15, police said.
Miami-Dade police officers discovered the victim inside his vehicle in a pool of blood with a gunshot wound to the head.
Police learned that the teens planned on stealing a vehicle, learned that the security officer was armed and then decided to overpower him, steal the gun and a car. In the end, they killed him for no other reason than to take his gun and steal a car for a joyride.
About a year ago in Greensboro North Carolina, a sixteen-year-old by the name of Nature Maurice Williams had spotted an armed security officer patrolling the local Food Lion Store. He hatched out a plan to stalk the security officer from nearby woods until the opportunity presented itself to swiftly move in, pounce on the unsuspecting security officer and take his gun. That plan left Anthony Charles Smith, 51, dead.
Smith was employed by Guard One Security and was working as an armed uniformed security guard at the time of the shooting. Williams was later arrested at his high school and charged with murder and robbery.
Maurice Roberts had just started his security career when a fifteen-year-old put two bullets into his chest, took his gun, his cellphone and wallet and disappeared into the night. Birmingham police tracked him down within a few days. The teen was going through a gang initiation and decided to take a life to prove his worth to the gang.
Michael Valentin was gunned down by sixteen-year-old Larry Brown in Tampa Fla. The night before Thanksgiving at an apartment complex. Brown, with a stolen handgun that he had taken from his mother earlier that night, quietly walked toward Valentin and shot him in the back of his head.
He later confessed that he just wanted the 9mm handgun that the security officer was carrying.
Valentin, said Hillsborough Assistant State Attorney Scott Harmon, “was being watched by a killer, a killer who saw something he wanted, and he killed to get it.”
Before coming to Florida where he took a job with Critical Intervention Services, Valentin was a police officer in New York City for nine years.
He began his new job with CIS a month before he was killed.
In March of 2016, a teenager attempted to rob an armed security officer with a pellet gun before being shot and killed by the officer.
The 15-year-old fired several rounds at the security officer and the security guard returned fire, striking the teen in the leg.
Lakeland Florida police say the gunshots rang out just before 5:00 a.m. Saturday at the Willow Glen Apartments on N. Gilmore Avenue. According to a Lakeland Police Department news release, the security officer, Shawn Plain, 19, was in a laundry room charging his phone. That’s when the suspect, identified as Stephen Brenor, 15, entered the room and shot Plain in the face with a pellet gun.
Plain told police there were other people outside the laundry room pointing guns in his direction. He returned fire, striking Brenor in the leg. Police say Plain went back to get his phone and call 911. He had a conversation with Brenor, who asked him to call an ambulance for him and apologized for shooting the security guard.
Brenor later died as a result of his injury. Police said the 15-year-old was a documented gang member. Plain was treated for pellet gun wounds to the face. Police did not charge him with any crime.
During the past five years, we have recorded 246 guns taken away from security officers on duty. Of those suspects identified as the culprit either by police or the media, thirty six percent were juveniles under the age of seventeen.
Due to state law, many remained anonymous unless charged as an adult with felonies.
We all know that any person regardless of age can be a threat to us and should be treated as such until otherwise confirmed differently. But, many of us are parents and it’s hard to think that a twelve or fourteen-year-old might really be there to kill us. The sad, documented and hard fact is, they really could be.
