Two deaths, just months apart: private security guards hired by public agencies face more scrutiny
California May 17 2021
The private company that provides guards security guards to the Metropolitan Transit System in San Diego, including the armed guard who helped hold down a handcuffed Angel Zapata Hernandez in a fatal encounter in October 2019, is being sued in Sacramento federal court for a similar death.
That death, where a trio of guards handcuffed and restrained Mario Matthews inside Golden 1 Arena, occurred in July 2019, less than four months before Zapata Hernandez died on an MTS platform near the Santa Fe Depot.
In both cases, the men were held down for extended period by security guards employed by Allied Universal — nine minutes in San Diego, some 20 minutes in Sacramento. And both Matthews and Zapata Hernandez had a guard kneeling on their necks as they lay handcuffed and face down — Matthews for four minutes, Zapata Hernandez for six minutes.
The two fatal incidents have put a spotlight on the giant private security guard industry in California, where more than 293,000 security guard licenses have been issued by the the state agency overseeing the industry, the Bureau of Security and Investigative Services.
State laws require as little as 32 hours of training to get the license and eight hours a year afterward, and there is no specific training on the dangers of restraints and certain holds. Private companies that employ guards augment that training with their own programs, but it is far less than what peace officers get.
“As a ‘training requirement,’ it does not cover anything involving the use of force,” said Stewart Katz, a Sacramento lawyer who is representing the Matthews family in a federal lawsuit over his death.
Now, spurred by Matthews’ death, a bill pending in the state Legislature would require security guards to undergo use-of-force training, including use of deadly force and de-escalation techniques, starting in 2023.
“They come in contact with the public more so than even some of the men and women who are sworn peace officers,” said Assembly member Chris Holden, a Democrat who represents the north San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles County and is carrying the bill.
“A lot of folks out there are licensed to be private security guards but have absolutely no training as it relates to use of force, or training on how to interact with people who may have mental health issues.”
MTS records of the San Diego incident obtained through a Public Records Act request, identify the officers as as Code Compliance Officer Ryan Berg and security guard Jorge Lopez. Both were licensed by the state. Lopez worked for Allied Universal, which has been paid close to $50 million under a contract with MTS since 2016 to provide security on the trolley lines.
That contract was set to expire next month — but it was extended to the end of the year because the coronavirus pandemic delayed the bidding process for another contract.
Allied’s years-long relationship with MTS could be drawing to a close.
On Friday, the agency announced it had chosen Inter-Con Security as the winning bidder for the next contract. That decision still has to be approved by the full board at a meeting on June 17.
Allied put in a proposal for this newest contract, said MTS chief executive Sharon Cooney, but Inter-Con’s proposal fit with the changes MTS is making to its security operation. In the wake of the Zapata Hernandez death MTS has revamped its use-of-force policy, banned use of the carotid restraint and pressing a knee on someone’s neck, throat or head, and increased training for security workers.
Cooney said Zapata Hernandez’s death was not a factor in the decision to select Inter-Con.
Allied Universal is based in Santa Ana and Pennsylvania, and bills itself as the world’s leading global security company, operating in some 85 countries. The company had $8.5 billion in revenues in the U.S. in 2019 and employed more than 250,00 people.
The company did not respond to two requests this week for comment on the Zapata Hernandez and Matthews deaths. Neither Berg nor Lopez, both of whom no longer work at MTS, could be located for comment.
Zapata Hernandez, who suffered from schizophrenia and took medication to control it, died after a struggle with Berg and Lopez the evening of Oct. 25, 2019. He had been spotted wandering on the train tracks, and after Berg stopped to speak with him, he ran away. MTS security videos and body worn cameras of Berg and Lopez captured what happened next.
The two caught him on a train platform near the Santa Fe Depot, handcuffed him and eventually forced him to the ground to better control him.
While they waited for San Diego police to arrive, Lopez and Berg held him face down on the platform, with Berg at one point jamming a knee into Zapata Hernandez’s neck. When police officers arrived one instructed Berg and Lopez to keep Zapata Hernandez on the ground for another minute, when they checked and noticed he was not breathing and had a faint pulse.
The county Medical Examiner ruled the death was a homicide caused by cardiopulmonary arrest while in a prone restraint. After months of investigation by San Diego police, the District Attorney’s Office concluded no charges would be filed, in large part because there was not enough evidence to show the restraint and knee to the neck were direct causes of the death.
In April the Hernandez family settled a claim against MTS for $5.5 million. Videos of the incident — which had been kept from the public for months, partly at the request of the family — were released, showing in graphic detail the struggle and death.
The videos were publicized the day that the jury deliberations began in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who was ultimately convicted of murdering George Floyd in a similar knee-on-neck encounter seven months after Zapata Hernandez’s death.
State regulations require that security companies file a report to the state Bureau of Security and Investigative Services any time they fire a weapon or have a “physical alteration with a member of the public while on duty.”
It is unknown if such a report was made in the wake of the Zapata Hernandez death. A bureau spokeswoman said the information on those notices and investigations, as well as any complaints, are exempt from disclosure under the state Public Records Act.
But available records show that the company did not make that required report in the Matthews death in Sacramento. Those records show Allied Universal was cited on Dec. 30, 2019 for failing to report the incident. The company was fined $2,500.
The 125-pound Matthews had slipped into the Sacramento arena via an open side door early on July 2. Shirtless, he made his way to the court, where security videos show he ran around, at times pretending to dribble and shoot a basketball. Eventually two Allied guards chased him and tackled him in an arena hallway.
They restrained him, along with a third Allied guard, until police arrived. A still combative Matthews had his legs strapped together and drawn up behind his back in a hogtie-style known as “maximum restraints,” then stopped breathing, according to a report on the incident from the Sacramento County district attorney.
He was taken to a hospital but did not recover and was taken off life support two days later. The coroner ruled he died when oxygen was cut off to his brain, and that he also had “acute methamphetamine intoxication in association with physical restraint and excited state.”
Records show Allied Universal has been cited and fined five times since 2014 for not making required reports to the bureau.
The MTS incident report filed by Berg downplays the protracted struggle and does not say he placed his knee on Zapata Hernandez’s neck. He wrote that after they forced a combative Zapata Hernandez to the ground, “I held Zapata Hernandez by the upper shoulder blades and Officer Lopez had his midsection and he (sic) legs,” he wrote.
The video of the incident shows Berg at first holding Zapata Hernandez down by the shoulders then moving his knee to the neck area.
Other reports on the incident also did not mention the knee on the neck. A news release from San Diego police a day later said Hernandez was “taken to the ground,” and that witnesses told officers they did not see any use of force other than Berg and Lopez trying to hold him down. The medical examiner’s report also says the two officers “restrained” Zapata Hernandez.
In the months after the death no information about the event came out. MTS lawyers withheld the video while the case was under investigation by police and the district attorney, according to emails. The police investigation took nine months, records show, and it was not until June 22 that prosecutors received the report.
Several weeks later District Attorney Summer Stephan declined to bring any charges in the case. Under recent state laws, previously confidential reports investigating the use of force by peace officers can now be made public.
But MTS security workers are not “peace officers” as defined by the law, and the records are not available. MTS declined the Union-Tribune’s request for its copy of the report, saying it was not authorized to release it under the terms of a non-disclosure agreement it signed with the District Attorney’s Office.
MTS continued to withhold the video from the public while it worked to settle a civil claim with Zapata Hernandez’s family. That was largely at the request of the family, which wanted the video kept confidential until the mediation was over, and MTS abided by that request, the records show.
The company has also been the subject of lawsuits in state and federal court, which is not unexpected for a nationwide company that employs a quarter-million people. Many of those lawsuits have alleged excessive force by workers.
Just two days after the Zapata Hernandez death, a man who said he was assaulted by MTS and Allied officers in February 2018 settled a federal lawsuit for $150,000, court records show. The man, Jesse Matheny, alleged he was sitting outside a 7-Eleven next to an unidentified trolley stop when officers told him he had to move off of MTS property. When he responded he was on private property belonging to 7-Eleven and did not have to move, the security officers tackled him, left him handcuffed for 14 minutes, then cited him.
The suit said Matheny he hit the ground with such force both bones in his left wrist were shattered, and a piece of a metal necklace he was wearing stuck in his forehead.
Late last year officials with the transit system in Denver settled a lawsuit filed by Raverro Stinnett, a Black artist who was brutally beaten by Allied Universal security guards at a bus depot. He was waiting for a bus when a guard told him to go into a bathroom, followed him in and punched him into unconsciousness. Stinnett suffered permanent brain damage, which ended his budding art career.
Three of the guards were prosecuted, with one receiving a four-month sentence and the others probation. But the case set off a public push to have local governments terminate contracts with the company. The Denver City Council in October voted down a $25 million contract with the company to patrol government buildings. But the transit agency, under similar pressure, declined to terminate its contract with Allied.
It is unclear what impact if any the Zapata Hernandez death will have on Allied’s relationship with MTS. The current five-year contract began in 2016, totaling $39 million, agency records show.
It has been amended seven times since, most recently in January for a $5.3 million extension to the end of the year.
Inter-Con is a Pasadena-based company that is smaller than Allied, with about 35,000 employees. The winning bid is a five-year contract that would pay $66 million.
