Violent start of new year for private security
CHARLOTTE NC
Jan 14 2018
It seems that the violence against private security that we saw in 2017 has seamlessly entered into the new year and even picked up its pace in the first days of 2018.
Just twelve days into the new year and private security officers have been engaged in forty-seven armed confrontations resulting in one security officer death, and thirteen persons shot to death by security personnel and six others shot but who survived.
On the first day of the year, a security officer working at a Louisville Denny’s restaurant fired a fatal shot at a man who had assaulted him while being asked to leave the premises.
On the same day and almost at the same exact time in Columbia Missouri, a security officer on duty at a Waffle House responded to a shooting inside the restaurant and when the crowd pressed in toward the security officer making him fear for his life, he fired a random gunshot killing an innocent man.
Also on the same day, Florida security officers working at a club in Hillsborough County where a teen party was being held, shot and killed a fifteen-year-old girl and a twenty-five-year-old man who security officers say were shooting at them. The sheriff’s office stated that they are still investigating that shooting.
Just yesterday at a cancer hospital in St Louis Missouri, an armed patient holding two knives, confronted a security officer in a hallway of the facility and was shot to death by the security officer.
A security officer also fought off an attacker trying to kidnap her in a Baltimore parking garage and an on -duty security officer at a Virginia shopping center was stabbed.
Eleven other security officers have been shot in the new year and three have been stabbed. All of whom were on duty.
Gun violence and violent crime in the US is steadily on the rise and it’s no surprise that it frequently spills over to the businesses, schools and churches where private security officers have been hired to protect life and property.
2017 ended with more than one hundred security officers killed on duty and more than thirty-three thousand others assaulted or injured.
Safety needs to be priority one in our industry. It’s up to us to make sure that our employees and co-workers all go home safe at the end of their shift.
