Still on probation for two separate weapon and cocaine possession convictions in 1990, John Padilla, 20, was hired last July by the HSC Security company as a guard at Carle Place High School on New York's Long Island. Now he is accused of firing 16 shots from a 9-mm gun, killing two young men and critically wounding three others as they sat in a parked Cadillac outside the school. HSC, which has since shut its operations, was required by law to submit Padilla's fingerprints to the state within 24 hours. Instead, the company waited more than seven weeks. According to Padilla's parents, their son is "mentally unstable."
Members of his family say Michael Huston, 41, had been mentally disabled since the Vietnam War, which may explain why he blames "another person inside" him for setting a 1990 blaze that caused $25 million in damage to movie sets and property at Hollywood's Universal Studios. In January, Huston admitted in a Los Angeles courtroom that he had tossed a cigarette lighter into a trash can full of papers at Universal, then reported the fire to a superior, apparently hoping to earn praise. Wearing the ubiquitous uniform of Burns International Security Services, the nation's largest, Huston had been "guarding" the studio barely a month.
Marita Juse, 48, of Burbank, Calif., will be sentenced later this month for embezzling more than $1 million from Pinkerton's, the oldest and second largest U.S. security firm. A fugitive on tax-fraud charges, Juse used an alias when Pinkerton's accounting division hired her. Obtaining computer codes, she made wire transfers of cash from the company's bank account. Juse faces up to 30 years in prison. Meanwhile, Pinkerton's, the company that once stalked Jesse James, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is pitching a job- applicant screening service to its clients, which include half the Fortune 500.
For companies that rely on the $15 billion security industry, "problems" like Padilla, Huston and Juse are all too common. While the majority of the estimated 1.1 million security guards in America do honest and capable work, a TIME investigation indicates that the industry, which has grown spectacularly in the past two decades, has become a virtual dumping ground for the unstable, the dishonest and the violent. Many use drugs or have criminal records. Many are hired off the street, given uniforms and assigned to posts within a day. The industry is fragmented, intensely competitive and unwilling to police itself adequately, yet it is governed by weak laws that are often ignored. Add mismanagement and inadequate pay to the mix, and crime thrives. "Our industry needs leadership," says Robert McCrie, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. "There's a steady stream of horror stories."
In 1971 a Rand Corp. report described the average security guard as an aging white male who was underscreened, undertrained, undersupervised, underpaid and underregulated. The only significant change in that profile, according to Hallcrest Systems of McLean, Va., which closely monitors the industry, is that today's private guard is more likely to be much younger and black or Hispanic.