Last month, Allied Universal, a private security contractor, settled a lawsuit brought by Scott Amaral, who alleged that while he was working as a nurse at Rhode Island Hospital, nearby Allied Universal security staff failed to intervene as he suffered “blows to his head, neck and chest” from a psychiatric patient, which eventually led to cardiac arrest. Amaral’s lawyer did not provide details on the settlement due to a non-disclosure agreement, but in a statement to The Herald, he said that these types of cases usually have to do with a “systematic deficit by the employer who fails to hire the right people, fails to supervise them properly and lo and behold, the mistakes occur.”
Yet Brown continues to employ this same company to patrol our campus. Following the tragic Dec. 13 mass shooting, Brown hurried to address numerous concerns surrounding campus security. One significant change was deploying additional guards from Allied Universal and USENTRA Security Services. In January, the editorial page board wrote that the University should “prioritize hiring public safety officers, who understand and are a part of the Brown community, over private contractors.”
While the University has begun to scale back its use of these private security forces, they still remain at specific posts around campus. Clements described the shift as “right-sizing” the use of contracted security on campus. We applaud the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Management’s efforts to reduce our reliance on private security companies, but, in light of their recent failure at the RIH and other quality complaints they have received, the University should cease to use these private contractors altogether. Considering the poor service records, unfortunate worker treatment and overall ineffectiveness of private security forces in protecting college campuses, it is time to send these security guards home.
According to a 2023 TIME article, Allied Universal’s profit-centric mentality and lack of public accountability have allowed the company to “deploy underpaid and under-trained guards in cities across America, where they put themselves and the general public at risk.” Standard guards are typically only paid just above minimum wage. This fits into a pattern identified by an Allied Universal Guard on Penn’s campus. He stated that the company’s management is “worried about how many contracts they get, not about hiring good, quality people.” That same guard said that he had not received de-escalation or self-defense training from his employer.
In 2020, research from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School looked into the effectiveness of unarmed observe-and-report security guards. Their findings led them to conclude that the minimal benefits of these services were “short-lived at best,” likely because criminals would eventually learn the sad fact that “security guards could not do anything more than generic citizens always could do,” such as reporting the crime to the police.
Brown has personally felt the pains of ineffective security. Following the tragic events of last December, Derek Lisi, a custodian who works at Brown, told The Herald that he had reported a man believed to be the shooter weeks before Dec. 13. Lisi recalled reporting the suspicious man to a staff member of Event Staff Services — another private company that the University contracts for events. Lisi had expected the ESS worker to at least check the suspicious person for a Brown ID, but, allegedly, no such action was taken. In a statement to The Herald, the president of ESS stated that their role is “strictly to assist with on campus events … to check IDs, search bags and ensure a room doesn’t go over capacity.” He also stated that “the individual was told to provide that information to Brown Police” — a claim that Lisi has denied. Regardless of the specifics of that exchange, that a member of Brown University staff specifically pointed out a suspicious and ultimately dangerous person to an external contractor agent and it did not lead to any action being taken to secure our campus is troubling at the very least — but it is not out of the ordinary.
Allied Universal claims that their “trained specialists bring human brains to the table,” “calm down angry fights” and “call the cops fast.” But evidently, “trained specialists” sounds like an overstatement. On Dec. 13, police were alerted and began to arrive at Barus and Holley almost immediately. In a world where every student on Brown’s campus carries a phone capable of alerting the DPSEM or dialing 911, paying private security to observe and report is little more than burning money just for the feigning of improved security. Considering the track record of private security companies in protecting communities, including Brown, it is clear that the way to ensure student safety is to invest in properly trained and armed DPSEM officers, who are selected and employed by the University itself.
Through their actions to scale back in October, Brown seems to have recognized that private security presence is not a long-term solution for our campus. The DPSEM currently faces around 12 officer vacancies. That number of vacancies has remained approximately the same since last March. Clements defended the lengthy hiring process in an interview: “It takes a long time to onboard a police officer.” But as the University continues to work toward improving surveillance and filling these gaps in our DPSEM system, maintaining a force of external private security on campus is not keeping us safer. As Clements aptly puts it, “It’s not measured by the shared numbers of security standing on the corner, but by the quality, the readiness and the integration.”
Allied Universal and security forces like it have demonstrated time and time again an utter lack of both quality and readiness — it’s time the University replaces them with trained police officers.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board, and its views are separate from those of The Herald’s newsroom and the 136th Editorial Board, which leads the paper. A majority of the editorial page board voted in favor of this piece. Please send responses to this editorial to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
