Security training or lack of it in the state of Mississippi a serious problem!

I touched on this subject about six months ago which was the lack of regulations regarding security companies in the state of Mississippi and required training for security officers. I feel after things I have seen in the last few months I need to touch base on this subject again with a little bit more detail because I feel that the only way the politicians will act is if the public demands them it. First of all of the statements I am about to make I know personally to be fact I'm just not going to name names of either the companies nor the individual security office but I will say that these companies are established security companies that have been in business for years. I have to say since the Clinton gun range has went out of business I have been doing quite a bit more gun range certifications for security officers and I hope in the future I do even more that's why I added a second range. In the process of certifying security officers I noticed a disturbing trend that a lot of these officers not only do not know the basic gun stands but do not know how to clean their own gun. I think it's a shame when security companies have officers working for them and some of these officers have been with them for years without ever qualifying with their gun that they carry with them on the job. To make matters worse I would have to say 75% of officers that come through my gun range their gun after the first firing locks up on them to where they have to manually chamber each bullet after firing. Some of these guns have locked up completely and what makes it worst is they were not just semiautomatics but revolvers too. Of course I have yet to have any security officers know what to do if someone goes for their service gun while it is in their holster and recently I had a security officer who is currently working for a security company come to me for a job and when I asked him to see his security gun permit he gave me his blue temporary card that he received in 2008. To those of you that do not know anything about security gun permits, when you go to the Mississippi Highway Patrol they issue you a temporary six-month permit so you can go to work while they check out your background. After six months if you pass the background check they will send you your regular security gun permit with your picture on it in the mail to you if you pass. What I think is unbelievable that this officer is working from year 2008 till now for that security company illegally and neither the Mississippi Highway Patrol nor his company has put a stop to him working on a temporary permit that had been expired for 5 years.

I thought after a year ago when a security officer working at the Pine Grove Apartments in Jackson Mississippi shot an unarmed young man in the back who had his hands up in the air something would have be done in the legislation about the proper training of security officers but nothing never happened. That was probably because the young man was just an average person if he would have been a politicians relative I guarantee you they would have done something about this problem. The other issue I would like to touch on is the ease in which a person can start up a security company, all he has to do is go pay $20 to get his business license he does not have to have a background check nor show any proof of insurance. I personally knew a man a few years ago who started up a security company to which he was doing unarmed security, so he did not have to get a security gun permit which if he did he would not have passed because he was a sex offender and his partner had not just long-ago got out of Whitfield. How would you like this man's company working for you and you know he doesn't do any background checks on his employees probably, in fact I'm willing to bet most of the security companies in Mississippi don't do any background checks on all. I remember one time I worked for Security Company that sent a security officer to work an armed post and issued him a hand gun and he was only 20 years old. Just in case any of you out there do not know you have to be 21 in the state of Mississippi to have a security gun permit. I will have to say that this is another category that the state of Mississippi falls behind the rest of the country in any and needs to catch up before more bad things happen. I do not know of any state out there that has more relaxed security regulations and enforcement of what few requirements they do have then the state of Mississippi. The only requirement that the state has is if you do armed security you must have a security gun permit to which I've never heard of the Highway Patrol going into any of the security companies and checking to see if their security officers have their gun permits nor seeing if they've had any gun training. That is the last thing I'm going to touch on when you go to the Highway Patrol and asked them what type minimum gun training do you require their answer is whatever your company requires. If you ask me that is a very stupid answer because if you do not have minimum standards for companies to go by they will do what they want which is a little of nothing. Of course there's always the legal system if the security officer does something wrong you can always hire a lawyer to sue the company, but if it happens to be like a company that I know of that works just down the street from one of my posts you would not get any thing because he has no insurance and does not own anything. Well I believe at this time of giving plenty of information to digest but believe it or not I could go on and write many more pages on the subject but at this time I will not. I do hope that the information I have given will be enough to stir up the general public into putting pressure on the politicians to come up with some regulations not only to protect security officers by giving much-needed  training that they do not have but also make it safer for the general public. Which at this time crime rate growing at such an alarming rate in the city of Jackson and spilling into the outlying cities like it is the last thing we need is poorly trained and poorly equipped security office.