Fill the post,’” Horton recalled her supervisor instructing her, in testimony that was unrelated to her central complaint. Kimberly Horton, a former operations manager in Louisiana, testified in a 2016 discrimination lawsuit she filed that G4S pushed her to quickly hire guards regardless of their qualifications. The company’s most infamous guard, Omar Mateen, thrust G4S into the American spotlight after he gunned down 49 people and wounded 53 more in 2016 at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. Reports showed G4S didn't consider Mateen dangerous despite warning signs, and Florida officials fined the company for hundreds of faulty psychological records, including Mateen’s.Īnd while Mayo and Mateen represent worst-case scenarios, reporters found examples around the country of guards slipping through the cracks at G4S.

Some employees who raised safety concerns were ignored, punished or threatened while G4S executives cast the most serious incidents as aberrations. Some went on to rape, assault, or shoot people – including while on reporting revealed a pattern of questionable hires often driven by low wages, high turnover and pressure to sign new contracts and bring on enough guards to meet the requirements. G4S has sometimes given power, authority and weapons to individuals who represent the very threat they are meant to guard against.ĭocuments show the company's American subsidiaries have hired or retained at least 300 employees with questionable records, including criminal convictions, allegations of violence and prior law enforcement careers that ended in disgrace. market with low-cost protection have repeatedly come at the expense of its own hiring and training standards. G4S guards drive prisoner transport vans and stand watch over sports fans, college students and grocery shoppers.īut the company’s efforts to penetrate the U.S. Its American operation, headquartered in Jupiter, Florida, has collected billions of dollars in private and public contracts to guard hospitals and banks, airports and gated communities.

marketplace in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks and, by its height in 2014, had grown into the third largest private employer in the world, behind only Walmart and Foxconn. That pitch has been effective. The London-based company entered the U.S. Then he pinned her from behind, slammed her head against the wall and ripped at her clothes. One night on the graveyard shift, Mayo watched a cleaning lady push her cart down a darkened hallway. They ignored him.Ī police report details what happened next. Mayo’s supervisor warned his bosses: Fire this guy before someone else gets hurt.

He adjusted security cameras to watch women enter the locker room. He groped a coworker’s breast. They claimed he stalked a woman around the building. Within months, G4S, the largest private security company in the world, gave him a job 20 minutes up the road guarding an office building and its workers.Ĭo-workers said he raised more red flags almost immediately. Philip Mayo cost himself a law enforcement career the day he helped shatter a prison inmate’s face and beat him until his back was broken.īut the fired Maryland corrections officer wasn’t out of uniform for long.

Basic journal with privacy guard