Only 12 states require guards or their employers to report security guard-involved shootings to state regulators.
Shoshana Walter
Reporter
Shoshana Walter is a reporter for Reveal, covering criminal justice. She and reporter Amy Julia Harris exposed how courts across the country are sending defendants to rehabs that are little more than lucrative work camps for private industry. Their work was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in national reporting. It also won the Knight Award for Public Service, a Sigma Delta Chi Award for investigative reporting, and an Edward R. Murrow Award, and was a finalist for the Selden Ring, IRE and Livingston Awards. It led to numerous government investigations, two criminal probes and five federal class-action lawsuits alleging slavery, labor violations and fraud.
Walter's investigation on America's armed security guard industry revealed how armed guard licenses have been handed out to people with histories of violence, even people barred by courts from owning guns. Walter and reporter Ryan Gabrielson won the 2015 Livingston Award for Young Journalists for national reporting based on the series, which prompted new laws and an overhaul of California’s regulatory system. For her 2016 investigation about the plight of "trimmigrants," marijuana workers in California's Emerald Triangle, Walter embedded herself in illegal mountain grows and farms. There, she encountered an epidemic of sex abuse and human trafficking in the industry – and a criminal justice system focused more on the illegal drugs. The story prompted legislation, a criminal investigation and grass-roots efforts by the community, including the founding of a worker hotline and safe house.
Walter began her career as a police reporter for The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida, and previously covered violent crime and the politics of policing in Oakland, California, for The Bay Citizen. Her narrative nonfiction as a local reporter garnered a national Sigma Delta Chi Award and a Gold Medal for Public Service from the Florida Society of News Editors. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, she has been a Dart Center Ochberg fellow for journalism and trauma at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim fellow in criminal justice journalism. She is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Guns, Hired Guns
Shootings by security guards rarely reported, let alone investigated
Regulators repeatedly ignore or fail to investigate guard-related shootings, leaving inadequately trained, traumatized or potentially dangerous guards on the job.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Guns, Hired Guns
America’s gun-toting guards armed with poor training, little oversight
Across the U.S., a haphazard system of lax laws, minimal oversight and almost no accountability puts guns in the hands of security guards who endanger
Posted inGuns, Hired Guns
Interactive: Guards with guns
See if your state requires firearms training, mental health exams and background checks for armed security guards.
Posted inGuns, Hired Guns
Armed & Dangerous: The illustrated story
This is the story of Kijuan Byrd – he was shot to death by a private security guard with a history of substance abuse, who later was diagnosed with psychological disorders.
Posted inUncategorized
FBI bank robbery data shows armed guards increase risk of violence
CIR’s study of the FBI data is among the first to measure how arming civilian guards affects public safety in the United States.
Posted inUncategorized
Why legislative efforts to improve security guard training keep failing
Lobbying by the security industry and big businesses has derailed attempts to require rigorous training standards for armed guards across the country.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Guns, Hired Guns, Law Enforcement
Guard industry welcomes ex-law enforcement officers despite shady pasts
CIR has identified dozens of armed guards who previously had been fired from or left law enforcement after being accused of offenses such as civil rights violations, excessive force and corruption.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Guns, Hired Guns
Florida clubgoer’s death shows weak links in security guard licensing
Regulators have approved licenses for guards without conducting mental health evaluations or checking for evidence of substance abuse.
Posted inCriminal Justice, Law Enforcement
How a federal Ecstasy sting ended the party for Mac Dre’s rap label, Thizz
Dion “Freeky D” Daniels (left) greets Simon Curtis “Kilo Curt” Nelson, who still produces music under the Thizz label. A few Thizz rappers and former friends from their neighborhood in Vallejo, Calif., were swept up in a federal drug bust last year. “To come to 2012 and be labeled a drug label, it’s a bad […]