A Mysterious Link Explored
Why are there no paralegals moonlighting as grim reapers, no librarians driven to carnage by inquiries about Dan Brown? Security fields a disproportionate number of the empathy challenged. Practitioners of this noble calling succumb to dark nights of the soul, wondering if the property they defend requires blood to sustain its existence. Why is it always the loners? What happens in the cold vacuum of solitude, time spent with the ultimate stranger? Consider ten instances of this cruel occupational hazard and wonder why “going rent-a-cop” never joined the lexicon.
“I hate guards who fall asleep on the job and don’t perform their duty”
With an honor code familiar to samurai and superheroes, Bangkok guard Wittaya Jaikhan snuck away from his post to hunt slumbering comrades, killing seven, becoming the Watcher of Watchmen, Guardian of Guards, Slayer of Sleepers. Our motives are never as pure as we believe. He also took their chocolate and phones. We are not justified in assuming that madness is the best explanation. The West has had no understanding of Honor since WWI. Historical myopia hides Jaikhan’s perspective from us. By bringing shame to his vocation, the snoozing guards brought dishonor to him. You may be okay with that. Don’t speak for others.
Dennis Lynn Rader, the BTK killer, worked for ADT
The acronyms will give you PTSD. He was as poor at coining them as his company is at informing guards of alarms. Was the B necessary? This is minutia, not substantive information. We assume some means of incapacitation was used, that his victims did not transcend their hard-wired response to pain on his behalf. That leaves us with TK, which is little better than Chokey or Hurty. (It’s not clear he needed the K either, since we can see the final result.) This narcissistic diva distracted attention from the QWERTY killer, UTI killer, and FDDBBFTBH killer, who struggle in vain for their fifteen minutes.
Corporal Urinalysis
A grain of sand irritates an oyster to create a pearl. With humans all bets are off. Andrew Urdiales killed eight women and counting. In the Navy they called him Corporal Urinalysis and wouldn’t follow his orders. They called him Corporal Urinalysis. He had facial tics and less than awful social skills. If you believe all God’s creatures have a purpose you’ve got your work cut out for you. Most of these men were slated to be recipients of ridicule and conduits of fury. Did you ever make a conscious decision not to become a serial killer? Those philosophical head-trips about free will have obscenely physical instantiations. If you don’t choose your thoughts you don’t choose anything. You don’t choose your thoughts. Were Uriales’ security shifts a fortress of solitude or a hall of mirrors where Corporal Urinalysis leered from every direction? How long before you’d smash the mirror?
Tiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha killed thirty-nine people to treat his anxiety
Proceed with caution when judging a man poisoned by cortisol and deprived of its antidote. This could have been prevented by a script for Klonopin: vitamin of Stoics, Viagra for stiff upper lips, pink slip for Mr. Gives a Shit, spinach for nervous guards. Not incidentally, the wicked stereotype of alcoholic guards comes from self-medication for a constant state of fight or flight.
Ted Bundy
He blamed his urges on pornography. It’s always hidden beneath the Soldier of Fortune, next to the handcuffs you aren’t supposed to use, atop the SECURITY MANUEL, across from the half-eaten bag of Fritos no one has touched for three years but you hope the new guard does just to see if he survives. Like Bundy, security guard Neal Falls had victims who all looked alike. They say routine is the anchor of life.
Steven Alexander Hobbs, the large red-headed guard
What vicarious atonement did the fifteen prostitutes represent? Were they sacrificed as substitutes for cubicle-dwelling women who treated him with disdain, like his job was a Wiffle job, his life a Civil War reenactment? Ginger-themed taunts do not recede on the horizon of Time, where it’s always third grade. The indignities guards endure come with compounding interest. The harder you try to catch up the further you fall behind.
Kenneth Bianchi, Simon to Angela Buono’s Garfunkel
The Hillside Stranglers toured California in 1977 with a van that may as well have had FREE CANDY painted on the side. Bianchi attained the Holy Grail of security: an in-house position at a jewelry store, free from polyester uniforms and reliefs who don’t show and companies who make $20 an hour while paying you nothing. When he gave jewelry to girlfriends he lost paradise and settled for the Whatcom Security Agency. The mysterious springs of the heart are unwound by less. Some said he had company in the attic. Multiple Personality Disorder was the flavor of the day. Here’s a secret. All guards do. Their exquisitely honed instincts become distinct and incompatible like Greek gods. The most ruthless prevails. Shhhhhhhhh.
They don’t sport horns or a scarlet SK
Rodney Alcala was “the devil. He’s very personable, good-looking. It’s easy to get in with this guy. He likes women with good shapes. He convinces them to let him take their photos.” A serial killer’s success is a function of camouflage. Remember that. Putting victims at ease by appearing to be something else is a screwdriver in Nature’s toolkit, like the hungry fish that looks like a rock. Primates do it too. A high IQ sans moral radar acted like a turbocharger for Alcala. His victim count remains unknown. And he brought a popular hobby among guards into disrepute. Don’t take your Nikons to work anymore.
Britain’s worst serial killer may have been a guard
And Scottish. Jack the Stripper killed a parliament of prostitutes. His suicide note said he was “unable to take the strain any longer.” A recent study may shed light on his sorrows. “They found that shift work was associated with impaired cognition, and the impairment was worse in those who had done it for longer.” It ages the brain. Remember your grandfather’s obscene tirades when he lost his dentures? Imagine that frame of mind transplanted into a young man. Don’t judge him until you’ve slouched a mile on third-shift.
“It’s not the news that any shift worker wants to hear. Not only is working irregular hours bad for your social life and likely your health, but it has a chronic effect on your ability to think, a new study has found.”
Misfortune comes in threes
A lady guard broke Joseph Ferguson’s heart. Then his rent-a-cop slavemaster fired him while he grieved. Then he didn’t pace himself and became consigned to the footnotes as a lowly spree killer. Where would we be without profilers and their arcane taxonomy, without men who keep a straight face as they inform us the profile is a white male in his twenties, as if we would have assumed an elderly Asian woman was to blame.
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What crimson thread links them? Does an aptitude for solitude predestine one to infamy? Perhaps silent shifts are petri dishes where life’s indignities mutate and grow. (Theories about postal workers suffering from “golden handcuffs” are equally plausible.) Unarmed security is the most dangerous job in the United States. The authority it gives is not proportionate to its perils. The authority is an illusion. A guard has no more legal power than a common citizen. They’re sitting ducks and accountable for everything that occurs on their watch, the worst of both worlds. What are the long term effects of cognitive dissonance?
“The final total for workplace homicides in the United States, from 1990 to 1999, stood at 508 security guards slain in the line of duty and 495 police officers, and detectives, slain in the line of duty. In just one decade private security guards had surpassed even law enforcement officers in the rate of workplace homicide – an ominous occupational indicator for all those in working in the private security field. In the year 2000, the dangerous trend in violence would continue with another 46 security officers murdered in the line of duty. The same year witnessed an occupational homicide rate for public police officers and detectives of 35 killed by criminal assault or ambush.”
To begin a campaign of social justice for guards, to stop the killing, begin by addressing them as Safety Technicians.
Incoming, before the final sentence could be typed: Khalil Wheeler-Weaver, Guardian of Grocery.
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“Driving, page-turning force” Publishers Weekly
Spy by night, blogger by day, Zelda Alpizar becomes infected by a contagion known to civilians as guilt, forcing her to choose between following orders or intervening to save two watchmen. Their trance-like lethargy makes them the ideal storage drives for a detonation code. Decrypting it could have lethal side-effects. Though the most important thing Zelda will ever find, the boundary between good and evil is of little value in a place where the only legend reads Here There Be Monsters.
Security guards, harbingers of dawn, are they not warriors? Beneath the polyester Travis and Alex consist of flesh and blood. A predator stalks them, more implacable than skateboarders. Putting your tax dollars to work, the NSA discovers that human storage devices offer greater security than digital ones. Dead drives tell no tales. Like all their secrets it’s soon available to the highest bidder. When Zelda infiltrates a secret society lending this service to terrorists, she sees how the private sector can be almost as wicked and incompetent as the government.
They should have chosen a more secure password. “Mary Weatherworth” is also an adult actress beloved by security guards, and an urban legend reputed to appear in mirrors when summoned thrice. Busy lady. This ambiguity entwines discrepant parties in strange ways. Connected to them all by one degree of separation, the sausage link in a karmic chain, Maestoso the Dachshund waddles across this remorseless battlefield, observing the chaos, perhaps resolving it. Avoid eye contact. You don’t want him inside your head.
Petronius Jablonski 