The president of a private security firm at the center of a federal civil-rights lawsuit contends that he has ''nothing to hide'' as lawyers and state regulators begin combing through the firm's hiring practices and patrol activities.
A security guard for Brentwood Patrol was arrested last year after he was charged with rape and kidnapping. Metro police say that in August 2002, Loren Janosky flashed his green lights at a motorist, pulled her over, and after purportedly arresting her on DUI charges, took her to a Forest Hills swim club where he raped her. His jury trial is scheduled for November.
The victim has since sued the city of Forest Hills for contracting with Brentwood Patrol to be its ''auxiliary police'' department.
The business was called Brentwood Security Services when it originally signed the contract with Forest Hills. It is now called Brentwood Patrol.
The plaintiff, identified only as Jane Doe, charges that the arrangement between the city and the patrol company violated her constitutional rights and that the city was negligent in failing to ensure that the security guards were properly vetted and trained. It also contends that the city does not have the authority to designate an ''auxiliary police'' force, especially because the Metro Police Department handles the city's law-enforcement duties.
City officials are not commenting on the suit on their attorneys' advice. The city has yet to respond in court to the suit, filed last month, but it expects to do so by mid-September, said its attorney William Bates.
Brentwood Patrol's president, Tommy Thompson, responded yesterday for the first time to the suit's allegations that his firm has employed certain guards who had criminal records. The suit contends that a routine check of legal documents would have turned up several Brentwood Patrol employees who after leaving the company turned out to be violent criminals.
Jane Doe's lawsuit refers to ''those employees' propensity for violence and predatory acts,'' suggesting that Forest Hills should have seen those legal records as red flags.
Thompson said there is little he can do to predict what one-time employees may go on to do in the future. As for their pasts, there are background checks.
By law, Thompson said, the state performs the criminal background checks through the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. If those checks come back clean and the Department of Commerce and Insurance issues a guard a license, he must assume that they have been cleared by the state — and in the case of armed-guard applicants, by the FBI, he said.
''I am at the mercy of the state of Tennessee when you come to work for me. I don't know whether you've got a record or not because it's privileged information as far as a background check. It's limited what an individual company can obtain on your background or your criminal record,'' Thompson said.
One past employee listed in the suit, Joseph Lee Bernell Bryant, had worked for Brentwood Patrol in 1993-94. After that, he worked for another security company. While employed at Integrity Security, he was charged with raping a colleague and was later convicted. Before his employment at Brentwood Patrol, court records show, he had amassed a lengthy criminal record in the 1980s.
''Nobody knew he had a record,'' Thompson said
''He was licensed,'' confirmed Donna Hancock, executive director of the state board that oversees the private-security industry.
But since a law change in the mid-1990s, Hancock said, the state does a more thorough job of checking applicants' backgrounds.
''I can tell you unequivocally that if that person had an application processed through this office and we've done a background check on them, they are scrutinized from top to bottom, every arrest they have ever had,'' Hancock said.
That held true for Janosky, the rape defendant, when he applied for his state license, she said.
Email This Page!