It was in March. I was working as an armed security officer in Austin, TX at an extremely bad-lit, dangerous apartment complex where Palo Mayombe practitioners, ex-convicts convicted of violent crimes, convicted child molesters, violent gang members, drug addicts and dealers, and prostitutes, among others, are rumored to be living.
The apartment complex is also located on South Congress Avenue, same as the now-defunct "security" company. This company had the general reputation locally as a "bottom feeder" which means they would take the security accounts that nobody else wanted and they would hire the rejects, the psychos, the burn-outs and the desparate. I was in the latter category since what had happened to me at yet another creepy Austin security contractor and I was unable to find a better job and had no money to retrain for another career. I will have to go NOW, though!
I was the officer on duty that night when I heard the heart-rendering, terrified screams and weeping and saw the lady with her baby running in one of the driveways in the back, worst-lit part of the complex and behind her and closing fast was a man with what appeared to be a very large bolo knife. I had the feeling that he was going to harm the lady and her baby. The race of the people is irrelevelant because I am sworn to protect and serve ALL people. They were speaking a dialect of Spanish which was totally different from the Mexican Spanish that we speak here.
I ordered the man to leave and indicated that if he ran at me with the knife, I would shoot him in self-defense and if he tried to harm the woman and the baby with the knife, I would take him down also. He turned and ran away and I was trying to get a direction of travel so I could call the police and they could handle him, unfortuntely, it was not well-lit and I did not see the big quart beer bottle on the ground half-hidden by newspapers and I fell down a flight of cement stairs and landed on both of my knees on the tarmac. My right knee got the very worst of it.
After I recovered enough to realize I was hurt bad, I managed to crawl to the pay phone and report it to the security company's office. All I got was an answering machine. I left a message. There was a supervisor on duty but I have NO idea where she or he was. I managed to crawl in my car and get home and then I passed out. We had NO hospitalization insurance and I thought that they would get back with me within the time mandated by OSHA.
Turns out that they CONVENIENTLY or ACCIDENTALLY erased my message from the tape recorder. Nobody had come to check on me to see if I was OK either. I put a knee brace on the knee that was injured worst and tried to work on but it hurt too bad. I didn't have any money of my own to go to an emergency room (On $8.00/hr. How much ER treatment can you afford? You sure can't afford health insurance.). The so-called public hospital here in Austin will HOUND you until you pay them, whether you have the money or not and will even issue a warrant for your arrest if you don't pay them! So it was out of the question for me to go there by myself without the company's help to pay for it.
Assuming I was able to drive, which I wasn't. I still don't know how i managed to drive the 35 miles home (one-way) without passing out with the pain. I thought that I had just sprained my knee but it turned out I had torn almost every ligment and tendon in there to say nothing of what had happened to my kneecap. The right knee took most of the hit. Shortly afterward, rhuematoid Arthritis set in and my life as I knew it was effectively OVER.
Because I had not been able to follow OSHA procedure, no personal injury attorney in town would touch the case! None of the sharks who advertise on TV would take it either... Plenty of attorneys would have taken it if I could have come up with the $1,500 standard retainer, however. But when you work for a sorry private security contractor, you just don't have that kind of money. Especially when you are injured and out of work.
Someone who claimed to be an insurance adjustor came out to the house and was so threatening, demeaning and arrogant, I told him to leave. He told me his company wasn't going to pay me a *damned dime and to go to hell. That's when I asked him to leave. I think he was a friend of one of the owners and not for real because I have been told that insurance adjustors do NOT threaten you and curse you like that. At the time, I was hurting too much to care.
I made an appointment that May with a social services agency to get my knee looked at. That's where I got the bad news in September of that year. I wasn't able to work since the injury and my unemployment insurance wasn't that much.in fact, I lost it when I applied for another job that I wasn't able to keep. There was pressure on me to get a job but I was no able to do one anymore.
The company must have had a LOT of other issues, besides being afraid of a lawsuit from me as they went out of business sometime in November of so I heard. They aren't located at the same place anymore. From what I can understand of it, a husband-wife team owned the company and the husband and wife had had a fight and drawn guns on each other and the husband was the one arrested who went to jail and lost his license to run the company so it went out of business. And I think it was the threat of the possible lawsuit over my permanent disability (At least that's what the Parking Sticker that I have now that goes on the other people's vehicles who drive me around since I can't drive anymore. I have osteoarthritis in both knees and in my back and they never compensated me for the injury. They never will.
I was told that I could have sued the owner of the apartment complex, who has since installed better lighting and been more selective who they have for tenants over there. Again, no retainer up front, NO lawsuit. So the attorneys get theirs both ways and I get... A debilitating injury.
Moral of the Story: Even though these guys are no longer around, I hear that the mom part of the equation is still in operation and when I find out what she is going to call her new security company, I will post it here. They offered bon homme cameraderie and friendship, like THAT was supposed to compensate for the rip-off wage that you were going to get with them. And they had a BIG SIGN outside the business that said they were always hiring and they kept a constant traffic of applicants trough the door.
There were two guys they would send out who would go to other security companies and steal their accounts and try to get them out of business. CROWN SECURITY in Austin, TX was allegedly a victim of somebody working inside who ratted that company out to the Board which regulates security companies in Texas. So was the Austin office of STANLEY SMITH SECURITY was another one that got out of business because someone working from another security company (Burns) got inside and took accounts from them and left the unemployed security officers to fend for themselves. CUTTHROAT!
I AM GLAD Alliance Security Forces ARE OUT OF BUSINESS BUT OTHERS WILL TAKE THEIR PLACE! And they still have a lot of "former" employees out there whom you still have to watch out for, especially if you are an ethical, moral and honest security company! I understand they will try to rise like the Phoenix from the ashes.
Whatever happens, I am DONE with private contract security companies. It is just too dangerous to risk having all this happen to you for just $8.00 an hour. My life as I know it is over. And I have received NO help. I wasn't able to repair my car and then it was repossessed.
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