Mar 24, 2025
DEI Facts vs Feelings
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from Norway
seen from Israel
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Switzerland
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Sweden
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Yemen
seen from United States
DEI Facts vs Feelings
City staff and officials were apparently unaware of lawsuits and court cases involving the security company Allied Universal before voting Thursday.
Durham City Council members awarded a $2.7 million contract to a security company to staff downtown parking decks, unaware of harassment and discrimination complaints against the company in other states.
Until this year, an outside management company, Republic Parking Systems, hired security for the parking decks. The city recently brought parking management in-house, and with the previous security contract, with NightHawk Security, expiring December 31, it sought proposals from companies to staff the decks with unarmed guards.
The contract came before council members during a work session Thursday. Typically, the council doesn’t take action during work sessions, but it suspended the rules and voted unanimously to approve the contract with Allied Universal in order to more quickly get security guards in place.
According to media reports, however, the company’s past has not always aligned with the city’s professed progressive values.
In 2017, current and former Allied employees working a New York airport filed a federal civil rights lawsuit saying employees were being pressured by their superiors for sex. The ordeal was captured in an episode of This American Life last May. (In response to the episode, Allied said these “isolated incidents are not indicative of our culture and work ethic,” and it has “zero tolerance against sexual harassment.” At the plaintiffs’ request, the case was later voluntarily dismissed without prejudice.)
In January 2018, the company paid $90,000 to settle a religious discrimination lawsuit from a Muslim employee in California who sought a religious exemption to the company’s grooming standards and was fired.
Just last month, two Allied employees pleaded guilty to beating a black man at a Denver transit station, which employees had tried to cover up. Separately, video footage surfaced in December 2016 of an Allied guard beating a homeless man in Boston, after which employees relayed to the Boston Globe a culture of harassing homeless people.
Allied employees were also the first to engage Jazmine Headley while she waited with her baby for hours at a food stamp office in New York. According to The New York Times, Allied employees brought her “to the floor” before police officers arrested her, taking her baby out of her arms — as shown in a video that went viral — and taking her to jail.
After the vote, Mayor Steve Schewel told the INDY he was unaware of the lawsuits and allegations involving Allied and would ask staff to review the matter before the council’s next regular meeting.
"Now that we know, it’s all of our responsibility to look at it,” he said, adding that he believed his colleagues would have raised these issues had they been aware. “It’s our expectation that our administration will bring us contracts we want to approve and usually they do a good job. We'll have to take a look at whether this one is an exception.”
Conversations at work sessions about prospective contracts typically center on workforce diversity and pay. Council members didn’t take issue with the racial breakdown of Allied’s local employees. The only question about the contract during Thursday’s work session, from council member Mark-Anthony Middleton, was to confirm that the company had agreed to pay a minimum wage equal to or greater than the city’s, which is $15 an hour.
Schewel said the contract didn’t raise red flags for him because the company’s workforce data “looks strong,” and it had agreed to pay what the city considers a living wage. Allied Universal’s proposal scored thirty-five points more than the company ranked second through a city review process, gaining many points for low cost.
“We have certain mechanisms to make it really easy to test for things we care about,” Schewel said, like workforce diversity and adequate pay. “The other stuff you have to hear about.”
Formed in 2016 through a merger between Allied Barton and Universal Security Services of America, Allied Universal has more than two hundred thousand employees at forty-two thousand client sites, including Duke University.
"While we are unable to comment on pending litigation, Allied Universal is committed to equal and fair employment and maintains strict policies against discrimination and harassment," a company spokesperson said in an email to the INDY.
Under the three-year contract, Allied would provide guards to staff five downtown parking decks 24/7: Chapel Hill Street, Church Street, Corcoran Street, Durham Centre, and the new Morgan Street deck.
This post has been updated to include a statement from Allied Universal.
---
City officials had asked Allied Universal Security Services to respond to reports by the INDY that it was involved in lawsuits and criminal cases.
City staff say they're satisfied with answers provided by Allied Universal Security Services about past lawsuits and criminal cases involving the company, and are recommending the city proceed with hiring the company to provide security at five downtown parking decks as planned.
City Council members originally approved a $2.7 million contract with Allied at a January 24 meeting. However, after an INDY report called attention to the company’s involvement in sexual harassment and religious discrimination lawsuits, the transportation department sought more information related to the company’s responses to these incidents.
The five parking decks that will be protected by Allied Universal guards were previously overseen by a parking management company that hired another company to provide security guards. That security contract expired December 31. Because the city is bringing parking management in-house, it put out a request for proposals to replace the old security contractor. The city received six responses. Allied’s offer, the cheapest of the six, scored the highest, and City Council members approved the contract unanimously during a January 24 meeting.
City staffers and officials were unaware of the company’s alleged instances of harassment and discrimination when the City Council awarded the contract to Allied Universal. In an effort to clarify the company’s reactions to these suits, Thomas Leathers, Durham’s Chief Parking Administrator, sent a January 25 letter asking a series of questions, including seeking specific policy adjustments and managerial reforms. Most of all, according to the letter, the city sought to investigate how Allied might prevent and mitigate similar incidents in the future.
Five days later, Allied issued a response. Charles Bohnenberger, the company’s vice president of government services, provided commentary and clarification on the allegations that the INDY brought to light, saying that the company takes such “negative articles” very seriously.
On January 24, shortly after the council’s vote to approve the contract with Allied, the INDY reported on a religious discrimination suit, a sexual harassment suit and two criminal cases involving the company. The religious discrimination suit, which occurred in California, involved a Muslim guard who was fired after seeking religious accommodation from the company’s grooming policy. The case ended in a $90,000 settlement. Another incident — a sexual harassment claim levied by a former New York airport guard — alleged that supervisors were pressuring employees for sex. Earlier this year, two Allied guards pleaded guilty to assault in Denver, and in Boston, video footage captured a guard beating a homeless man in 2016.
The city asked seven questions regarding specific actions taken by the company to address these incidents. In response to the religious discrimination suit, Allied says it provided additional training to its supervisors and employees. The company said that this training was meant to distribute information regarding religious discrimination and “reasonable” accommodations to its grooming policies that supervisors could offer employees.
“While Allied Universal believes its treatment of [the plaintiff] was at all times appropriate and that our grooming standards are in full compliance with all laws, we nevertheless worked with the EEOC toward a constructive resolution of the matter,” Bohnenberger wrote to the city, noting that the EEOC had commended Allied's response to the situation.
The company described additional actions including establishing an “Employees First” complaint hotline and terminating “bad actors.” In response to city questions about training tactics, Allied explained that it employs programs that cover topics such as de-escalation and appropriate response to workplace sexual harassment.
The transportation department found these responses satisfactory and released a February 4 memorandum recommending that the City Council authorize normal procession with the contract, which was set to take effect February 1. During its investigation, the office also sought verification of the company’s policy changes from seven local clients. Of these seven, the city only received contact from two — but these two clients, State Employees Credit Union and Norwich Realty Services, offered favorable reviews of their experiences with Allied.
“The company’s response was thorough and detailed,” Durham Mayor Steve Schewel said in a conversation with the INDY. “And their explanations were certainly plausible. Going forward, the city manager will monitor the contract very closely to make sure they’re meeting our expectations.”
According to the initial letter from the city, Schewel previously requested that staff provide an official update to the City Council at its February 4 meeting. Though no discussion took place -- the report was submitted in written form instead -- Schewel confirmed that the city plans to move forward with the contract.
The City Manager's office also confirmed to the INDY that Allied Universal has agreed to pay employees a livable wage of more than $15 per hour, and that the contract seeks to employ nineteen full-time security guards and one account manager. In its memorandum, staff stated that Allied hired all five of the employees previously contracted at the downtown garages who applied to work with the new contractor.
“You know, they employ two hundred thousand people,” Schewel said. “When you employ two hundred thousand people, sometimes these things happen. And we have to make sure that they’re not happening here in Durham.”
Read the correspondence between the company and the city below:
Allied Universal Inquiry Up... by on Scribd
---
“I think we need to determine whether these incidents are the result of a few bad actors or if there’s a culture within the company that encourages or enables harmful behavior.”
After the INDY brought to light allegations of harassment and discrimination against Allied Universal Security Services, Durham wants answers from the company it just awarded a $2.7 million contract to provide security for five downtown parking garages.
City staffers and elected officials say they were unaware of the lawsuits and criminal cases involving Allied when the council unanimously approved the contract in a work session on Thursday. The INDY first reported on the company’s troubling history of litigation on Thursday evening. On Friday, city officials sent the company a letter asking for specifics on how each case was resolved.
Thomas Leathers, the city’s chief parking administrator, sent the letter, which says the complaints are of “great concern.”
“The City of Durham values the fair and equitable treatment of all people, including employees, contractors, residents, visitors, stakeholders, etc.,” Leathers wrote. “… The City takes all complaints of this nature very seriously and will investigate fully and fairly.”
Typically, the council doesn’t take action during work sessions. But the Allied deal carried a sense of urgency because the previous contract for parking-deck security expired December 31. In the past, the city had contracted with a parking management company, which, in turn, hired guards. But it’s now bringing management of the five garages in-house.
During the lapse, city spokeswoman Beverly Thompson confirms, the decks were not staffed by security guards, though they were monitored more frequently by police.
In its search for a contractor, the city’s transportation department released a request for proposals, and six companies responded. Allied offered the cheapest price. Thompson says that, throughout the process, the transportation department worked with the company’s local division and was unaware of complaints brought in other cities.
“Now that we know, it’s all of our responsibility to look at it,” Mayor Steve Schewel told the INDY after Thursday’s vote. “It’s our expectation that our administration will bring us contracts we want to approve, and usually they do a good job. We'll have to take a look at whether this one is an exception.”
This contract was approved the same week that the council created a Workers’ Rights Commission, which will advise the city on how to improve working conditions. Labor organizers hope the commission will help protect workers from low wages, discrimination, and abusive work environments — in other words, the kinds of abuses that Allied is accused of.
One incident involves a 2018 religious-discrimination case, since settled, in which a Muslim security guard was fired after seeking a religious exemption to the company’s grooming policies. Another suit was brought by Allied employees in a New York City airport, who said they were harassed and pressured by supervisors for sex. The alleged abuse — detailed in an episode of This American Life — included supervisors denying female guards bathroom breaks for ten or twelve hours at a time. Last month, two Allied employees pleaded guilty to beating a black man at a Denver transit station, which employees had tried to cover up. Separately, Allied employees described to The Boston Globe a culture of harassing homeless people after video surfaced in December 2016 of a guard beating a homeless man in Boston.
Steve Maritas, organizing director with the Law Enforcement Officers Security Unions, which represents police and security professionals in the Northeast, says Allied is notoriously bad for labor.
“They’ve been buying up companies left and right to suppress wages,” Maritas says. “If the city wasn’t paying guards fifteen dollars an hour, Allied never would. They’ll pay their guys whatever they can get away with.”
Allied is now the largest security provider in the nation, with more than two hundred thousand employees at forty-two thousand client sites, including Duke University. (An Allied supervisor at Duke did not respond to a request for comment.)
“While we are unable to comment on pending litigation, Allied Universal is committed to equal and fair employment and maintains strict policies against discrimination and harassment,” the company said in an email to the INDY.
The city wants to know how serious Allied is about these values. In its letter, the city asked the company for examples of actions aimed at mitigating harassment and discrimination. The city specifically took interest in supervisor training programs and changes in grooming policies.
“I wasn’t aware of the allegations prior to the vote, and I’m glad they’ve been brought to our attention,” says city council member Jillian Johnson. “We’ve asked staff to look into the issue more. I’m most interested in how these issues were handled by the company once they came to light.”
Schewel says the contract didn’t initially raise red flags. Typical council conversations about prospective contracts focus on workforce diversity and pay, and Allied met or exceeded the city’s goals on both fronts.
“We have certain mechanisms to make it really easy to test for things we care about,” Schewel says. “The other stuff you have to hear about.”
Council member Charlie Reece suspects the company’s potential issues weren’t flagged because the contract and its related materials mostly refer to University Protection Services, a division of Universal Services of America, the company that AlliedBarton Security Services merged with in 2016 to form Allied Universal.
Leathers has asked Allied to respond to the city’s questions no later than January 30, and Schewel asked staff to update the council at its February 4 meeting.
“Of course, we don’t want anything like what happened at those other sites to happen here,” Johnson says. “I think we need to determine whether these incidents are the result of a few bad actors or if there’s a culture within the company that encourages or enables harmful behavior by staff.”
Contact staff writer Sarah Willets by email at [email protected], by phone at 919-286-1972, or on Twitter @sarah_willets.
---
If you work for Allied Universall, a warning. Don’t get sick and lose a limb, they will fire you for being useless to them,
Hired Guns, Unwanted Guards
America’s private security industry has morphed into a global mercenary force—staffed by ex-military from around the world, barely paid, and barely wanted by the corporations they protect. In cities and suburbs across the United States, the uniformed guard standing at the mall, the hospital, or the warehouse gate may not be who—or what—you think. Increasingly, private security firms in the U.S.…
Allied Universal Company Review
Allied Universal aka Allied Universal Security losing guards .