Security Guards

California’s workplace violence prevention law took effect July 1, 2024 and applies to essentially every employer. It requires a written plan with specified elements — including procedures to identify, evaluate, and correct workplace violence hazards, to respond to emergencies, to accept and respond to reports without retaliation, and to review the plan annually and after every incident.

It also requires a Violent Incident Log for every incident, recording the date, time, and location, the type of violence, a detailed description, the circumstances — including whether the employee was working during low staffing, isolated or alone, rushed, in a poorly lit area, or unable to get help — and what was done afterward. Records must be kept for five years and produced to employees on request.

Why this decides cases. Guards are deployed by a contractor onto a client’s premises, and both the guard company and the client have obligations at that site. A guard assaulted at a post with no hazard assessment, no incident log, no panic device, and no post orders has:

• A straightforward work-relatedness case
• A serious and willfulSerious and willful +50%, and uninsurable, so the employer pays personally. 12 months. misconduct claim worth a 50% increase — paid personally by the employer and not covered by insurance — if the employer knew of prior incidents at that post and did nothing
• A third-party claim against the client premises owner — because workers’ compensation exclusivity does not protect the client
• And a retaliation claim — if the response to the assault was to remove you

Your training file matters too. Guards must hold a state Guard Card with specified training hours. That file is discoverable, and an employer who deployed an untrained guard to a high-risk post has a serious problem.

• Serious and willful misconduct
• Third-party claims
• Psychiatric injury

Acute — the dominant category: assault including blunt force, stabbing, and gunshot, with traumatic brain injury and concussion; injuries sustained restraining or detaining someone — shoulder dislocations, rotator cuff tears, knee and ankle injuries, bites and needlesticks; dog bites; crashes on patrol; falls in dark stairwells, parking structures, and construction sites; heat illness at outdoor and gate posts; fentanyl and biohazard exposure at transit, shelter, and encampment posts; and psychiatric injury from assault, from witnessing an overdose or a death, and from sustained threat exposure.

• Hearing loss
• Traumatic brain injury
• Cumulative trauma

Also: hearing loss for guards at concert venues, stadiums, and firearms qualification ranges.

• Turnover above 90% means most injured guards have short tenure — at the employer where they were hurt. Do not let a carrier annualize a few weeks downward — the calculation should reflect your scheduled hours and earning capacity.
• A second guard job is very common — and with a median wage around $20 an hour, that second job is frequently the difference between the statutory minimum benefit and a real one. Those earnings aggregate.
• Graveyard, weekend, and holiday differentials count — Armed-post premiums count. On-call and standby time counts where you had to remain on premises.
• Uniform allowances and permit reimbursements are contested — Argue they count where paid as a flat amount unrelated to actual expense.

And one precise detail: a worker employed only in security work at a marine terminal is excluded from federal longshore coverage when state workers’ compensation covers them. Your claim is a California claim — which matters if anyone tells you otherwise.