What the state actually requires of a registered guard, and the part of this industry that never gets advertised.
Licensing and training in Arizona
Security guards in Arizona are regulated under A.R.S. Title 32, Chapter 26 and registered through the Department of Public Safety. Registration requires a background review and pre-assignment training before an officer works a post, with additional firearms-specific training and a separate registration for armed work. The employing agency must hold its own licence. Honeybadger holds Security Guard Agency licence 1759798 and Private Investigations Agency licence 1759795.
Registration is a floor, not a standard. It establishes that a person is legally permitted to stand a post. It says nothing about whether they know your site, understand your escalation path, can write a usable report, or will challenge a stranger politely at 2am. That part is the contractor’s job, and it is where contracts are actually won and lost.
What our officers cannot do, stated plainly and written into every post order: no arrest or detention authority beyond that of a private citizen, no searches of people or their property, no pursuits on foot or by vehicle, and no use of force except as narrowly justified in defence of self or another. They deny access under your authority, document, and call law enforcement.
The part of this industry nobody advertises
Guard services are usually bought on hourly rate, and the hourly rate is mostly wage. That produces a predictable chain: the lowest bid pays the lowest wage, the lowest wage recruits from the smallest pool, the smallest pool turns over fastest, and a post with high turnover is staffed by someone who has never seen the site before and does not know which door matters. Every complaint clients have about guard companies — the officer asleep, the officer on their phone, the officer who did not know the procedure, the officer who was different every week — traces back to that chain.
We would rather have the conversation about it up front. A rate that looks materially cheaper than the market is not efficiency; it is a wage assumption, and you will meet it as turnover. What we commit to instead is stability on the post: consistent officers, a named supervisor, documented site-specific briefing before anyone stands the post, and a replacement process that briefs the replacement rather than just filling the slot.
Two other things we do differently and will put in the contract. Officers are directly employed rather than passed through as contractors, which is what makes training, supervision and accountability real. And supervisor visits happen at a defined frequency and are logged — an unsupervised post degrades within weeks regardless of who is standing it.
What Honeybadger Solutions provides
Honeybadger Solutions is an Arizona-licensed security guard and private investigations agency — Guard 1759798, PI 1759795 — with investigations, digital forensics and cyber work delivered nationwide. This article is background on the problem. For what we actually provide, see Unarmed security, or book a confidential consultation.