CRIME PREVENTION AND PRIVATE SECURITY
1767: The French treatise, Art of the Locksmith was published
1772: The lever lock was in common use
1784: The Bramah lock was developed in England
1818: Jeremiah Chubb invented the Barrel Key
1833: Vidoq retired from the Surete and became the world’s first private detective
1850: Allan Pinkerton started his detective agency in Chicago
------ First manufactured safes were cast iron boxes with weak locking devices
1851: London Lock Exhibition
1853: The first private electric alarm business in U.S. was started in Boston
1855: Allan Pinkerton formed the North West Police Agency to provide protection for 6 midwestern railroad companies
1857: Pinkerton formed the Pinkerton Protection Patrol to provide watchman services, thus starting the first contract uniform guard company in the U.S.
1858: Allan Pinkerton hired the first female detective
1859: The Brinks Company was founded in Chicago
1861: American Linus Yale introduced the pin tumbler lock
1869: The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was the first security company in the U.S. to gross $1 million a year
1872: The first U.S. central station burglar alarm company was started in Brooklyn, NY
------ By this time, William and Robert Pinkerton were taking control of their father’s company
1874: James Sargent invented the first American time lock
1878: Western Union got into the alarm business
------ About this time window foil alarms (and screen alarms) were developed
1880-1890: The American Banker’s Association hired Pinkerton Agency to investigate bank robbery, burglary, and forgery cases
1893: Congress passed the Pinkerton Act
1900: Brinks Company had a fleet of 85 wagons
1909: Baker Industries entered the fire control and burglary detection business
------ Raymond Schindler started an investigative agency in NYC
------ William J. Burns started his detective agency in Chicago
1913: Burns Agency opened an office in London
1914: There were about 13,000 railroad police in the U.S.
1916: William J. Burns was convicted of illegal entry in connection with a NYC wiretap
1923: Allan Pinkerton’s son, William Pinkerton died. His brother, Robert took over control of the company.
1932: William J. Burns died
1935: Pinkerton Company discontinued doing labor investigations after a Senate Subcommittee investigation showed that 30% of their work involved spying on labor
1936: Brink’s, in the largest single move of private property, used 10 trucks to haul $20 million in jewelry, art objects, stamps, and currency from a home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts to a Boston bank
1946: An Eastern U.S. Bank, in an embezzlement case, gave 60 of its employees a lie detector test
1948: Crime novelist Erle Stanley Gardner formed the “Court of Last Resort”
1954: George R. Wackenhut founded his security company at Miami, Florida
1955: The American Society for Industrial Security was founded (ASIS)
1957: The Wackenhut Corporation was hired by the Dade County Grand Jury to investigate crime and corruption in Miami, Florida
1959: Brink’s Incorporated had 112 branch offices and 1026 armored cars handling an average of 1 1/3 billion dollars a day
1964: The Pinkerton Company was awarded the largest single security contract on record, the New York World’s Fair
1965: The Wackenhut Corporation was the nation’s 3rd largest and fastest growing security company. The company was given 2 very large federal contracts
------ The Pinkerton Company changed its name to Pinkerton’s, Inc. The company, by this time, was doing more civil than criminal work
1966: The Wackenhut Corporation was hired by the governor of Florida to investigate the state’s crime and corruption
1968: Congress passed the Bank Protection Act
1970: $3.3 billion spent by the private sector for security services
1971: Architect Oscar Newman developed the concept of “defensible space”
1972: The Rand Corporation published its 4 volume study of the security industry
1973: John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City started one of the first college degree programs in security
1974: There were 226,300 in-house security guards and investigators and 71,200 contract security personnel in the U.S.
------- The Wackenhut Corporation landed a $15 million contract to guard the construction of the Alaska pipeline
1975: A private security task force began a major study of the security industry
------- Six major corporations controlled over 50% of the protective services and products market in the U.S.
1979: U.S. Business lost $7 billion to industrial espionage this year
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