How do I verify a security guard company's license in Texas?

Step by step

Get the number. A licensed company puts it on its proposals, its vehicles and its website; a company that hesitates to give it is telling you something. Open the Texas Department of Public Safety’s license search for the private security program and search by license number or company name. Read the record: the legal name, the license class, the status and the expiration. Compare the legal name to the name on your proposal and contract, since a license held by a related company is not a license held by the company you are hiring. Confirm the class covers guard services. Confirm the status is active and note the expiration.

Then check the people

Officers are licensed individually, as registrants for unarmed work or commissioned officers for armed work, and their credentials are tied to the company that employs them. Ask for the registration or commission numbers of the officers who will be fixtures on your property and look them up the same way. An officer registered to a different company is not covered by the license you just checked.

What the record does not tell you

Whether post orders exist, whether anyone reads the daily report, how quickly dispatch answers, what the officers were trained beyond the state course. Those are questions for the walk-through and the first month’s reports. Licensing is the floor; the hiring checklist article covers the rest.

Repeat at renewal

Licenses lapse and companies change hands. A minute at each renewal keeps the check current. Price Protection displays its license and affiliations on the licensing page and invites exactly this check.

Keep a copy

Save a screenshot of the license record with the date you checked it in the contract file, so the verification is on record if anyone asks later.