Buyers shopping unarmed security guards in Fort Worth almost always ask the same question first. Are your guards licensed. It is the right instinct and the wrong question, because every company will say yes, and the word is doing at least three different jobs in that sentence.
There are two separate licenses in play on any Texas guard contract, and most proposals blur them on purpose.
Two licenses, and only one of them is on the proposal
The company holds a license. Thirteen Alpha Solutions LLC holds a Texas Department of Public Safety Class C license, number C31017501. That is the license that lets a business provide guard and patrol services at all. It is the one every vendor puts in the footer.
The individual officer holds a separate license. An unarmed officer works as a noncommissioned security officer holding an individual license. An armed officer works as a commissioned security officer holding a security officer commission. Those are two different credentials, issued to the person, not to the company.
A company license tells you the business exists lawfully. It tells you nothing about whether the person standing on your property tonight holds a current individual license. Those are different facts and only one of them is printed on anything you have been handed.
The employer files the application, not the officer
This is the part that explains most of the bad behavior in this industry.
Under Texas law the employer files the individual license and commission applications. Tex. Occ. Code § 1702.162 and 37 TAC § 35.21(a) put that obligation on the licensed company, not on the person being hired. An applicant cannot walk in holding their own completed registration the way a tradesman holds a certification.
So when a vendor tells you an officer is "licensed and ready to deploy," the question underneath it is whether that vendor did the paperwork. A company that staffs a sudden Saturday by pulling someone it has not registered has not given you a licensed officer. It has given you a person in a uniform, and the regulatory exposure for that sits with the company, which is to say with the company you hired.
"Level III" is a course, not a license
You will see tiers in proposals. Level II, Level III, Level IV.
Those are training courses under 37 TAC § 35.141. They are not license classes and they are not interchangeable with the credentials above. A completed course is a prerequisite step, not the credential itself. Level IV corresponds to personal protection officer authorization, which is a specific additional authorization and not a rank.
We do not publish training hour counts, and you should be skeptical of any vendor who leads with one. The published figures and the statutory floor do not agree with each other, so an hour count in a sales document is a number chosen for effect.
One more correction while we are here, because it dates a vendor instantly. The regulator is the Texas Department of Public Safety, Regulatory Services Division, under its Private Security Program. There is no Private Security Bureau and no Private Security Board. The board was abolished by Senate Bill 616 in 2019. A proposal that still names it was written from a template nobody has read in seven years.
Three questions that actually test the answer
Ask these in this order. They take about two minutes and they sort the market.
Who specifically is assigned to my property, and does that person hold a current individual license right now. Not "our officers are licensed." A name and a status.
Who filed that officer's application. The correct answer is "we did." If the answer is that the officer brought their own, the vendor either misunderstands its own obligation or is describing a subcontractor relationship it has not disclosed.
Show me the last three patrol or activity reports from a comparable property, redacted. Not a sample report. Actual ones. You will know inside two minutes whether anyone is being supervised.
A company that answers all three cleanly is a company that has done the administrative work, and the administrative work is the only reliable proxy for whether the field work is supervised.
What this means for your site
Unarmed coverage carries most of the commercial work in this market, and that is not a downgrade. An unarmed officer at a controlled entry, on a documented patrol route, writing reports somebody reads, prevents more loss on a typical property than an armed post does, because most of what threatens a commercial property is opportunism rather than violence.
Decide the posture from the property, not from the brochure. The question is what the officer is there to do: hold an access point, cover a lot during arrival and departure, walk a perimeter on irregular timing, or hold a fixed interior position. Each of those is a different job and some of them require a commission and some do not.
We do not post warm bodies. We deploy trained officers behind a real threat assessment.
If your property runs retail hours, the seasonal piece matters too, and the staffing window for the holidays is open now rather than in December.
Talk to us
Thirteen Alpha Solutions LLC is a licensed Texas security guard and patrol company based in Fort Worth, working across Tarrant County and DFW. SDVOSB certified. TALI member. Insured and bonded.
This post is not legal advice. The statutes and rules named above are cited so you can read them yourself, and you should.
Call (817) 480-2291 or email info@thirteenalpha.com.
Thirteen Alpha Solutions LLC
4364 Western Center Blvd #2105, Fort Worth, TX 76137
TX DPS Class C License #C31017501
