Bonsu says patients spat at him, called him names and told him to go back to where he came from.     
   
He recalls during one particular incident having to restrain a patient.
   
“It became so violent that I didn’t know what to do.”
   
Bonsu now has back problems and can’t walk properly. 
   
And he isn’t the only one.

Just this past June, a security guard at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., was shot on the job and later died in hospital.

Here in Canada, a Pointe Claire, Que. security guard was attacked in a park in June, after coming to help a woman who he thought was being attacked by three men. The security guard was stabbed in two places and punched and kicked by the men.  

And in 2006, a 34-year-old female security guard was raped while working alone overnight at a Calgary construction site.

According to the Homicide Survey, which is based on Canadian police-reported data on homicide incidents, victims and accused people, there were 69 homicides in Canada that were a result of the victim’s legal employment, between 2001 and 2005.  Three of these victims were security guards.  [Watch: COS special video feature on workplace violence]

‘Topical’ issue
In the last 10 years workplace violence has become “really topical” in occupational health and safety regulatory circles, but has always been a “big issue” within the private security industry because dealing with this violence is part of the job, says Brian Robertson, president of Ontario-based Diligent Security Training and Consulting.
   
In the security industry, workplace violence is about “dealing with very imminent, real-time, actually violent or potentially … violent scenarios,” he says.
   
For a long time members of the private security industry have been “comfortable” seeing themselves as part of the way employers protect their employees from harm, but in the last five or six years the industry has started viewing security guards as workers who have the right to be protected from workplace violence, just as much as the people they protect, he explains.      
   
That’s why Robertson believes employers should be providing their security guards with better training and personal protection equipment so they are protected from workplace violence.

Despite an Ontario Labour Relations Board precedent that determined this personal protection equipment as body armour, a baton for self-defence, and handcuffs to arrest and restrain the assailant, access to this equipment is “hit and miss” for security guards, he says.
   
Most have “excellent” access to cellphones and radios, but not to the other protections they need: quick backup, good training on physical “use of force” skills to get the violent person under control, if necessary, a baton, and protection equipment, such as vests to protect them from weapons, such as knives or guns.
   
By having these “tools and capabilities,” security guards are going to be able to protect others and themselves from harm for at least a short period of time and be able to exercise enough control until backup arrives, Robertson says. 
   
Braidy Parker, a security consultant for the Association for the Advancement of Safety Technologies a non-profit organization that specializes in training, policy development and safety-related technologies, also believes security guards should have better training and personal protection equipment.

“It’s an extremely tough job,” he notes. Parker says real-time auditing needs to be conducted of the workplace violence that takes place in specific locations, and security staff need to be equipped and trained to appropriately respond to this violence.
   
More “hands-on use of force training” and personal protection equipment, in terms of body armour and protection devices, such as batons, should be provided, he says.
   
However, there are obstacles to acquiring these protective measures.
   
According to Parker, most employers address violence only from a human resource perspective, which views all people as reasonable and that workplace violence can be talked out. Their action plan for when this violence occurs is to call security.
   
Employers need to listen to their employees and understand that there’s a “significant portion of the population” that cannot be reasoned with and is there to do harm, he says.