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A Texas security guard quit his job on live TV this past week after his boss blamed him for two would-be carjackers trying to steal his car.

Security guard Percy Payne of Priebe Security was completing his shift at a local office complex last Monday evening when he spotted two young hooligans on surveillance camera entering a private underground garage whose door was stuck open.

“I witnessed two young Hispanic males on two electric scooters,” he later recalled to local station KTBC.

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When he went downstairs to check it out, he witnessed the two trying to break into his personal vehicle.

“One individual was at my driver’s door with his back to me, looking back. The other individual was at my passenger door facing me, being a lookout,” he recalled.

The suspects saw him and immediately made a run for it, prompting him to chase them so as to try to detain them until the police arrived. That’s when the suspects got violent.

“A young individual tried to run me over with his scooter multiple times,” Payne said. “And then that’s when they started to assault.”

First with fists, then allegedly with a screwdriver.

“I heard [one] individual say, ‘hold him,’ and that’s when he went for the screwdriver to try to stab me,” Payne recalled. “I let them go and immediately went to get my work phone to call 911.”

And that, incidentally, is when the real drama began to unravel …

The first dispatcher refused to send an officer because the suspects hadn’t successfully stolen his car. A second dispatcher he spoke with a few minutes later apologized for the first dispatcher’s bull and then deployed an officer who arrived about an hour later.

“The officer told me that that call should have been an emergency case,” Payne said of the officer.

Now fast-forward by a couple of days to when KTBC showed up at Payne’s job to interview him about the Monday night event.

As the station was speaking to Payne, his boss showed up and started causing a ruckus by berating him.

“We have a policy that you’re not supposed to do any interviews in your uniform,” she complained. “If you want to do this as a private citizen, you can.”

Payne attempted to explain the situation, but his boss remained argumentative, so he eventually complied with her request and removed his uniform. He then asked her point blank if it was his fault that two suspects had broken into the garage, tried to steal his car, and assaulted him.

Stunningly, she said, “I would say yes, every bit of it.”

And that was the final straw for Payne.

“The fact that my supervisor basically told me it was my fault that I got assaulted, that let me know all that I needed to know,” he said.

Contacted later by the station, a rep for Priebe Security said, “We’re in the process of gathering details. We have been made aware of it and are looking into the situation.”

The public, meanwhile, remains divided. Some have already decided that Payne’s former supervisor is the one who deserves to be out of a job. These same critics also had some tough words for Priebe Security.

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But some pushed back by arguing that security guards aren’t supposed to intervene — that they’re just supposed to observe and report.

“Every security job trains you to disengage when the offenders disengage,” one critic tweeted. “I’m not saying it’s the ‘right’ thing, but it’s certainly the legal thing from the company’s perspective. Security aren’t cops, you never chase once the offenders try to leave. You let them leave.”

“The attackers were guilty of trespassing at first but the guard escalated the situation by getting physical as chasing after them,” another critic argued. “Security guards are NOT COPS, they are only supposed to get physical in self defense. The guard got physical first and broke protocol.”

Vivek Saxena
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