Keeping Watch: For Personal Security Companies, Sometimes ‘Truth Stranger Than Fiction’

Feature image above: Jerry McIntyre, left, and Kyle Ogden of The Private Eyes. (File photo)

In a world where artificial intelligence looms and headlines report millions of dollars’ worth of damage at the hands of hackers, it is little wonder that cybersecurity gets more buzz when it comes to protecting business assets.

However, as recent high-profile incidents — such as the assassination of a health insurance executive in 2024 and the murder and attempted murder of Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses just this year — have shown, it behooves companies, executives and other prominent individuals to consider their safety in the world of flesh and bone, as well.

“Security itself is not as sexy as people think,” said Jonathan Reeves, co-founder and chief operating officer at Liberty Defense Group, a northwest Arkansas-based multistate security company. “It’s actually very boring. Security work is all about the overwatch and the protection of your clients’ facilities, assets, their personnel or products, whatever it may be.”

Jonathan Reeves

On the other hand, life does sometimes emulate spy movies, at least in minor ways. Kyle Ogden, owner of The Private Eyes private investigation firm in Little Rock, originally crossed paths with business partner Jerry McIntyre when the two were hired on either side of a divorce case. It is not uncommon, Ogden said, for someone to hire The Private Eyes just to keep from being investigated by the firm on behalf of someone else.

While counterintelligence has always been an issue, it may be bigger now than ever before, and The Private Eyes has to keep that front of mind when working with clients.

“We certainly have to take it seriously because of all the assets that are out there nowadays,” Ogden said. “We think we have the best equipment, we think we’re the smartest in the business, but you have to be very alert at all times.”

Private Eyes’ main caseload is divorce and child custody cases. Its high-profile clients are often traumatized or threatened by a spouse in some way, so the company provides peace of mind, either through mobile or fixed surveillance, to attempt to ensure their safety at all times. A contentious domestic dispute can become even more fraught during cases where there are more assets at stake, such as for a company executive or other business professional.

“When you start arguing and fighting over money and property and children and child support, as you’ve seen on Dateline or 20/20, people do crazy stuff,” Ogden said. “It’s just dangerous nowadays.”

Over the course of more than three decades, The Private Eyes has built up a trusted reputation providing domestic, corporate and industrial surveillance, including undercover operations, covert audio and video surveillance and night-vision capabilities. A piece of evidence collected by the group can make the difference between defeat and victory in the courtroom, and the company is trusted by a number of law firms, corporations and individuals in Little Rock and beyond.

“We just try to keep them as safe and prepared and alert as they can be,” Ogden said. “We offer help with our clients 24/7 if they need us there. We don’t mind being there and watching and documenting, and we do that physically or we do that with cameras. We do it with drones. We do it various different ways.”

With locations in Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana, Mississippi and Kentucky, Liberty Defense Group provides physical security in a range of contexts and applications. While the company offers protection for large corporate clients, retail shops and construction sites, for example, its main focus is the cannabis industry. Still a relative newcomer to the world of above-board commerce — and full to the brim with circulating cash and valuable goods — cannabis is a particularly ripe area for security threats.

“Cultivators, outdoor growers, indoor growers, dispensaries, processors, cash transport, product transport — all of it is a super high-value target,” Reeves said. “It’s the most high-value target in America that we have today.”

Liberty Defense Group was founded by Reeves and business partner Ryan Hansen, both U.S. Marine Corps veterans with experience in private military contracting and mercenary work. The company is uniquely equipped to serve the industry thanks both to its focus on hiring other veterans and a training program specifically developed for its security specialists. Employees coming from a special forces or other combat background have to learn to be proactive rather than reactive, Reeves said, adding that the basic state-level requirements for security licensing do not address the demands of cannabis-industry clients.

“It’s just completely different,” Reeves said. “We built our own training platform to be able to train these guys [with] the knowledge of what goes into the marijuana industry — the cultivation, how to act, how to be professional in a dispensary world, what to look for, the different types of threats coming in. … [We got] blessed by the state police department here in Arkansas to be able to train our own guys, and that’s how we do it.”

Once trained, security specialists are assigned to teams for the company’s various clients. Whether posted at a dispensary, cultivator or processing facility or transporting cash, each team is designed to meet the needs of the specific facilities they serve. Not only is it important to protect products and money but also to ensure the safety of budtenders and patients coming in and out of the dispensary.

“We’re not flamboyant about it,” Reeves said. “We don’t drive massive trucks. Everything’s done by soccer mom cars. Everything’s concealed. Everything’s very under the radar. Some days are boring. Some days are action packed. Some positions are forward facing, in front of the clients, patients or customers, [and] others are hidden away in the back room, watching videotapes or doing other things.”

The company also offers security consultations to help identify vulnerabilities before they turn into catastrophes. Not dissimilar to cybersecurity, prevention is everything, though an unfortunate number of organizations wait until after disaster has struck to start investing in protection. There are more potential weak spots than perhaps most companies might think, and risks start well before the front door.

“One thing that we get all the time [is], ‘Oh, we’re secured,’” Reeves said. “Yeah? What about your parking lot? No matter who you are, if you’re a manager of a dispensary or you’re the manager of a Walmart … or you’re a corporate executive that comes in at 5 a.m instead of 7 a.m. like the rest of his team — I mean, if anybody wants you, what time frame do you think they’re going to come find you?”

From small shops to large organizations, Liberty Defense Group consultations cover everything from lighting and security camera placement to badging into the building, interior and exterior security systems, and facial recognition capabilities. Still, the biggest threat for cannabis businesses, as well as manufacturing and large operations of the Amazon or Walmart caliber, is internal theft, Reeves said. It is employees, after all, who best know the schedules and potential blind spots of their companies. Also high on the list for corporate settings is individual protections for the most important names on the organizational chart.

“When you’re pumping $200,000 to $300,000 per executive employee, why does that guy not have some kind of bodyguard service?” Reeves said. “Your biggest ones like Walmart, obviously they have their own internal situation going on, so you’re not going to find an executive there that doesn’t have some type of protection. It’s these smaller corporations. Each one of these corporations has executives that they put a lot of money into. They all have life insurance. They all have succession plans if they die, but what’s there to prevent that from happening?”

Thankfully, the technology available to surveil, shore up and safeguard one’s business or personal interests has only proliferated since companies such as The Private Eyes got started. During an era where virtually everyone has a cellphone in their pocket and a camera on their doorbell, more people might be savvy to the possibility of being monitored, but there are also more ways than ever to gather valuable information for those able to take advantage of the latest methods.

“I don’t even have the right word to explain how much it’s evolved, especially when you start talking about tracking devices, computer tracking, vehicle tracking, drone tracking, drone video, wireless and still data cameras,” Ogden said. “You just have to be prepared to be able to get the surveillance footage, whether it be an insurance case or a child custody case or a drug case or allegations of some wrongdoing. You have to be pretty diversified on how you can get that documented into a courtroom because times have changed drastically.”

The intersection of the digital and real worlds has only made for more bizarre cases for Ogden and his team. After 35 years in business, it was only last year that The Private Eyes launched a website.

“That tells you one of two things,” Ogden said. “We’re either stupid, or we do really good work without a website. We’ve been referred to from extremely smart and competent attorneys for a long time. I say that to say this: Since we have obtained that website, we have seen some of the absolute craziest cases. They’re much more diversified, and it’s almost [that] the truth is stranger than fiction.”

New ground is also constantly being broken on the physical security front. Utilizing artificial intelligence or other tools to read license plates, recognize faces or even detect concealed weapons can be invaluable for teams such as Reeves’, but he is also mindful of the irreplaceable human component of protection services. There is no substitute for the instincts of a security specialist with 15- or 20-years’ worth of body language discernment and de-escalation know-how.

“As a security company, your product is that person,” Reeves said. “That’s your widget that you’re selling. You can never take that experience from that guy or that group of personnel or that team. You’ll never get the same experience from a robot, I promise, ever.”