Originally Posted by
TGS
USMS Court Security Officer through Akal, InterCon etc is the best gig in terms of people you work with and job duties. I'm not sure which company holds the contract(s) in this area.
Diplomatic Security Uniformed Division, contracted by InterCon, is going to be high up there as well with a starting pay of $32/hour in the NCR....the personnel are a little more variable in quality in DC compared to USMS, and the dudes who go in and get assigned to SOU (Special Operations Unit, basically just officers with active shooter training) generally don't stay too long as they're more capable dudes and working towards an actual police job. They have a fairly large K9 program as well, in addition to an honor guard if that JROTC-Nazi stuff is your thing. Initial training is 4 or 5 weeks with a few days per year refresher, and you qual once a year within that (all currently in Woodbridge, VA). Duty gear is Class B's with corframs (or BDUs/boots for K9 and SOU), concealed body armor, duty belt with Sig P229, two spare mags, cuffs, monadnock baton, flashlight, and radio.
You'll generally be standing post at an interior checkpoint in one of the many State Department buildings in the NCR, but there's some roving/vehicular stuff and exterior vehicle control points as well....one of the DSS UD security guards is even on camera getting stick time on the Turkish goons in 2016. If you end up working the Harry S Truman building, you'll do a lot of arrival and departures for visiting dignitaries and posting a lot of diplomatic events. There's limited opportunity for travel as well, primarily to support DoS operations at the UN General Assembly every September. About 40% have SDUSM credentials, and the hiring standards don't weed out window lickers but it's good enough that you'll generally be around responsible people and not brand new security guards with no experience that want to wear double thigh holsters and black trench-coats.
DHS is all through FPS. Maybe there's an FPS guy on the board, but from what I understand and have seen, their contracted armed security officers get paid less than USMS and DSS.
There's a ton of one-off jobs for various NGOs and museums in DC as well that I don't have any real information on, but if you can think of a museum or NGO, there's a good chance they have an armed guard contract. DC has some weirdness to it where they're all technically Special Police Officers.....I'm not sure what sort of limited arrest authority or protection that confers (if any).