LAPD union leader faces complaints that his security company hires and underpays problem cops

When Los Angeles police Officer Brady Lamas was relieved of duty in 2022 for allegedly sharing nude photos of a fellow cop — his wife at the time — he reportedly found a lifeline with a private company named Watermark Security Inc.

Started by Jamie McBride, an LAPD detective and director for the union representing most rank-and-file officers, Watermark has earned a reputation in law enforcement circles for offering a soft landing to cops who face disciplinary action.

McBride promised good pay, reportedly telling officers suspended or fired from their departments over various allegations of misconduct that it would be “like they were making” up to $40 an hour as guards for businesses and celebrities around L.A. County and in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For many officers feeling the pinch of being out of work for weeks or months at a time, the offer of a steady paycheck seemed too good to pass up. They also trusted the word of McBride, who has made a name for himself nationally as an outspoken — and controversial — advocate for officers who believe they’ve been railroaded by their departments.

But after working for Watermark, a former employee wrote in an email to LAPD leadership that McBride was denying workers overtime pay and lunch breaks — while enriching himself at the expense of the same aggrieved officers he claimed to support.

Ten other ex-Watermark employees echoed those allegations in interviews with The Times. The former employee who emailed the LAPD also alleged in the complaint that McBride was defrauding clients including Target and Walgreens “in the form of overbilling and falsification of officer credentials, in breach of contract, and worse.”

McBride is the subject of at least two internal LAPD investigations stemming from complaints lodged by ex-Watermark employees over payroll issues, according to department records.

LAPD investigators are also looking into allegations raised by another former employee in a lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court in June, that accuses McBride of withholding his overtime pay. All three department probes remain ongoing.

McBride did not respond to questions about allegations made in the complaints. Instead, an attorney for Watermark issued a short statement to The Times, saying: “We are unable to comment on much of this, as it is the subject of ongoing litigation.”

“However, we do want to point out that all of Watermark’s security officers are licensed by the State of California Bureau of Security & Investigative Services, who conduct their own criminal history investigation prior to approving individual Security Guard Licenses,” lawyer Jaimee Wellerstein said in a written statement. She added that Watermark “prides itself on being a second chance employer for those who may have limited opportunities for stable employment and who can otherwise meet the requirements set by the [state] to obtain a Security Guard License.”

The LAPD said in an email that it had no “information regarding the company,” without commenting further.

The Times reviewed dozens of internal Watermark documents and court filings in lawsuits against the company and spoke with 11 former Watermark workers, nearly all of whom requested anonymity because they fear retaliation and endangering future job prospects given McBride’s influence in the tight-knit private security community.

The onetime employees’ backgrounds varied, but their accounts were consistent.

Most said they had found out about Watermark through word of mouth while their disciplinary cases were moving forward. Such referrals usually came from police colleagues or attorneys, but in one case an LAPD officer who came under department investigation was reportedly advised by an Internal Affairs detective not involved in his case to contact McBride for a job.

Those who spoke with The Times said they began working quickly; their guard uniforms were shipped to their homes within days when they reached out to McBride. Most of the ex-employees who spoke to The Times said they found it odd that they never received pay stubs. However, they said that initially they had no reason to suspect anything was amiss.

And so, the employees said, they continued to work because McBride always paid on time and in full — at least on paper.

But several said they began they began to ask questions after discovering that the hourly rate they were making was sometimes closer to $30, with McBride making up the difference in the form of bonuses — which were subject to increased taxes.

This, according to a complaint filed with the LAPD, allowed McBride to reduce his payroll tax and insurance obligations.

One former Watermark employee, Tai Vaimaona, said he was hired to work at the Walgreens at 6th Street and Vermont Avenue in Koreatown, which was known in the private security world as a particularly troubled location with foot traffic around the clock. He left the company after only four months, he said, after noticing he wasn’t getting a paid lunch break.

He also began to suspect he was being denied overtime pay despite clocking 12-hour days; a Watermark employee handbook reviewed by The Times states that employees are entitled to time-and-a-half pay for working more than eight hours per day or 40 hours per week. Vaimaona said he did receive pay stubs, but did not initially check them.

With 40 years of experience in private security, Vaimaona said, walking away from the job was easy for him. But others stay on at Watermark and other area security firms out of fear of losing their income or having their names tarnished in a field in which reputations are hard to revive, he said.

“They don’t want to rock the boat and say anything,” said Vaimaona, a retired narcotics detective who first started working private security in the early 1990s, protecting celebrities such as the late rapper Eazy-E and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. “This is a dirty, dirty effin’ world in security.”

Several former Watermark employees who spoke with The Times on the condition that their names not be used said they only figured out they were being shortchanged in January 2023, when the company switched to a new payroll system that allowed them to see their real hourly earnings. Workers who confronted McBride about their pay had their hours cut, according to the Internal Affairs complaint filed by a former employee.

Others said they were simply taken off the schedule entirely, sometimes without explanation.

In appearances on Fox News and in his monthly column in the union‘s magazine, McBride frequently has lashed out at those he argues are preventing police from doing their jobs: progressive lawmakers, mainstream media outlets such as The Times and, occasionally, LAPD leadership — which he argues is out of touch and too often panders to special interests. In 2017, he won $1.5 million in a lawsuit that alleged his LAPD supervisors had retaliated against him.

McBride and a former LAPD cop started the security firm that evolved into Watermark in 2012. In a declaration earlier this year in a lawsuit related to a shooting by one of his former guards, McBride wrote that the company, in which his wife has a stake, had grown to between 100 and 120 employees.

Clients came to include Walgreens — through a subcontract with Allied Universal, one the nation’s largest providers of guards, to protect about 15 stores. Watermark also worked with Walgreens and Patagonia. But after The Times published an article in 2020 on McBride’s controversial record of policing, the outdoor clothing retailer reportedly canceled its contract with Watermark, several of his former employees told The Times.

Around the same time, federal government records show, Watermark claimed pandemic-related financial hardship and received $233,000 in federal recovery loans to cover the payroll for what at the time was 63 employees. The loan has since been forgiven, the records show.

On top of his earnings from Watermark, McBride draws a union salary; he owns at least three homes in one subdivision in Camarillo, and bought a $1.15-million house on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, according to property records.

He and his wife also bought a former fitness studio in Ventura County, and are renovating and converting it into a tiki bar to be called House of Bamboo, according to local news reports. In recent years, business records show, McBride has created several limited liability companies. California secretary of state records indicate he also moved Watermark‘s headquarters from California to Nevada, which has no state or corporate income tax.

In addition to its corporate retail clients, Watermark provides executive and celebrity protection services. McBride — who has roughly 20 minor film and TV roles to his credit, according to the entertainment-industry database IMDb — has himself worked as a part-time bodyguard for A-listers including rapper Travis Scott. In his initial license application for Watermark, McBride said he was also vice president of Discreet Protection Security Group, co-owned by former LAPD Officer Charles Wunder.

Since 2015, McBride — a veteran of some 30 years with the LAPD — has served as a director for the politically influential Los Angeles Police Protective League. The organization has roughly 8,800 members and represents officers in labor and workplace disputes, including those accused of excessive use of force and other cases of alleged misconduct. Part of the reason McBride has held on to the job, an employee said in a complaint with the LAPD, is that it “allows him first crack at suspended, relieved from duty, and fired officers.”

As head of the police union’s legal committee, he has access to an internal database with detailed personnel information about every officer who is sent home pending a disciplinary hearing.

In a putative class-action lawsuit filed in June in Los Angeles County Superior Court, former Watermark employee James Bibeau accused the company of failing to pay overtime for at least four years. The suit contends Watermark employees worked more than eight hours a day, seven days a week, “without being properly compensated.”

The security company, according to the lawsuit, was “failing to accurately track and/or pay for all minutes and hours actually worked at the proper overtime rate of pay,” and was “engaging … or permitting employees to work off the clock.”

Bibeau’s attorney, Jasmin Gill, declined to say how many Watermark employees had signed on to the suit or to discuss specific allegations “out of respect for the integrity” of the judicial process. McBride has not responded in court to the suit.

Security experts say the demand for private guards soared after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and has picked up again in the years since the 2020 outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic — buoyed by growing anxiety around smash-and-grab thefts and other crimes. Guards, some toting firearms or less-lethal weapons, are now a common sight at schools, bars, retail stores and other venues.

According to Duke University law professor Ben Grunwald, who has studied the private security industry’s boom in recent years, hired guards face far less oversight than police and have lower licensing and training standards. Such guardrails vary by state.

Beyond his concerns about putting officers with “tarnished histories” back on the streets, the professor said, the lack of consistent regulations also means the guards will have fewer workplace protections than when they were at the LAPD or other law enforcement agencies.

“It’s easier to exploit people who have fewer resources and less political power and who aren’t protected by a union,” Grunwald said.

California’s requirements for contract security guards are among the most rigorous in the nation, with a minimum of 40 hours of training; to carry a weapon, they must qualify for separate permits for guns, batons or pepper spray.

The number of licensed security guards in the state grew by nearly 4% — from about 301,000 to roughly 313,000 — between fiscal years 2021 and 2022, according to a report from the California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services, which has pushed for increasing training requirements for guards.

Last fall, a former Watermark employee sent a complaint to senior LAPD officials, including then-Chief Michel Moore, a frequent target of McBride’s criticism of department leadership. The complaint, which has not previously been made public, accused McBride of using the union “as a means of recruiting employees for his company, and the expansion of his business.”

The former employee‘s complaint also accused McBride of traveling around the state for Watermark business — while on the union clock — and of giving false police credentials to employees who were never cops, when clients thought they were getting experienced officers.

The complainant promised to furnish Internal Affairs with “supporting documentation in the form of names, text messages, emails, photographs, payroll spreadsheets, time sheets, and receipts.”

Several former Watermark employees who requested anonymity alleged that if, for instance, a guard was barred from carrying a firearm due to their work status, the company would supply a realistic-looking pellet gun, or instruct them to wear a heavy jacket and tell store workers they were carrying a concealed weapon underneath it.

Not everyone who went to work for Watermark landed there with a dubious past.

But a review of one company roster showed McBride employed officers who had come under investigation on allegations of misconduct that included using excessive force, committing workers’ compensation fraud and domestic violence.

Among them was Lamas, the LAPD officer who was relieved of duty in late 2022 and charged with six counts of disorderly conduct for distributing explicit photos of his then-wife to some of their police colleagues. In March, Lamas pleaded no contest to a single misdemeanor count and was sentenced to probation; his former wife, an LAPD officer, is currently suing the city, alleging that department leaders failed to protect her from sexual harassment and retaliation.

Lamas said in an email to The Times that he hadn’t “ever worked for that company.” He did not respond to a follow-up email that noted his name appears on a Watermark employee roster.

According to that document, the company has also employed a Los Angeles cop who was criminally charged with falsifying information on field interview cards and later cleared; one who was fired for allegedly selling drugs to an undercover investigator; and another who lost his job for reportedly pointing his gun at another motorist while off duty.

In addition, Watermark employed a former officer who left the LAPD after being convicted of raping two women while on duty in the 1990s. The former officer served three years in prison and was registered as a sex offender before Watermark hired him.

The company declined to comment on him or the other officers.

Other current and former officers listed as Watermark employees were recommended for termination by their departments but prevailed in their disciplinary hearings and went back to work.

When a Watermark guard was indicted in August 2023 as part of a federal corruption investigation, another employee texted McBride a photo of a front-page story about the case in the East Bay Times newspaper.

“Does he work for us,” McBride wrote back back, according to a screenshot of their text exchange. “Yes,” the employee responded.

“Did he get arrested” McBride asked.

The response was again: “Yes.”

McBride responded with a single-word expletive, to which the employee wrote that the guard had “bonded” out of jail.

“So he’s still working for us?” McBride texted. “Tell him to keep his mouth shut.”

In recent years, Watermark security guards have been involved in multiple incidents that attracted public attention, including at least one fatal shooting.

In November 2022, a Watermark guard shot and killed an emotionally disturbed man who had stabbed two customers, including a 9-year-old boy, at a Target store at West 7th and South Figueroa streets. The man had reportedly lunged at the guard before being shot.

Both stabbing victims have filed a lawsuit against Target, which has denied all allegations of wrongdoing in the ongoing litigation. The Watermark guard, Enedino Espinoza, has also sued, alleging that the incident had caused him “panic attacks, social avoidance, intrusive memories, negative thoughts, nightmares, insomnia.”

Arkady Itkin is a San Francisco-based attorney who represented a former Watermark employee who reached an out-of-court settlement after suing McBride for lost wages. He said he couldn’t discuss particulars of the case due to a protective order. But he didn’t hold back when describing how his client was treated by McBride and Watermark.

“I don’t think it’s criminal, but it’s despicable nevertheless,” he said.

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.