Multiple questions were raised when a security guard working at a downtown Lincoln bar shot and killed Gregory Little Jr. on April 7. Some of those questions were answered when prosecutors said the guard did not commit a crime when he shot Little, who had reached for a handgun that had fallen from the guard’s vest.
Others, like how a bar could be open at 3 a.m., an hour after alcohol sales legally end, have been clarified.
And the Royal Hookah Bar & Lounge has had its license suspended and been given a mandatory 1 a.m. closing time by the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission.
Raised in a story by Journal Star reporter Andrew Wegley, one of the most troubling queries remains unresolved. That is, are security guards licensed on any level and can those guards legally carry concealed weapons without a permit? The answers: no and yes. And both need to be reversed.
Nebraska requires formal training or a state occupational license to teach school, give body piercings, paint or cut nails and style hair. The same requirements hold for massage therapists, funeral directors and anyone working with asbestos. But there are no regulations for private bouncers or security guards, who since September can carry concealed weapons without a permit.
The basic regulatory structure of Nebraska’s laws governing “private policing” — the closest thing the state has on the books to regulating private security guards — was imposed in 1959 and, as the hookah bar incident has sadly illustrated,.
