In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton, Scottish detective and spy, met Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in a local Masonic Hall and formed the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency. The former Government Services division, PGS, now operates as Securitas Critical Infrastructure Services, Inc.

Pinkerton Corporate Risk Management', a division of the Swedish security company Securitas AB. The company now operates as 'Pinkerton Consulting & Investigations, Inc. The Pinkertons were also used as guards in coal, iron, and lumber disputes in Illinois, Michigan, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia as well as the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921. The ensuing battle between Pinkerton agents and striking workers led to the deaths of seven Pinkerton agents and nine steelworkers. One such confrontation was the Homestead Strike of 1892, in which Pinkerton agents were called in to reinforce the strikebreaking measures of industrialist Henry Clay Frick, acting on behalf of Andrew Carnegie. ĭuring the labor strikes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, businessmen hired the Pinkerton Agency to infiltrate unions, supply guards, keep strikers and suspected unionists out of factories, and recruit goon squads to intimidate workers. Pinkerton was the largest private law enforcement organization in the world at the height of its power. Notably, the Pinkerton Detective Agency hired women and minorities, a practice uncommon at the time.

Pinkerton's agents performed services ranging from security guarding to private military contracting work. Pinkerton became famous when he claimed to have foiled a plot to assassinate president-elect Abraham Lincoln, who later hired Pinkerton agents for his personal security during the Civil War. Pinkerton, founded as the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is a private security guard and detective agency established in the United States by Scotsman Allan Pinkerton in 1850 and currently a subsidiary of Securitas AB. Security management, full-service risk management consulting Investigations, employment screening, protective services, security, crisis management, intelligence services

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