Ira A. Lipman

Ira Ackerman Lipman (November 15, 1940 – September 16, 2019) was an American businessman and philanthropist. He was the founder and chairman of Guardsmark, a privately owned security company with a payroll of 17,000 employees and 130 offices in the United States, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom and France. In 2015, he sold Guardsmark to Universal Protection Service, the largest private security company in the United States, and he served as its vice chairman until its 2016 merger with AlliedBarton. He was called "a pioneer in the private security guard business". to a Jewish family in Little Rock, Arkansas. His father, Mark Lipman, was the founder of Mark Lipman Service, a private investigation company, and the author of the 1975 book Stealing: How America's Employees Are Stealing Their Companies Blind. His mother was Belle Ackerman. He was a member of Aleph Zadik Aleph. While he was in high school, Lipman acted as an anonymous source to journalist John Chancellor, who was covering desegregation.

Business career Lipman founded Guardsmark, a security company, in 1963.

In 1971, Lipman disagreed with City College of New York Professor Lawrence Zeitlin's research, which showed companies would save money by letting good employees steal. Instead, he argued that companies should cut costs by investing in good security to prevent theft.

Meanwhile, in 1972, after President Richard Nixon laid off 1,100 federal airport security agents, Lipman argued that they should be replaced with private armed guards who should be present in airports at all times. Moreover, Lipman suggested that airport security could be improved if frequent travelers carried with them special cards, as airport security would then focus on irregular travelers and significantly reduce the risks of skyjacking. He added that passengers should be required to go through metal detectors, their carry-on luggage should be searched, and landing ramps should be equipped with closed-circuit television camera.

Lipman expanded his business to home security in 1973, initially in Memphis, Houston, New Haven, Connecticut, and Concord, California. Meanwhile, he also expanded his business to patrolling entire neighborhoods, the first of which was Belle Meade, Tennessee.

Lipman expanded his business further with bodyguard protection for high-net-worth individuals by 1974. He argued that this was necessary to prevent kidnappings.

A 1981 report from the United States Department of Justice's Law Enforcement Assistance Administration quoted Lipman's advice that having a dog in the house was an efficient deterrent for burglaries. Meanwhile, in a 1988 lecture at the Institute of Criminal Justice and Criminology of the University of Maryland, College Park, Lipman suggested private security firms should have access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's criminal records to weed out felons and individuals with mental health problems.

Lipman's business increased in the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma city bombing. On September 11, 2001, Lipman instructed his employees to evacuate floors 48th to 52nd of the One Liberty Plaza, adjacent to the World Trade Center.

By 2014, the company had an annual revenue of US$500 million, with 17,000 employees. It had "130 offices in the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and the United Kingdom." Lipman served as its vice chairman until its merger with AlliedBarton in 2016. He also served on the board of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, He is the recipient of the Stanley C. Pace Leadership in Ethics Award from the Ethics Research Center. In 1995, he endowed the annual $50,000 John Chancellor Award. He served on the board of trustees of Ohio Wesleyan University, from 1988 to 1997. He subsequently served as its chairman. He served as the Honorary Life Chairman of the National Conference for Community and Justice. With his wife, he donated a Torah scroll to Yeshiva University in 2007. He served on the board of trustees of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Lipman collected paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Mary Cassatt. They had three sons, Gus, who served as Senior Vice President of Guardsmark, and M Benjamin. Lipman died of complications from lymphoma on September 16, 2019, at the age of 78.

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