Kentwood security company acquisition adds 75 West Michigan jobs, boosts revenues $2M

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Some 75 new jobs may be coming to West Michigan soon, if the predictions of DK Security’s leaders are accurate.

Last week the Kentwood company announced its acquisition of Mason-based security firm Joseph A. Young & Associates. The acquisition will add some 125 positions, 75 of which are new, and will boost revenues to more than $10 million this year—up from $7.9 million in 2008.

“We’re primarily a security provider, but the secret is that we’re a full service company providing security guards, armed guards, investigators and detection dogs,” says John Kendall, president and CEO. “We also do background screenings, fingerprinting and drug testing.”

Kendall, a retired FBI agent, hopes to hire other retired agents, former police officers, former military personnel and students and graduates of area criminal justice programs.

Ninety percent of the company’s clients are located from central Michigan to the west lakeshore. The firm also is licensed in Ohio, Arizona and Florida.

“We do a lot of investigative work,” Kendall says. “We put people in businesses to investigate things like sexual harassment and drug and alcohol sales.”

The company provides security at schools and its K-9 unit has dogs trained to detect illegal drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs, firearms and ammunition.

“At one school there was a boy who had smoked marijuana at a party and his jacket smelled like it,” Kendall says. “The dogs smelled it and when the school opened his locker they found nunchucks. The dogs can’t sniff nunchucks, of course, but they detected the marijuana on the jacket and things went from there.”

DK Security grew 63 percent over the last five years. The acquisition will bring its employment rolls to about 750.

Source: John Kendall, DK Security; Andrea Groom, Wondergem Consulting, Inc.

Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].