Tyrone Johnson had never experienced a life-threatening situation in his five years as a security guard at a technology services building in Totowa.
But he and 150 other union members at a rally in Newark on Wednesday all felt the death of their colleague Aland Etienne, a guard from Brooklyn who was among four victims killed in a July 28 mass shooting in Manhattan.
“People refer to security officers as ‘rent-a-cops,’” said Johnson, 67, of Woodbridge, a father of three and grandfather of seven who makes $43,000 a year. “And one of the people that was killed in that shooting in Manhattan was in our union. So we do very dangerous work.”…