Founders James South and Jeffrey Gale have been friends since childhood. They attended school together, and, upon graduating high school, enrolled in the State Police Academy. Both Jim and Jeff were with the State Police for over 25 years, pursuing different paths, but occasionally working assignments together. They were best man at each other’s weddings, raised their families together, and, upon retirement from the State Police, knew they wanted to be in business together as well. With their extensive experience, continuing to work in the field of investigation and security was an obvious choice. They founded South and Associates to be the investigative side, and Garrison Security Group to provide security services in 2011.
Since then, both Jim and Jeff have continued to seek out instruction and certifications that allow them to provide the most up-to-date and professional services for their clients. Both businesses have continued to grow organically since their inception, including adding more team members with the same values.
Joseph Herrity joined the companies in 2019, bringing over 35 years of military, law enforcement and investigative experience. Joe has extensive international, government, and defense contract experience and has worked on (almost) every continent. Mr. Herrity established and supervised protective service details (PSD) and base security operations in hostile locations such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, conducting approximately 10,000 PSD sorties for individual trips/flights/missions totaling almost 2 million road miles, moving 19,800 employees and clients. All of these movements and base security operations were self-protected, without coalition forces for escort or protection. He also established an air bridge (rotary and fixed wing aircraft) that conducted hundreds of sorties between sites in northern, central and southern Iraq without sustaining a single casualty.
Kelly Dietz was brought on board in 2018 as our Director of Administration. With over 10 years of office management experience, she is our resident expert on Trackops – the client portal that allows us to share reports, scheduling details, and keep our clients fully informed on the status of their cases.
