(Editor’s Note: This is Part III in a series on the history of H&S Protection Systems.)

After Sentra Protective Services and Horgan Sales joined forces to become H&S Protection Systems, the question for the business was: What’s next? The year was 2007. The nature of the security industry was about to change.

Until that time, the home security market boomed. Many businesses were modeled on providing home and business security, as well as fire alarms and perhaps carbon monoxide protection. H&S was not the exception. In 2008, the major recession hit, impacting security services along with nearly every business in the United States. Your “typical” security company had to change.

H&S was ahead of the ball, looking at how to increase our reach and determine what came next in terms of our customers’ needs. That’s always been our focus, and because of the nature of the security market and the national economy at the time, we looked at how to complement our expertise as we became one company, and also how to best share that with customers.

With strengths in sales, finances and operations, as well as similar types of customers and equipment from the two initial companies, H&S was able to interlock our customer base. This allowed us to respond quickly to any service issues, and focus strongly on our local bases in the communities we served. We hang our hats on this – being there on-time with answers that make sense, then delivering effective and intelligent solutions.

Yes, we’ve grown. We’ve added services, like a stronger video platform, as customers seek additional technologies to protect their homes and businesses. But in many ways, we’re still the same as we were before the merger: Knowing our customers, being accessible and finding out what you want before proposing how we can help.

When Ed Horgan ran the business, he got out of the fire protection service when it became clear that it was not viable for our model. He looked into alarms and other areas for growth. He changed the business in a good way, one that helped put us where we are today.

We will continue to change in a good way for our employees and our customers. We look forward to serving our Wisconsin customers many years into the future, and hope you let us know how we’re doing.

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a short series on the history of H&S Protection.)

From our humble beginnings in 1959 as Horgan Sales, servicing fire extinguishers, we’re proud to have expanded our offerings and joined with Sentra Protective Services to provide a wide range of security services across a larger area of Wisconsin in 2015.  Like the country, we were simpler back then.  Our history reflects both the evolution of business in the United States, and the nature of the fire/security industry.

Dave Horgan, grandfather of H&S Co-Owner Mike Horgan (along with Steve Garritson), started Horgan Sales in Stevens Point in 1959 while working at AT&T.  Selling and servicing fire extinguishers for local businesses, he started operating part-time in the basement of his house.  The mess from the yellow powder used to fill the fire extinguishers was too much for his wife Vernie though, and he found a building in downtown Stevens Point to maintain domestic peace.

Over the next 12 years, Dave Horgan grew the business and added other fire-related services. His son Ed joined the business in 1971, returning to Stevens Point from a sales manager position he held with Proctor and Gamble in New England at the time.  As the fire protection business commoditized, the Horgan’s looked to new markets, adding restaurant suppression products for kitchens, testing of fire extinguishers and hoses, a 24-hour answering service, along with selling and servicing pagers. Slowly, too, employment with the company grew from a one-man show to six offices with upwards of 50 employees.

That was peak employment, and by the late-1980s, the Horgan’s sold the fire division/protection equipment side of the business to focus on the new area of burglar alarms.  The pager and answering service were also sold.  They subcontracted the central station response services and began focusing on electronic security.

(Stay tuned for Part II, as we bring you Steve Garritson’s journey into the industry and the creation of Sentra Protective Systems.)

There are many reasons to install video security cameras in your home or business. You want to prevent crime, and deter it. Sometimes you get lucky and a perpetrator is caught on video. We had that happen recently.

H&S Protection cameras recently captured an arsonist torching a Milwaukee bar. We hope to be able to post the video soon for others to see, but at this point, here’s what we know. We installed a camera system for our customer. Watching the video from the fire, you can clearly see an arsonist pouring gasoline in a number of locations, then striking matches to start the fire.

It’s a good thing he was clumsy, because he couldn’t get the matches to light the first or second time. We hope that will help us identify him as we work with local authorities to catch him. Our clips show him torching the back, and marching boldly out in front of the bar to start the blaze there as well.

Our night vision video did what it was supposed to do. We have very clear pictures and have provided those to authorities. People come to H&S Protection for this very reason.

The bar was damaged, but not destroyed. The fire department did its job, and we want to salute emergency response officials for arriving quickly to prevent further destruction of the property.