“I have carried a weapon professionally for years: surely I can skip ahead.” It is the most reasonable question we get from Killeen, and the answer is still no. Here is why, and what the first class actually gets you.

Weapons Experience and Texas Licensing Are Separate Things

Killeen sits next door to Fort Cavazos, so a large share of the people in this city looking at private security are either serving, transitioning out, or married to someone who is. Many of them have handled weapons to a standard far beyond anything a civilian course asks for. None of that changes the licensing sequence, because the sequence is not measuring marksmanship. It is measuring whether you have been trained in Texas private security law.

Under 37 TAC §35.141(a)(1), Level 2 is the course that must be completed by anyone applying for a non-commissioned security officer license, and it is the required first step toward a security officer commission. Everyone starts there. The soldier with a decade of range time and the twenty-two-year-old with none take the same first class.

It Is an Unarmed Course, and It Should Be

To be unambiguous: Level 2 contains no firearms training and no firearms qualification. No range, no weapon handling. It does not by itself authorize you to carry on duty and it does not by itself produce a commission. If you are expecting a shooting component, you are thinking of the next course.

What it covers is the material that transitioning service members most often find genuinely new: Texas security law, the professional responsibilities of a security officer, emergency procedures, and ethics, from a curriculum prepared or approved by the Texas Department of Public Safety. A private security officer’s authority in Texas is narrower and shaped differently from anything on an installation. The rules of engagement you operated under do not transfer. This is the class where you learn the ones that replace them, and it is worth more to you than it is to someone with no background at all, precisely because the habits you are carrying need recalibrating.

The Certificate You Will Be Asked For Twice

Finish the course and you receive a certificate of completion, PSP 36 as it is referred to here, which must be submitted with your license application. Keep it. Under §35.81(a), the eventual security officer commission application has to be accompanied by both the Level 2 and the Level 3 certificates of completion.

That is worth flagging for anyone who may PCS, move out of state and come back, or simply change employers three times in two years. Store a copy somewhere durable and personal, not only in a work email account you will lose access to. You can read the provision and everything around it in 37 TAC Chapter 35.

Working the Central Texas Market Between the Two Courses

Killeen and the surrounding Bell County communities have a security labor market shaped by the installation next door: a lot of transient population, a lot of apartment and rental housing, hospitals and clinics serving both military families and the wider region, retail corridors, school campuses and municipal buildings. Almost all of that is unarmed, non-commissioned work, and it hires year-round because the population turns over constantly.

For someone still in uniform, that combination is unusually workable. A non-commissioned license lets you take part-time or off-duty security work now, build a civilian employment record before separation, and be a known quantity to a local company on the day your commission comes through. Plenty of officers in this area take precisely that route.

No Continuing Education While You Are Unarmed

Useful for anyone juggling a duty schedule: §35.161(b) specifically exempts noncommissioned security officers from continuing education requirements. Nothing recurring to fit around a training rotation at this stage. That starts once you are commissioned, and it is handled through the armed security renewal course.

Fitting It Around a Duty Schedule

East Texas Security Training Academy delivers the Level 2 course 100% online, which is the practical answer for a Killeen student who cannot commit to a fixed classroom block hours away. It is also worth knowing that under §35.141(a)(1), §35.142 and §35.143, Level 2 may be taught either by the licensee’s own designated person or by a DPS-approved school with a DPS-approved instructor: so an employer-run version can be legitimate. Level 3 has no such in-house option; the commissioned course always comes from an approved school.

Take this one first, hold on to the certificate, then move to the Level 3 commissioned officer course when you are ready to be armed. Our FAQ page answers the questions that come up most often, and the full class list shows every step in order.