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.”

Johnson is one of 2,500 New Jersey security guards who belong to Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, or SEIU, which staged the Wed

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