The Private Arm of the Law

[Waya]

Some question the granting of police power to security firms.
Raleigh, North Carolina - Kevin Watt crouched down to search the rusted Cadillac he had stopped for cruising the parking lot of a Raleigh apartment complex with a broken light. He pulled out two open Bud Light cans, an empty Corona bottle, rolling papers, a knife, a hammer, a stereo speaker, and a car radio with wires sprouting out.

"Who's this belong to, man?" Watt asked the six young Latino men he had frisked and lined up behind the car. Five were too young to drink. None had a driver's license. One had under his hooded sweat shirt the tattoo of a Hispanic gang across his back.

A gang initiation, Watt thought.

With the sleeve patch on his black shirt, the 9mm gun on his hip and the blue light on his patrol car, he looked like an ordinary police officer as he stopped the car on a Friday night last month. Watt works, though, for a business called Capitol Special Police. It is one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by the state of North Carolina - and part of a pattern across the United States in which public safety is shifting into private hands.

Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in some places - and trying to expand their terrain. The "company police agencies," as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets. Elsewhere - including wealthy gated communities in South Florida and the Tri-Rail commuter trains between Miami and West Palm Beach - private security patrols without police authority carry weapons, sometimes dress like SWAT teams and make citizen's arrests.

More:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/AR2007010100665.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. When I attended Sweet Briar College, the security was contracted out to

the Pinkerton Agency (whose roots go back to the Civil War) and later, the Burns Agency. The company provided security officers whose job was to provide protection to the students, the faculty, the campus property, etc. They also had the ability to write and turn in reports of handbook infractions, such as men who were "visiting after hours", leading to "due process" of the offending students. They also had the ability to start a police investigation and call in either local or state police to follow a criminal investigation. They had both badges, and later, guns. OTOH, they were a welcome presence if "visitors" became a problem and needed to be removed from campus. It was a love/hate relationship. I became friends with an officer who eventually was promoted to the head of the campus security. But I do recognize there were rogue agents, one of whom tried to rape a student. I'm not sure whether it's best to have an absence of security vs. contracting for private safety.

[northshore]

2. some problems

With a public agency there is a chain of accountability going from the officer on the street, thru supervision, on to a review mechanism (IDA, professional standards, etc.) in many cases a civilian review board, on up to elected officials who ultimately must answer for the actions of the agency.


With the rent a cops, the only people who have to be answered to are the stockholders of the corporation and the people paying for the service.

One of them ever trys to "arrest" me, they better shoot me in the ass, cause as far as I am concerned, they don't exist.

we have the same problem here in NYS with "Campus police". The ones near me, Canisius College, in Buffalo NY, feel their mandate extends to miles of city streets between their remote buildings. Maybe they could buy a place in Albany and write speeding tickets on the Thruway and cut tuition.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Welcome to DU. n/t

[newyawker99]

4. Hi northshore!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[lectrobyte]

5. Interesting. I'd seen these guys directing traffic around the malls

for xmess, and just assumed they were some branch of the Raleigh city police. Their cars are identical, i.e., Crown Vics with the same blue and white color scheme as the city police, except with Capitol Special Police in large letters on the doors. Their uniforms looked similar as well. How long before we get a RoboCop?