One step closer to The Godfather


They will make you an offer you can't refuse
Okay, I keep flashing on the classic film.

Private companies being hired to enforce the law.

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.

The idea of private guards and security companies doesn't concern me.

The idea of private firms with police powers worries me. Especially since right now one trend is shield police officers from prosecution because they were just doing their job.

Add in that bit about expanding territory and it begins to look like a gangster film.

I have some natural concerns about police officers. The idea of private police officers make those concerns fears.

If things like photo radar and drug informants are any indication, governments will look the other way as long as they get their cut of the take.

Hat tip to Wren's Nest.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - January 2, 2007 at 05:56 PM  Tag


 ◊  ◊   ◊  ◊ 

Random selections from NeoWayland's library


Pagan Vigil "Because LIBERTY demands more than just black or white"
© 2005 - 2009 All Rights Reserved