Would security guards doing very low level enforcement at the neighbourhood level replace most police work?

[Jonty30]

I'm a security guard. My experience is that 90%+ people will comply to my request to move on if I confront them. I never have to do much beyond taking to people to achieve compliance. I'm not allowed to touch anybody. If, however, I've done everything I can, I have the option of calling the police. It is just unnecessary 90%+ of the time.

So, I'm thinking that, because does not have the option of backing down or avoiding the physicality of an encounter, that for minor problems whether cops should be called at all, exceptions being reasonable concern about violence or absolute disregard to moving on.

[Vehmgericht]

David Dorn, an expert on these matters, is unavailable for comment.

[Greetings_Puny_Humans]

That’s not what’s going to happen when these cities shut down their police departments.

Policing will be taken over by leftist political organizations, calling themselves “Community led” and supported. Imagine getting arrested by a Black Panther member or the ACLU.

[Tired of Taxes]

The two police officers would be much more versatile. You could send them anywhere.

Agreed.

Shocking that places like Minneapolis are actually takng seriously the idea that the police department should be disbanded.

Even just cutting the budget would be a bad idea in high crime areas.

[pepsionice]

In Brazil, a lot of apartment buildings have two to three private guys with shotguns hired up. But to be effective in Minneapolis? You might require 15k of these guys.

[SauronOfMordor]

What police have, which private security doesn’t, is the right to use force to obtain compliance, combined with a high degree of immunity from PERSONAL lawsuits regarding use of force.

[dp0622]

Rofl!!

[Tallguy]

It would work right up to the point where one of these security guards uses deadly-force in a questionable situation. Then the mooing heard of leftists will begin demanding “professional police departments” to stem the tide of bloodshed.

[eastexsteve]

I once knew a security guard in the North Houston area who wished he was a cop. He had a bad habit of continually approaching people while in his uniform, and telling them how they were breaking the law. Because of this, he was also a regular customer at the local emergency room. I remember one summer he visited them twice.

[Tallguy]

*** Real cops would not have left me in this predicament. ***

I take your general point, but have you ever tried to legally carry concealed in Philadelphia? Get back to me after the highly trained police officer takes your legally carried weapon and tells to to contact the precinct to (maybe in a couple of months, when they get around to it) get it back. PD’s can deliberately misinterpret your rights, because they are politically inconvenient to their masters.

[eastexsteve]

You have to be able to use deadly force if need be. It always comes to this. Back in the day, the Pilgrim Dry Cleaners chain in Houston tried everything to keep it’s 24-hr locations from being constantly robbed. They even went the unarmed security guard route. But, only when they started putting armed private guards with shotguns in their stores did the holdups finally stop. Even at that, they had to bury a few bad guys before they eventually got their point across.

[max americana]

that’s why they’re called “toy cops” for a reason. They’re a joke. Sane law abiding citizens do follow them but criminals dont.

[trebb]

For most areas where it might be effective, it probably isn’t needed...it’s the inner cities and ghetto areas that require most of the police force.

[MrRelevant]

That’s because you are convenient as opposed to calling police and making reports. You are the first line of defense. Once you are the only line of defense I’d bet things change quickly.

[sphinx]

Several different mental experiments are in order. Once upon a time, in the mid-19th through early 20th centuries, the front line of policing in major cities in the U.S. and northern Europe was the local constable on foot patrol. Beat cops were not highly trained. Nor were they well paid. But there were a lot of them, in enough numbers that an officer who needed assistance could blow his whistle and his fellow officers would come running. That means that several would be within earshot at any time; they probably met up regularly and chatted at the corners where their beats intersected. It was an honorable blue collar job, and guys who were good at it and showed initiative could move up, but a lot of them were just neighborhood guys who knew everybody, often got to know and mentor the kids who were spending too much time on the streets, and dispensed some informal street justice that kept minor matters out of court. There were some bad applies but most of them were ok. Then we professionalized the police, paid them a lot more, and put most of them in cars where they become an alien presence.

Private security guards are analogous to the old beat cops, without any formal police power. In large part, the private security industry emerged to fill the niche left when police officers retreated into the cars. The private security guards are tied to a specific employer, not the neighborhood, but I would imagine, depending on the layout of the area, that there can often be a real spillover effect due simply to having eyes on the street. Neighborhood watch patrols do the same thing, but private security guards work through the wee hours, long after the neighborhood volunteers have gone home.

I would be interested in an experiment in community policing that brought back elements of the old system. Having beat cops that frequently circle your block and who are within whistle call of each other translates into lots of bodies. That gets prohibitively expensive unless pay is very low. If pay is low, training standards, public expectations and legal liabilities must be adjusted accordingly. The whole system would have to shift gears. But in theory, a lot of shoeleather neighborhood cops on the street backed up by much smaller, more highly trained and highly mobile response teams might be worth exploring.

[VTenigma]

A security guard acting as the police is the police. At that point it’s just semantics.

[snoringbear]

“ Sure...just form a neighborhood militia...”
*********

Actually, the affluent have already done something similar. Many now live in gated communities and have 24/7 security. I foresee this movement expanding considerably. Those that can’t afford gated community and security will form neighborhood watches and such.

[Mom MD]

Most of the reason the 90% move along when asked is because the police will be involved if they don’t. Remove that back up and see what happens to the compliance rare

[sphinx]

By the way, the same structural issue exists in medicine. We have made MDs the gatekeepers for far too much. As a practical matter, experienced nurses are informally practicing a lot of medicine in doctors offices and clinics, and as long as nobody gets sued (because something goes wrong when a nurse is overstepping the existing regulatory limits in the licensing hierarchy), this works out fine. Expanding the role of nurse practitioners, EMT's and other paraprofessionals would probably be a good thing. The MD's could shed a lot of routine duties and focus on more complicated issues. The ever increasing sophistication of medical testing and IT diagnostics is already pushing this along.

Other countries do it differently. I had a conference some years back in Costa Rica and had a bottle of prescription medicine that went astray on the flight. I was grimly expecting a medical ordeal involving a real runaround, maybe a trip to an embassy doctor, and several international calls to get the prescription refilled. I started with the concierge at the hotel and asked him who to call. He phoned up the local pharmacy. Within 30 minutes, a pleasant young lady on a motor scooter arrived at the hotel with my meds. The U.S. overcomplicates a lot of things.

What we have traditionally done in medicine is akin to demanding that we have a certified chemical engineer on the back of every garbage truck, on the chance that someone will put a hazardous substance out in the trash.

[Saltmeat]

Who is going to make arrests, do the investigations, risk their lives, work lousy hours, and do everything that policeman do for the pay that they get. One sheriff once told me that his biggest problem was hiring someone smart enough to do the job and dumb enough to do for the pay he could offer.

[Cincinnatus.45-70]

Security guards may be all that is needed for a polite society filled with polite people, which parts of Canada still are. However, what about that 10%, even in Canada?

Security guards can get some of the job done in a society where everyone knows they can call the police for a forceful response. Once there are no police, unarmed security guards will be killed by hoodlums like fat rabbits.