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Private Police Forces and Government Ethics
Monday, August 24th, 2015
Robert Wechsler
What are the government ethics implications of private security when
it goes beyond protecting specific businesses, malls, universities,
and gated communities, becomes an adjunct to or replacement of
an ordinary police force, and is done in conjunction with the public
police force and, often, using off-duty public police officers?
Favoritism
One problem is that such private forces generally protect the most wealthy neighborhoods. Setting up a neighborhood force with the support of a city or county government is little different from offering the government a gift of funds for the police force, but insisting that they all be spent in one wealthy neighborhood. This sort of favoritism sends a message that one's police protection depends on one's wealth, a form of favoritism that is not an ethics violation, but which undermines trust in government equivalent to the provision of worse schools in poor neighborhoods, without the alternative of busing, magnet schools, vouchers, or other means of equalizing education. Privatizing an entire police force is less problematic, at least if the officers are subject to government ethics and other laws.
Conflicts of Interest
Another problem arises when off-duty public police officers work for private police forces in these wealthy neighborhoods. Although their work is similar, these officers are wearing two hats and working for two bosses, which may have different interests and goals. In fact, these different interests and goals are sometimes explicitly stated in state and local laws, rules, and regulations, for example in Illinois' Private College Campus Police Act of 1992, which states that it is intended to protect not only the "students, employees, visitors and their property," but also the "interests of the college or university, in the county where the college or university is located." There are going to be a variety of situations where off-duty officers working for a university are conflicted, and it won't be easy to withdraw from participation or otherwise cure the conflict.
A different sort of conflict of interest arises when a city with a private police force is considering limits on outside work by police. It is difficult for a city council to pass a law that would limit a private police force's ability to hire off-duty officers, when council members know that the force protects most of their major donors.
Transparency
A third problem involves secrecy: private police forces are usually not required to have the same level of transparency as public police forces. This could be required, but it does not appear to be common. Especially since constitutional safeguards do not generally apply to private police, it is especially important that there be full transparency.
A New Orleans Example
A recent New York Times Magazine article looked at an especially problematic private police force for the wealthy French Quarter of New Orleans. According to the article, the force was started by one individual, who happened to have made a great deal of money from city waste removal contracts after Hurricane Katrina and who appears to be loaded with conflicts of interest.
One conflict involves the fact that, with city government support and the use of off-duty public police officers, he is using his short-term investment in his own neighborhood (after his house was burglarized) to test an app that he appears to want to sell to neighborhoods across the country.
Another conflict involves the head of the state police, who according to the article once visited the individual at a resort he owned in the Bahamas. A high-level official such as this should not be involved in any way with a friend's public-private venture. And yet he is publicly supporting the individual and invited him to attend a state police sting operation.
Another issue involves ads that the individual paid for, attacking the mayor for allowing a crime wave. The attack ads helped push the mayor to allow the individual to get city support for his neighborhood's experiment, even though the growth of crime occurred throughout the city.
Yet another issue involves gift certificates the individual gave to particular officers who he felt did a good job. Not only is this similar to an illegal gratuity to a police officer, but it is part of a personalization that can accompany such privatization. The individual became involved not only in managing the force, but in setting city policy, for example, by pushing for a joint sweep of panhandlers in the French Quarter. Also, the individual's "hunger for credit, his disregard of regulations, his habit of leaking sensitive information that could make it harder to prosecute suspects — all this had resulted in more than a few heated arguments" with the city government and its police force.
These are just a few of the government ethics issues that may come from establishing private police forces in wealthy city neighborhoods.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
Favoritism
One problem is that such private forces generally protect the most wealthy neighborhoods. Setting up a neighborhood force with the support of a city or county government is little different from offering the government a gift of funds for the police force, but insisting that they all be spent in one wealthy neighborhood. This sort of favoritism sends a message that one's police protection depends on one's wealth, a form of favoritism that is not an ethics violation, but which undermines trust in government equivalent to the provision of worse schools in poor neighborhoods, without the alternative of busing, magnet schools, vouchers, or other means of equalizing education. Privatizing an entire police force is less problematic, at least if the officers are subject to government ethics and other laws.
Conflicts of Interest
Another problem arises when off-duty public police officers work for private police forces in these wealthy neighborhoods. Although their work is similar, these officers are wearing two hats and working for two bosses, which may have different interests and goals. In fact, these different interests and goals are sometimes explicitly stated in state and local laws, rules, and regulations, for example in Illinois' Private College Campus Police Act of 1992, which states that it is intended to protect not only the "students, employees, visitors and their property," but also the "interests of the college or university, in the county where the college or university is located." There are going to be a variety of situations where off-duty officers working for a university are conflicted, and it won't be easy to withdraw from participation or otherwise cure the conflict.
A different sort of conflict of interest arises when a city with a private police force is considering limits on outside work by police. It is difficult for a city council to pass a law that would limit a private police force's ability to hire off-duty officers, when council members know that the force protects most of their major donors.
Transparency
A third problem involves secrecy: private police forces are usually not required to have the same level of transparency as public police forces. This could be required, but it does not appear to be common. Especially since constitutional safeguards do not generally apply to private police, it is especially important that there be full transparency.
A New Orleans Example
A recent New York Times Magazine article looked at an especially problematic private police force for the wealthy French Quarter of New Orleans. According to the article, the force was started by one individual, who happened to have made a great deal of money from city waste removal contracts after Hurricane Katrina and who appears to be loaded with conflicts of interest.
One conflict involves the fact that, with city government support and the use of off-duty public police officers, he is using his short-term investment in his own neighborhood (after his house was burglarized) to test an app that he appears to want to sell to neighborhoods across the country.
Another conflict involves the head of the state police, who according to the article once visited the individual at a resort he owned in the Bahamas. A high-level official such as this should not be involved in any way with a friend's public-private venture. And yet he is publicly supporting the individual and invited him to attend a state police sting operation.
Another issue involves ads that the individual paid for, attacking the mayor for allowing a crime wave. The attack ads helped push the mayor to allow the individual to get city support for his neighborhood's experiment, even though the growth of crime occurred throughout the city.
Yet another issue involves gift certificates the individual gave to particular officers who he felt did a good job. Not only is this similar to an illegal gratuity to a police officer, but it is part of a personalization that can accompany such privatization. The individual became involved not only in managing the force, but in setting city policy, for example, by pushing for a joint sweep of panhandlers in the French Quarter. Also, the individual's "hunger for credit, his disregard of regulations, his habit of leaking sensitive information that could make it harder to prosecute suspects — all this had resulted in more than a few heated arguments" with the city government and its police force.
These are just a few of the government ethics issues that may come from establishing private police forces in wealthy city neighborhoods.
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics
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