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?<br>
<br>
<b>Favoritism</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Conflicts of Interest</b><br>
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' <a href="http://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs3.asp?ActID=1176&ChapterID=18&…; target="_blank">Private College Campus Police Act</a> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>Transparency</b><br>
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.<br>
<br>
<b>A New Orleans Example</b><br>
A recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/magazine/who-runs-the-streets-of-new-…; target="_blank">New
York <i>Times Magazine</i> article</a> 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
These are just a few of the government ethics issues that may come
from establishing private police forces in wealthy city
neighborhoods.<br>
<br />
Robert Wechsler<br />
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br />