Public Interest versus Private Concerns

Public law enforcement is and has always been tasked with the needs of the public good. Few private security companies have to be concerned with domestic disputes, the transportation of the deceased, stray animals, or protection of the homeless and other downtrodden individuals.¹⁸ The Private Security Advisory Council characterized police work as a public interest function. Public police have “a wide range of responsibilities to protect essentially public concerns and their efforts are closely tied to statutorily mandated duties and the criminal justice system.”¹⁹ The advisory council further relates that the police are burdened with constitutional limitations and must interpret and implement certain guidelines in the performance of their law enforcement duties. Additionally, public policing is further restrained by public budgeting and financing processes. Police management policies and an administrative hierarchy within most major police departments must evaluate and allocate resources according to the needs and demands presently operating within this community structure.²⁰

Norman Spain and Gary Elkin, in their article, “Private Security versus Law Enforcement,” relate with precision:

One of the traditional functions of the public police is to deter crime. In reality, their ability to do this is drastically limited. The primary reasons are that the police have little authority to change the conditions that foster crime and they have no authority to decide who will reside in their jurisdiction, whom they will police. Private security forces, on the other hand, may alter—at times drastically—the environment in which they operate. They can have walls and fences erected, doors sealed, windows screened, lights put up, and intrusion detectors installed. They can often play a decisive role in determining whom they have to monitor—who is to be an employee of the company—by conducting background investigations of potential employees.²¹

Such a supposition is difficult to dispute, since private security is primarily concerned with the private concerns of private property assets and particular individuals. “Individuals and privately funded organizations and businesses undertake measures to provide protection for the perceived security needs that involve their private interests, not in the public domain. Private security is an option exercised to provide an additional or increased level of protection than that afforded by public law enforcement, which must respond to the larger concerns of the public.”²²

Moral or Egalitarian Purpose

Entrance into the vocation of public law enforcement is considered by most a moral and social commitment—a vocation rather than a mere job. This career distinction is generally not applied to individuals who commit their lives to the service of private security. But is such a viewpoint fair and rational? Is not the protection of assets, governmental facilities, communities, business interests, private proprietary holdings, or contributions in military and security initiatives a noble endeavor? If private security were not involved, what would be the state of American industry and its physical plants, the security of courthouses and judicial centers, transportation facilities, and neighborhood associations? How would the dynamic of the battlefield change in foreign wars? How would the allocation of military personnel be impacted? For that matter, how many more employees would the public sector have to hire, on the backs of already beleaguered taxpayers, to cover the diverse functions of private sector justice? By what standards are these judgments of moral superiority or social importance designed? Critics and theoreticians who scathingly condemn the nature of private justice often forget the historical contribution private security has provided. Long before the establishment of a formal, publicly funded police department in pre- and postcolonial America, private security interests were the only entities providing protection for individual persons, assets, and business interests. Remember that the nature of a system of town watches, the “hue and cry,” calling for posse formation and community cooperation, constables, and part-time sheriffs could hardly be characterized as public in design.²³

Judgments about private sector justice cannot be made in a vacuum but must be evaluated in light of the range of services the industry provides a troubled world. To be more particular, who would protect the majority of federal installations? Who would protect the majority of American museums? What force or body would ensure safety and protection in the college and university environment? What other bodies would provide adequate crowd control at entertainment events? What cost would society incur to ensure a public police officer in each bank? Should taxpayers’ money be spent in the transportation of money and other negotiable instruments? What police department would provide adequate security for American corporations? How far could city budgets be stretched to provide a secured environment for its multiple retail establishments if security services were absent? When these queries are explored, public law enforcement’s tendency to preach from a high moral pedestal is not as convincing. Richard Kobetz and H. H. Antony Cooper, in their article “Two Armies: One Flag,” cogently state:

It is no exaggeration to aver that without the aid of those presently engaged in the various tasks of private security, the resources of public law enforcement would have to be expanded far beyond the limits that the taxpayer could afford and would pay. Even those who do not contribute directly to the cost of providing private security services benefit to some notable extent from their existence. Private security is not a public luxury. It represents a substantial contribution to the general security of the community. In their impact on the community public and private law enforcement are one and indivisible.²⁴

A Caste System of Professionalism

Private security has long been an underclass when compared to public law enforcement. Differences in orientation, training, requirements, and social status accorded these positions have a great deal to do with the class or status differentiation. While much time and energy has been expended in the professionalization of public law enforcement,²⁵ negative stereotypes, justified or not, still exist concerning private security personnel. The most powerful trend is the continued growth of the private security industry, both in real terms and relative to law enforcement. In 1987, the director of the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) wrote that

cooperation becomes increasingly essential with the growth of the private security industry. [In policing,] resources to meet the increasing demand have dwindled. In most major cities, police personnel have declined, and the number of police employees per 1,000 population dropped 10 percent between 1975 and 1985. Shrinking tax revenues throughout the country and outright taxpayer revolts … have curtailed growth in government. Police, like other public administrators, have become familiar with cutback management.²⁶

The Private Advisory Council expounds that these attitudes

are based on incorrect assumptions that private security personnel perform the same job duties as patrol officers and investigators in law enforcement, and that a broad generalization can be made about the nature and personnel of all components of proprietary and contractual security—guards, private patrol services, private investigators, armored car guards and armed couriers, and alarm response runners and installers. Certainly, the security industry and private justice practitioners must concede there is a distinction between the level of training and qualifications for certification. The security industry has been its own worst enemy in this area by failing to promote high level, sophisticated standards of educational requirements.²⁷

In response to the call for increased state and local regulation of the private security force, Richard Lukins, in his article “Security Training for the Guard Force,” castigates the industry for its lack of action:

This trend has not caught the affected components of the private security industry—the guard services and proprietary security managers—completely by surprise but it does not appear that they were totally prepared either. And certainly no one can say that our industry has established an imposing record of self-regulation.²⁸

Lukins further relates that the present impression of a security guard as not more than “half a cop” will be deleterious to future professionalism in the security industry.²⁹ The quest for professionalism requires more than rhetoric. As outlined in Chapter 2 on regulation, licensing, and qualifications, the road to professionalism is filled with impediments. Those impediments—a lack of educational discipline or cogent body of knowledge, an accepted code of ethics, a prestige or status consensus on occupational roles, or a seal of social and governmental legitimacy—are all attainable goals.³⁰ To get beyond the characterization that a private security practitioner is nothing more than a play policeman, the industry will have to aggressively implement the standards of professionalism. On the other hand, much of that judgment is the result of prejudice and stereotype. “Private security is aware of this status differential imposed by many law enforcement personnel and deeply resent it since they feel that law enforcement neither understands nor empathizes with their crime prevention role. This in turn leads to a lower level of esteem by private security for law enforcement personnel.”³¹ Petty bickering and hate mongering further erodes the ambition of professionalism. Constructive suggestions regarding increased standards and performance objectives are more in order. Certification programs such as that offered by ASIS International and its Certified Protection Professional programs make a real contribution to substantive professionalism. The CPP program’s chief objectives are as follows:

Attaining professionalism will require both dedication and perseverance. Howard C. Shook, former president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), remarks that the private security sector has “proven its worth and can defend itself from detractors rather easily.”³³ Harold Peterson, in his work “Private Security v. Public Law Enforcement,”³⁴ calls for a natural respect between the public and private sectors and highlights the unique and extremely sophisticated expertise exhibited by the private justice system. He warns the traditionalist in law enforcement:

There are those in both the community and law enforcement who believe that the public police alone are responsible for crime reduction. If, as a chief, you think like this, I’m afraid that your agency will fail the public you serve.³⁵

A Failure to Communicate and Cooperate

Predictably, a lack of respect between the public and private sector leads to a lack of communication. The Private Security Advisory Council cogently concludes:

Since many law enforcement personnel perceive themselves as having a higher degree of status than private security, and do not properly appreciate the role of private security in crime prevention, there will be a tendency to avoid communication with private security personnel. One might expect that private security would communicate freely with law enforcement as a perceived higher status group. But the intensity of feelings expressed by private security and the ambiguity of their relationship with law enforcement … would seem to indicate an uncertainty as to the equality of status with law enforcement. Private security, then, would generally tend to avoid communication with law enforcement; without effective communication cooperation cannot be imposed.³⁶

Like squabbling relatives, this state of interaction is counterproductive but easily correctable. Many of the perceptions, viewpoints, and preconceived notions about the role of private security as it relates to public law enforcement that each party possesses are highly biased and unscientific. For example, it is ludicrous to argue that the training and educational requirements for all public law enforcement positions are markedly higher. Some major police departments, such as the one in the city of Philadelphia, with a metropolitan area of more than 6 million people, historically required no more than an eighth-grade education. While this may be an exception to the general requirement of a high school diploma, it is folly for public police personnel to perceive their educational requirements as always being more rigorous. Of course, there has been a strong tendency toward higher educational requirements with a recent flurry of legislative activity concerning the regulation, licensing, and education mandated for private security.³⁷ The perception that only public policing has erudite training is fundamentally flawed.

Another rationale often espoused by the public sector, which justifies its lack of communication, is functional separation. Some see no benefits to communication because of distinct occupational roles. The perception that private security protects only those interests that are strictly private is incorrect. Consider Table 7.5,³⁸ which charts the public functions performed by the private justice sector.

Table 7.5. Sites with Experience in Private Provision of Protection Services

Those asserting a limited public role for private security inaccurately portray the industry. Private security personnel have willingly taken on, been legislatively granted, or freely pursued these traditionally public functions: