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January 1990
PUBLIC LAW ENFORCEMENT/PRIVATE SECURITY:
A NEW PARTNERSHIP?
By
Terrence J. Mangan
and
Michael G. Shanahan
As the industrialized nations of the modern world move
deeper into a cultural/technological metamorphosis that has come
to be known as ``the information society,'' institutions are
being inevitably and significantly affected by the
transformation. Nowhere is this more evident than in the field
of law enforcement.
Since the late 1960s, American law enforcement has passed
through major changes that are not only healthy but also
irreversible. Changes over the past two decades, besides leading
to dramatically higher salaries and benefits for law enforcement
personnel, have produced law enforcement agency accreditation
standards, the use of highly sophisticated technology, and
probably most important of all, an air of professionalism. This
professionalism is especially visible in the area of policy
setting.
Gone is the stereotype that police are the guarantors of the
socioeconomic status quo. Today, the police are recognized as
being artful practitioners on the leading edge of major social
issues. As such, police are in the front-line delivery of public
services associated with the mentally ill, the homeless, abused
children, battered spouses, and victims of racial and religious
intolerance.
EVOLVING ISSUES
Through this law enforcement metamorphosis, it is important
to remember a basic premise of organizational ecology:
Organizations are dependent upon and affected by changes and
evolutions in other organizations in their immediate environment
or sphere of influence. This is the case with law enforcement
where private security has emerged as a major player in the
safeguarding of Americans and their property.
In the area of resources alone, the growth of private
security has expanded from what was estimated in 1969 as less
than 300,000 employees in an industry whose national product in
the United States was calculated at $2.5 million (1) to an industry
which has grown to an estimated $18 billion employing close to 2
million people. This is twice the size of public law
enforcement. Moreover, according to a 1984 survey of the
National Institute of Justice, public law enforcement resources
have remained relatively flat, with a significant percentage of
law enforcement agencies showing an effective decline in
personnel, despite growth rates in population and crime. (2)
A number of complex and evolving related trends may be
contributing factors in the explanation for the phenomenal growth
of private security at a time when public law enforcement growth
has stagnated. Such trends as taxpayer revolts, automation,
transferral of functions, stagnant economic growth, terrorism,
inner-city problems, financing of local services, and
immigration/emigration readily come to mind. Regardless of the
possible reasons, the fact remains that private security will
continue to have an impact upon and implications for society, in
general, and public law enforcement, in particular.
Ironically, the emergence of the private security industry
that now numerically and financially far exceeds its public
counterpart occurred without much influence from or interaction
with public police. In fact, until recently, there was a mixture
of disdain and concern that the emergence of private security was
threatening the professionalism of policing. Many officials
complained that the absence of adequate private security
standards was allowing the proponents of private security to
confuse the citizenry that ``rent-a-cops'' were a better bargain
than protective services provided through public law enforcement.
Police have traditionally viewed private security employees
as inadequately trained and ill-paid individuals who could not
find other work but were nevertheless allowed to carry a gun.
Furthermore, because these individuals looked and acted like
police, there was alarm that the private security industry might
even usurp important aspects of public law enforcement and erode
key citizen contacts that bond police officer and citizen in a
common alliance. Those fears have not been realized; however,
this unfortunately widespread view, early on, did much to stifle
potentially mutual and beneficial relationships between law
enforcement and private security.
While the 1960s were characterized as a period of
indifference toward private security, and the 1970s as one of
changing perceptions and some mistrust of the industry, the 1980s
and 1990s will most likely be regarded as the era of
collaboration and joint ventures between public law enforcement
and private security. This is necessitated by the fact that
individual and corporate citizens who are policed by public law
enforcement are also increasingly becoming the clients of private
security.
SCOPE OF PRIVATE SECURITY DUTIES
As pointed out in the 1984 results of a 30-month
descriptive and exploratory research project of the private
security industry, the scope of private security is constantly
changing and goes far beyond the more traditional areas of
``turf'' of local law enforcement agencies. (3) Proprietary or
corporate security encompasses such sophisticated and diverse
concerns as assets protection, loss prevention, countermeasures
for industrial espionage, drug testing in the work environment,
extortion, product tampering, dignitary and facility protection,
and communications security, to name a few examples.
Contract or private security companies also provide guard
and patrol services to business, industry and residential areas;
develop, sell, lease, and monitor simple to sophisticated
communications and alarms systems; provide investigative,
intelligence, and bodyguard equipment and services among other
services. Additionally, a significant amount of the
investigations involving credit card theft and fraud, check
cases, shoplifting, embezzlement, employee theft, computer
hacking, and other criminal enterprises are carried out by
private security. This ``de-policing'' trend has necessitated
new efforts in cooperation between public and private entities,
as well as the growth of new respect and understanding on the
part of both.
COOPERATIVE EFFORTS
Evidence of this collaboration and cooperation between
public law enforcement and private security is increasingly
evident. On two occasions, public law enforcement/private
security ``summits'' have been held in the northwestern United
States, where the Boards of the American Society for Industrial
Security (ASIS), the State Associations of Chiefs of Police
(SACOP), the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), and heads of
Federal, State, and local agencies met on a common agenda with
legislators, academics, and other key players. Moreover, joint
committees have been formed by IACP and ASIS to address common
law enforcement protocols and guidelines. In many of these
endeavors, leadership and coordination have been offered through
the Federal Bureau of Investigation because these law enforcement
and corporate concerns are both national and international in
scope.
Another cooperative effort is occurring in Washington State
where an organization constituted of law enforcement and
corporate executives, including key executives from both
proprietary and contract security organizations, has been
successful in a number of joint endeavors. The organization
known as the Washington Law Enforcement Executive Forum is
alternately chaired by executives from public law enforcement and
private security. It has successfully introduced and fostered
enactment of key legislation; established its own strategic
planning annex, ethical protocols, and executive strategies
projects; and has been generally a model for successful
public-private sector efforts. Similar organizations modeled
after this organization have been started in other States.
Through efforts such as these, the stereotype of private
security guards as underpaid, poorly educated, and untrained is
joining that same, but outmoded, stereotype of police in the dust
bin of history. Hopefully, both will be replaced by the vision
of a growing partnership between police professionals and private
security specialists in a highly technical and changing
environment where the collaborative effort of both benefit the
common good.
A CHANGING OUTLOOK
The progression toward a rapprochement between public law
enforcement and private security will require work, trust,
compromise, and resource investment of both parties before true
partnerships materialize. Several areas involving thorny and
fundamental value issues remain to be discussed and, hopefully,
resolved. Paramount among these is whether the growth and
expanding influence of private security constitute the emergence
of a ``shadow'' criminal justice system. In other words, will
the profit motive and loyalty to a company replace public service
and accountability to a system of basic principles of law and
fairness?
Several studies have reported that the dynamics of the
burgeoning private security system and how it interacts with and
disposes of criminal activity have never been systematically
explored or documented. (4) In fact, as Albert J. Reiss, Jr., of
Yale University pointed out:
``The large majority of private security agencies do not
have full legal power of arrest, yet they exercise enormous
discretion over criminal matters that occur on private property.
Despite this, almost nothing is known from systematic inquiry
about how these private police exercise discretion over criminal
matters.'' (5)
As an illustration, employee theft prosecuted in public
court might result in a conviction and concomitant sanctions. But
handled in a corporate venue, the theft might warrant dismissal
and debarment from future employment within that industry, all
without benefit of the extensive due process safeguards of the
criminal justice system. In other instances, it might serve the
corporate image of the ``damaged'' institution to allow quiet
resignation and nonreporting of a crime, or conversely, criminal
prosecution if this option is believed to be in the best business
interests of the company.
It remains to be seen how arbitrary decisions such as these
will impact long-term concepts and values of the traditional
criminal justice system. As more areas of responsibilities are
assumed by or transferred over to the area of private security
through a combination of realpolitik, limited public resources,
impatience with traditional systems, and growing corporate
influence, the demand for more examination and discussion of
these matters will grow.
INFORMATION EXCHANGE
Nonetheless, cooperation between public law enforcement and
private security must continue and, if there is one area where
public law enforcement and private security have worked
cooperatively for joint advantage, it has been in the area of
collection and dissemination of records. The ability of both
public law enforcement and private security to amass large
amounts of personal data about people's personal histories,
employment records, etc., poses serious liability problems during
an era that has seen severe restrictions placed on the use and
release of such data.
Recently, Illinois joined a number of States that now have
statutes authorizing the release of criminal conviction data on a
job-related basis to corporations. Although much more work needs
to be done in this area, having defensible model legislation
gives impetus to other States to aggressively pursue this course
of action. Alternatively, in many States, thanks to cooperative
law enforcement/private security initiatives, corporations are
simply obtaining a release from applicants, submitting a
fingerprint card, paying an established fee, and subsequently
receiving a criminal history from the desired police agency.
There has been no evidence of problems with these arrangements,
and corporations that operate in multiple States have been
willing to adjust their procedures to conform to applicable State
laws.
TARGETED AREAS FOR COOPERATION
Reassuring signs that joint efforts are possible are
appearing with broader scope and greater frequency. As an
example, one of the more significant protocols that has been
developed in recent years has been joint management of
product-tampering threat cases. The public is not well served
when valuable time and evidence are lost because jurisdictions
and corporations do not know their specific roles relative to
these violations. To address this, an initiative was launched by
the Southland Corporation, in conjunction with the IACP Private
Sector Liaison Committee, to draft a model protocol that could be
distributed to every State, county, and local law enforcement
agency in America.
For the first time, private corporations, Federal agencies
such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, and the FBI, and State and local
agencies cooperated not only in the review of the draft protocols
but also cooperated in adopting written directives relative to
this issue. Since 1986, over 100,000 copies of this protocol
have been circulated throughout the United States. They are in
place in State police agencies, sheriffs' offices, police
departments, as well as Federal and State law enforcement groups.
Affected corporations are aware of the protocols, and a number of
corporate security directors have carefully built appropriate
procedures into their own internal operating procedures.
Another example of emerging cooperation is in the area of
drugs. Through the efforts of the State of Maryland and the
chief of police for Baltimore County, a model protocol addressing
the issue of drugs in the workplace has been circulated to law
enforcement agencies and State chiefs associations. The purpose
of the document is to make available to corporations, and
especially the small business community, a straightforward
pamphlet that has been reviewed by the Justice Department, the
FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. This initiative,
which began in the fall of 1989, promises to be similar to the
effort which produced the product-tampering threat protocol and
is an instrument through which companies and units of government
can devise a ``Drugs in the Workplace'' procedure.
Furthermore, there are hundreds of community-based programs
that are directly benefiting community law enforcement efforts.
Namely, Pizza Hut spends as much as $136 million a year
encouraging young people to improve their reading skills through
its ``Book It Program'' organized to reduce illiteracy.
``Operation Home Free,'' started by Trailways Bus Lines and
continued by the Greyhound Corporation, allows juvenile runaways
to return home at no cost. While efforts such as these are only
tangentially associated with the public law enforcement and
private security rapprochement, they are a harbinger of the
commitment corporations are increasingly willing to make to help
law enforcement and they will serve to strengthen developing
public law enforcement and private security relationships.
The commitment has even led to ``role reversals'' where
public law enforcement is now learning from its private security
counterparts. Effective business trends such as customer
satisfaction, service orientation, subcontracting for services,
specialization, joint ventures, and even advertising and public
relations are being embraced by and changing the shape of public
law enforcement in the United States. As an example of these
role reversals, over 60 Fortune 500 companies make available
their training programs to supervisors at the rank of sergeant
through sheriff, chief, or superintendent. The program began
modestly with such corporations as Unisys, General Telephone of
California, and AT&T. Today, in 45 States, over 1,200 police
managers annually receive tuition-free corporate training that
would not otherwise be available through police academy budgets.
CONCLUSION
It is mutually incumbent upon both public law enforcement
and private security to continue to establish and improve
mechanisms at every level which will not only allow but
encourage dialogue on common law enforcement concerns and
challenges. As so aptly stated a few years ago:
``The exchanges between the policing institution and its
societal surroundings help assure both its change and its
stability for the functioning of the police organizations
must be kept somewhat in tune with the environment in
which it operates.'' (6)
It is hoped that the growing mutual respect and cooperation,
as evidenced by the initiatives outlined, are laying the
groundwork for a future of effective law enforcement in a world
that is growing increasingly complex and more demanding. Through
these efforts the continuing public law enforcement/private
security rapprochement will undoubtedly succeed.
FOOTNOTES
(1) Rand Report, 1972.
(2) William C. Cunningham and Todd Taylor, ``A Preview of the
Hallcrest Report: Security-Police Relationships,'' Security
Management, June 1983.
(3) William C. Cunningham and Todd Taylor, The Hallcrest
Report: Private Security and Police in America (Portland:
Chancellor Press, 1984).
(4) Supra note 2.
(5) Albert J. Reiss, Jr., ``Discretionary Justice,'' Handbook
of Criminology, 1984, p. 681.
(6) John P. Clarke and Richard Sykes, ``Determinants of Police
Organization and Practice in a Modern Industrial Society,''
Handbook of Criminology, 1984, p. 456.
About the authors:
Terrence J. Mangan is Chief of Police of the Spokane, WA
Police Department. Co-author, Michael G. Shanahan, is
Chief of Police, University of Washington Police Depart-
ment, Seattle, WA.