Private Security in Oakland

In 2007, John Robb wrote a Gibsonesque essay on a future he called "Privatopia" in which many functions of the government--most importantly security--became marketable goods. Now it looks like a piece of the future he's predicted may be happening. In Oakland, reduced budgets have led to a decline in police services. Inevitably, as this New York Times story Fred Leland posted points out,  private security is filling the gap:

In the wake of the city’s laying off 80 police officers last month, Chinatown is leading a new trend in the crime-ridden city: an increase in privately financed public safety. Mr. Chan has asked every business owner to install a street-facing camera. A new Chinatown security force, perhaps staffed by armed guards, could be on the streets as soon as next month, he said. The layoffs, which helped close a budget deficit of more than $30 million, eliminated a community-policing program that assigned officers to walk their beats and attend neighborhood meetings. Now some residents are pooling resources to restore a law-enforcement presence. The affluent Montclair District in the Oakland Hills and the Kings Estates neighborhood in East Oakland are also looking into private patrols. Experts say the combination of police and private security that Chinatown is pursuing reflects a new approach to public safety. “We’ve been doing policing more or less the same way for a couple hundred years,” said Barry Krisberg, a criminologist at the Center for Criminal Justice at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’ve reached a point financially where we have to start exploring new ways to deliver law enforcement.”

The dynamic inherent in this is very simple. The state no longer provides the public good of security/policing, so the functions are being distributed across the private sphere. There is the traditional bulked-up security you see in gated neighborhoods, as well as the Chinatown shop owners pooling their funds together to provide cameras and monies for a common security force. Of course, this gets into some problems, as a good deal of police functions is locking up perps as well as physically deterring them:

Private guards have a limited scope. They can make citizen’s arrests but cannot investigate accusations of criminal activity or detain a suspect. Unlike police officers, they are not required to undergo psychological counseling or background checks. Public safety experts say they should play a collaborative role, referring crime reports to the police, and making arrests only rarely. Chinatown’s video surveillance has already led to arrests, and suspects in a killing nearby at Webster and 19th Streets this month were apprehended thanks to video supplied to the police.

We are not at the point where true arrest powers or investigations in this sense have been privatized, so this is not totally a "Privatopia" type situation. But for many places in California, which is undergoing a governance crisis of epic proportions, similar measures will probably be taken by towns that find themselves pruning public services.

Comments

[NYkrinDC]

Other problems this may run into are costs, and corruption. The US military and political leaders in Washington, during the last decade, pushed for the privatization of specific functions away from the military. In time, not only did private contractors cost more, especially in terms of private security, but they also eroded the transparency and accountability these actors had in a war zone. Moreover, contractors also poached not only our armed forces, but also those of third nations for talent, which because it cost more, in the long run, became a net negative investment for our government. A primary example of this would be Blackwater/Xe.

Stateside, in Arizona, the issue has come up recently as well. Various politicians, from the governor, to State Senator Pierce pushed for a tough immigration law that would create thousands of federal inmates in the form of suspected illegal immigrants. Inmates, who would be housed in privately owned prisons, owned by corporations that not only donated heavily to both of these individuals, but also, had deep connections to their staff. In Gov. Brewer's case, two of her staff members are either former lobbyists for these firms, or have spouses and/or businesses which lobby for them. In short, corruption, in how contracts are apportioned and why, will also has to be dealt with.

[A.E.]

History of the Pinkertons is food for thought.

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