The Private Arm of the Law

Begin forwarded message:

From: [email protected]
Date: January 2, 2007 11:18:49 AM EST
To: [email protected]
Subject: The Private Arm of the Law

The Private Arm of the Law
Some Question the Granting of Police Power to Security Firms

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Kevin Watt crouched down to search the rusted  
Cadillac he had stopped for cruising the parking lot of a Raleigh  
apartment complex with a broken light. He pulled out two open Bud  
Light cans, an empty Corona bottle, rolling papers, a knife, a  
hammer, a stereo speaker, and a car radio with wires sprouting out.

"Who's this belong to, man?" Watt asked the six young Latino men he  
had frisked and lined up behind the car. Five were too young to  
drink. None had a driver's license. One had under his hooded sweat  
shirt the tattoo of a Hispanic gang across his back. A gang  
initiation, Watt thought.

With the sleeve patch on his black shirt, the 9mm gun on his hip and  
the blue light on his patrol car, he looked like an ordinary police  
officer as he stopped the car on a Friday night last month. Watt  
works, though, for a business called Capitol Special Police. It is  
one of dozens of private security companies given police powers by  
the state of North Carolina -- and part of a pattern across the  
United States in which public safety is shifting into private hands.

Private firms with outright police powers have been proliferating in  
some places -- and trying to expand their terrain...


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/01/ 
AR2007010100665.html?ZOMG