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GANG-LINKED CRIMES SURGE IN AUSTIN 65%
Austin Police Department releases data which shows a 65% increase from 2007-2008 in crimes linked to gangs. During the same period Austin police report an overall increase in documented gang members right here in Austin. Crimes range from drug possession to aggravated assaults, robberies and thefts. "Anytime you see an increase like that, it is a concern," said Assistant Police Cheif David Carter. "The gang threat in Texas is the greatest homeland security issue facing us right now, " said Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas.
*source Austin American Statesman front page 03/27/09
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Cash-Strapped Cities Try Private Security Over Police
Oakland, Facing Pressure to Crack Down on Crime, Is Among Towns Seeking to Improve Safety While Reducing Spending By BOBBY WHITE
OAKLAND, Calif. -- Facing pressure to crack down on crime amid a record budget deficit, Oakland is joining other U.S. cities that are turning over more law-enforcement duties to private armed guards. The City Council recently voted to hire International Services Inc., a private security agency, to patrol crime-plagued districts. While a few Oakland retail districts previously have pooled cash to pay for unarmed security services, using public funds to pay for private armed guards would mark a first for the city. Hiring private guards is less expensive than hiring new officers. Oakland -- facing a record $80 million budget shortfall -- spends about 65% of its budget for police and fire services, including about $250,000 annually, including benefits and salary, on each police officer.
In contrast, for about $200,000 a year the city can contract to hire four private guards to patrol the troubled East Oakland district where four on-duty police officers were killed in March. And the company, not the city, is responsible for insurance for the guards. Oakland is not alone in seeking to improve public safety while reining in spending. This month, the Chicago City Council, facing a possible $200 million budget deficit, proposed expanding the responsibilities of private armed security forces by authorizing them to write traffic citations. In New Orleans, neighborhood committees have sought to expand special tax incentives to pay for private security for neighborhood patrols.
In Oakland -- a city east of San Francisco with about 400,000 people -- hiring security guards is the latest nontraditional measure in its attempt to reduce crime. Last year, Mayor Ron Dellums announced a partnership with the Guardian Angels, a volunteer crime patrol organization, in the midst of a rash of restaurant-takeover robberies. Though violent crime in the city was down in the first three months of 2009 from a year ago, the city remains one of California's most violent, with 124 homicides last year and about 25 so far this year. Police also must deal with long-running tensions with residents: The killing of an unarmed man by transit police in January sparked weeks of protests, and two months later the four officers were killed in East Oakland by a parolee.
"We need a cost-effective answer to the crime we are facing," said Ignacio De La Fuente, a City Council member representing East Oakland who has led the push for armed guards. He added that he is confident the security company's armed guards -- who will have state-certified public-safety training -- are up to par. Mr. Dellums's spokesman, Paul Rose, says the mayor is concerned that private guards would lack proper training, putting the city at greater risk of lawsuits stemming from a shooting or other mishap.
Mr. Dellums's spokesman, Paul Rose, says the mayor is concerned that private guards would lack proper training, putting the city at greater risk of lawsuits stemming from a shooting or other mishap. Mr. Dellums and Oakland's police union support an alternative plan, to be introduced Tuesday, that calls for the $200,000 dedicated for the private guards to be used for overtime for four police officers who would patrol the East Oakland area on foot.
International Services, based in Torrance, Calif., declined to comment for this story. The company's chief executive, Sam Karawia, is a reserve deputy sheriff for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as well as the deputy director for the department's homeland-security-support unit. When other U.S. cities have hired uniformed guards to patrol downtown districts, they most often have acted more as cleanup crews and neighborhood ambassadors than security officials. In the 1990s, retailers in crime-plagued locales began to organize business improvement districts, which collected fees for area enhancements, including hiring armed guards who functioned as backups to local police.
A February study of the 30 improvement districts in the downtown Los Angeles region noted districts with the guards register significantly less crime than areas without them.
Some areas of New Orleans have used armed private patrols since 1997, when residents in an east New Orleans community petitioned Louisiana's Legislature to create a tax on property owners to pay for a private force. About 20 residential tax districts have been established, employing an estimated 100 private guards. This month, seven more neighborhoods voted to create districts. "The guards are viewed as force multipliers, extra eyes and ears with high visibility, acting in concert with actual police officers," said John Macdonald, the lead researcher on the Rand study and a criminology professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Can Private Security Guards Act As Cops?
CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine Can Private Security Guards act as Cops? That's exactly what they may soon be doing as they patrol Michigan Avenue between 100th and 116th streets, and a proposed city ordinance would give them many police powers. They're private security guards, already on patrol, but they may soon have the powers of Chicago Police officers. As CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine reports, the private security officers now on patrol on the city's Far South Side are expected to have their powers expanded as part of a citywide ordinance now being prepared. But officials are questioning whether this means public safety is being outsourced. Mayor Richard M. Daley has already privatized many city functions. The Chicago Skyway has been leased to a Spanish conglomerate. Midway Airport is run by a Canadian company. The parking meters were sold to a firm run by Morgan Stanley, and as a result, the cost of parking in the city has skyrocketed. But the question is whether another foreign firm providing cops on patrol may be privatization gone too far. A single squad car, marked "special patrol," cruises up and down a small commercial strip on far south Michigan Avenue tonight. Its patrol area is between 100th and 116th streets, some area merchants have their doubts, while others see a decrease in crime. But the security guards are not supposed to replace Chicago Police officers, according to the alderman writing the ordinance. He said the enforcement powers of the private security group would remain highly limited. Mayor Daley said the security force would have the power to enforce "moving violations and citations including loitering, littering and graffiti", but are still working on the ordnance. Many security officers were found to be reserve police officers, ex-military, military reserves and retired police officers well above the normal guard cut and Mayor Daley said the city would benefit from the extra patrols. "It's not a bad idea. You maybe have to refine it, but it's not a bad idea," the mayor said. With Chicago Police stretched so thin, just having a few extra cars and extra uniforms is comforting to some people. The J. Carolina Hosiery store, for example, was robbed 14 times in the last year. "The stores are being robbed, and then they're getting extorted, and you have the little gang bangers running in and out of stores trying to rob people," said store supervisor Larry McCullough. Since the private security patrols arrived, the robberies have continued, "but it's slowing down, because it seems like more of the stores have their own security." In addition to the Fraternal Order of Police being against it, experts tell CBS 2 that asking private security guards to conduct police functions is dangerous, and potentially fatal, with most security guards paid much less and receive less training. Chicago's Police Supt. Jody Weis calls it all a work in progress. "Let's be creative," Weis said. "If we can have police officers focusing on higher priority cases, it's worth talking about."
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The Private Arm of the Law
Some Question the Granting of Police Power to Security Firms By Amy Goldstein Washington Post Staff Writer 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, sir?" 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. The "company police agencies," as businesses such as Capitol Special Police are called here, are lobbying the state legislature to broaden their jurisdiction, currently limited to the private property of those who hire them, to adjacent streets. Elsewhere -- including wealthy gated communities in South Florida and the >Tri-Rail commuter trains between Miami and West Palm Beach -- private security patrols without police authority carry weapons, sometimes dress like SWAT teams and make citizen's arrests.
Private security guards have outnumbered police officers since the 1980s, predating the heightened concern about security brought on by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. What is new is that police forces, including the Durham Police Department here in North Carolina's Research Triangle, are increasingly turning to private companies for help. Moreover, private-sector security is expanding into spheres -- complex criminal investigations and patrols of downtown districts and residential neighborhoods -- that used to be the province of law enforcement agencies alone. The more than 1 million contract security officers, and an equal number of guards estimated to work directly for U.S. corporations, dwarf the nearly 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. The enormous Wackenhut Corp. guards the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and screens visitors to the Statue of Liberty.
"You can see the public police becoming like the public health system," said Thomas M. Seamon, a former deputy police commissioner for Philadelphia who is president of Hallcrest Systems Inc., a leading security consultant. "It's basically, the government provides a certain base level. If you want more than that, you pay for it yourself." The trend is triggering debate over whether the privatization of public safety is wise. Some police and many security officials say communities benefit from the extra eyes and ears. Yet civil libertarians, academics, tenants rights organizations and even a trade group that represents the nation's large security firms say some private security officers are not adequately trained or regulated.
Lisa Thurau-Gray, director of the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, said private police "are focusing on the priority of their employer, rather than the priority of public safety and individual rights." But Boston police Sgt. Raymond Mosher, who oversees licensing of special police, says such instances are rare.
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