The Private Arm of the Law
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.
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Those who work for private colleges, hospitals, and other things that are not the United States Government, or a political subdivision: You are lumped in with the rest of us, a Bush created threat to personal liberties, and a "fad that will go away."
Because George W. Bush has control over the past (NC has had the Company Police Act on the books for ages), and the states (those powers that give a private college officer the authority to be a police officer in Texas MUST of been a Bush/Cheney/KBR plot!)
There are many people who outright hate the concept of anyone but the government directly telling them what to do. They don't even like the government doing it, but they know they can't fight that.
But they can fight private policing. Expect this to swell up within the next five years, security hasn't gotten this much press in awhile.
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