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Private Enterprise and the Public Police - The Professionalizing Effects of a New Partnership (From Police Leadership in America, P 449-458, 1985, William A Geller, ed. - See NCJ-98325)

NCJ Number
99265
Author(s)
M G Shanahan
Date Published
1985
Length
10 pages
Annotation
This discussion of cooperation between corporate private police and public police considers the management of differences in operating styles, cooperative professional organizations, the mutual advantages of cooperation, and the future of the corporate-police partnership.
Abstract
The management of differences in operating styles among corporate private police and public police involves both professions' understanding and respecting geographic jurisdictional limitations and the crime foci of each profession; for example, since corporate security personnel focus largely on employ theft, public police and private police should develop complementary policies for dealing with such crimes and offenders. Cooperation between public and private police is being advanced by professional interassociation contact. Moreover, law enforcement and business executives are jointly operating through carefully written and researched operational standards. Public fears that public police-corporate cooperation may influence the police to be lenient in the investigation of crimes by corporations and corporate executives can be allayed by cooperative policy statements. Among the mutual advantages of public-private police cooperation are the enhanced professionalization private policing can bring to public policing and the public accessibility and openness that public policing can bring to private policing. Conflict will continue to characterize much of private-public police interaction, but the future should be dominated by an increase in mutual respect, upon which professional bonds will be forged. Three notes are provided.