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Hiring Police Officers Essay

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Hiring Police Officers

Hiring police officers to perform private security work has positive aspects and potential pitfalls. Business owners vary in their opinion on hiring police officers. Liability and cost are reasons some prefer to hire private security guards or take other security measures. Other business owners prefer the training, professionalism, deterrence, and authority that come with hiring a police officer. Due to lawsuits involving off-duty police officers, the Courts have had to develop tests to determine when a moonlighting police officer is working under the authority of the private company or in the role of a peace officer. Issues have arisen about the difference in police mentality and retail service. Some argue that …show more content…

I have known business to hire officers to control crowds at a bar or large events, provide plain clothes surveillance or uniform presence in a shopping mall, escort a manager around to his different stores to make cash pickups, and provide a presence and deterrence against theft and robbery.

For example, Hispanic grocery stores, particularly those that do checking cashing, carry lots of cash. Nearly all Hispanics at the store I worked off-duty at paid for purchases in cash. Before the owner hired police officers, a gang of armed men robbed his store and several other Hispanic stores with in a months time. They made off with an average about $20,000 from each robbery. The night of the robbery, during the course of the initial investigation, the owner inquired about hiring a police officer at night to provide security. The average rate at that time was $20 per hour. He wanted an officer from 6:00pm until he locked the store around 10:30pm. This security detail would be one officer in uniform seven days a week. The annual cost of the security detail would be $33,600. If having a police officer on site prevents two robberies a year, at $20,000 apiece, then the detail pays for itself. But how can you determine the effectiveness of the program? Well, at one point after the armed gang was caught, the owner thought about cutting back the

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