by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Two of the largest ones in the country, West Midlands Police and Surrey Police, have begun a tendering process inviting security firms, such as G4S, which is one of the largest security companies in the world, to bind for policing contracts.
The duties that will then be taken over by such security officers would be the street patrols and also the investigation of many types of crimes.
We have seen this privatization in some areas already for some time now, such as at large events where, in days gone by, the security would have been done by the police, is now being done by private firms and in other areas by a “private” branch of the military. The officers of the latter service are, at all times, armed and authorized to use lethal force.
Security officers are not police trained and often have serious attitude problems, and I kid you not, and neither have they got the faintest idea of crime investigations.
May of our jails are already run by G4S and those are the ones where, it would appear, the greatest abuses of inmates by staff take place. They also man many a custody suite at police stations and again there are serious issues with the treatment of detainees.
Mind you, the beginnings of the police force in London, the Bow Street Runners, out of which Scotland Yard and later the Metropolitan Police grew, was a private security police itself. But that was the time when the more serious policing was done by the army and the rest of policing did not exist.
In one particular area the new police station is, actually, being built by G4S and will be staffed by them, with some real cops.
We are headed down a very slippery slope and I wonder where this is going to lead. When policing is private then it will become a revenue gathering service and we can but guess what safety and security of the people will be like. Unlike in the USA, however, In Britain there is no right to defend oneself (with firearms) and thus I just dread what is going to happen.
Instead of privatized police forces we need a localized one the chief of which, let's call him or her the sheriff, is elected and responsible to the people and where the deputies are local people who have an interested in protecting their neighborhoods.
The kind of privatized police that is being proposed will not be accountable to the people and, it would appear, also no longer properly to government.
May the gods help us all...
© 2012
