You are in danger because the people who are supposed to be protecting you have other interests in mind. In early January, The Washington Post ran a story out of Raleigh, N.C., regarding the absurd proportion of this country’s security being overseen by the private sector. According to the article by staff writer Amy Goldstein, “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.”

This privatization of the police force is part of a dangerous national trend, which has led to an increased level of police “agents” on the street while creating a decreased level of actual public security. These forces are referred to as “company police agents” by their employing firms. Though visually representative of public police forces, private officers are not under obligation to use the same caution in regards to respecting the constitutional rights of the accused. In addition, because private security officers can be targeted individually for actions such as lawsuits when they abuse their power, the companies that employ them have less incentive to reprimand them when they commit an offense than would a state police agency – making it more likely that police abuses will go unpunished.

A shortage of qualified public officers is not a new problem for cities across the country. There has been a shortage of qualified police officers for decades, leading to the slackening of academy entrance requirements. But, this new trend threatens to put people with police power on the streets with even fewer qualifications. According to the article, “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.”

Having a private police force poses a problem for many aspects of the community. First, institutions that feel the need for a private security force tend to be those with a reputations, rather than populations, they are interested in protecting. Lisa Thrau-Grey, director of the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School in Boston, is quoted as saying

that private agents “are focusing on the priority of their employer, rather than the priority of public safety and individual rights.”

There is more to this than just the ickiness of knowing that Big Brother may actually be Unbalanced Uncle Powertrip. As the police force is taken over by private agents, and thus private interests, the constitutional safeguards and protections (however ineffective they continue to be) are weakened even further. As Goldstein understates “Some warn, too, that the constitutional safeguards that cover police questioning and searches do no apply in the private sector.” Equal Protection under the law is compromised, because now the power of protection is in private hands.

Members of the Guilford community have a particular familiarity with this issue under the local example of public safety. Here there is an example of an institution, with a reputation to protect, employing private security agents to do so. And, much like the national trend, this questionable alliance of public security and private aims has borne some tainted fruit.

From allegations of a condom being removed from the scene of an attempted rape before police could put it through the proper channels of evidence investigation, to a reputedly unaddressed rape of a female volleyball player by a football recruit, there may be problems at this “private institution” that are being ignored because the ownership of area security ensures that the Boss’s interests will be protected. This private security is acting as a buffer to keep true public safety issues from surfacing.

This trend is more than just a theory for sociologists to analyze. It is a real danger for people in all sectors of society, from the harassed tenant of low-income housing communities to under-protected students at prestigious private colleges. When private notions of safety reign, none of us can consider ourselves safe.