Private Security Law : Case Studies

Rating:
Summary: K-Mart Law (i.e. The Rentacop's Bible)
Review: According to editor David A. Maxwell, the role of subsidized law enforcement is becoming increasingly supplanted by private security personnel (primarily as a result of municipal tax dollars spreading too thin, but also as a buffer to litigation from citizens injured and/or victimized on private property), and as a result, the criminal justice system will be forced to engineer new legal paradigms to control these corporate spaces, what with our "public" environments becoming increasingly privatized (shopping malls, apartment buildings, condominiums, retail outlets, hotels, bars, restaurants, casinos, health care institutions), a postmodern Main Street, fragmented and decentralized. What the industry needs (and what Maxwell provides) are a series of discourses that explore these new legal dangers and issues of accountability, providing a code of ethics for underpaid, underrespected "rentacops" who nevertheless find themselves bearing the brunt of municipal police functionality, badge-wearing "civilians" with limited arrest and investigatory powers.

Maxwell provides a brilliantly edited anthology of case studies designed for the security manager, but generally used as a supplemental text in university courses on security administration. Recently, however, many professors have realized that merely technical excurses on the security industry tend mainly to put their students to sleep, while oversimplifying the civic answerability issues (i.e. a litigation-happy American society) which haunt every rentacop comptroller (not to mention the citizens who are routinely victimized by poor training, negligent hiring, and cost-cutting managerial tactics). Maxwell's book (and others like it) are rapidly becoming the required text in progressive courses on the subject, useful not only for those working in the industry, but also the network of lawyers, policeman, magistrates, and even potential litigants who routinely come into contact with security officers.

It is perhaps no accident that Maxwell's selected cases are often highly entertaining in their own right, exploring the legal vicissitudes of some truly bizarre and, at times, unbelievable scenarios. Granted, most of the cases involve the usual synopses of simple negligence, intentional torts, vicarious liability, contract law, false arrest, illegal detention, invasion of privacy, entrapment, et al. But beneath it all, Maxwell's editorial sense of humor keeps a devilish grin on the reader's face, many of the cases giving off that whiff of seedy, voyeuristic pleasure we usually associate with "reality" shows on the Fox network.

Remember Butterfly McQueen, the Oscar-nominated actress who played Scarlett O'Hara's squeaky-voiced handmaid back in 1939? Well, in her elderly years she had a disastrous run-in a pair of overzealous security guards, who literally *karate-chopped* her to the floor of a Greyhound bus terminal because they "thought she was stealing" (Int. Sec. Corp. of Virginia v. McQueen, pgs. 185-7). Or how about a K-Mart shopper whose colostomy-bag is mistaken for shoplifted merchandise, and unceremoniously ripped out of his colon by a non-English-speaking store detective (Canty v. Wackenhut, pgs. 188-9)? Or a peckish youth who is caught pleasuring himself by a parking-lot security-camera, the tape maliciously circulated amongst the employees of his father's workplace (Turner v. General Motors, pgs. 208-11)?

I hate to sensationalize what is, in the end, a dead-serious range of issues. There are of course plenty of weighty, somber, tragic scenarios included here as well, where shots are fired, tempers flare out of control, and citizens and rentacops alike end up terrorized, humiliated, beaten or killed. Yet even the most banal of case-studies convey that self-surveillant chill of civic instability, tapping into our personal histories of resentment and humiliation in the midst of public embarrassment and misunderstanding, the abuse of authority, the sense of subtle victimization and entanglement many of us feel in a highly regulated, obsessively policed and hyper-litigious society. Roughly 95% of the cases here involve lawsuits where something goes *wrong* with the security apparatus, and there's nothing that gets the bile flowing faster in our culture than the looming threat of litigation, the gut-churning anxiety of trying to get compensated through the system for the routine abasements of living in a corporatized environment.

In the end, Maxwell's book has as much sociological as legalistic value. The rentacop, underpaid and disrespected, is becoming an important player in the high-stakes game of public safety and civil liability. But respect and higher wages will only come with a complete overhaul of the industry, both in its ethical precepts and legal safeguards. If Maxwell's book has the influence I hope it will have, then many of us will be able to live in a safer, happier, less persecutory public (private?) environment, with less hatred for the badge, and more confidence in the propensity of private citizens to look out for one another.

Rating:
Summary: Premiere text not aging gracefully
Review: As a security professional and attorney with more than 30 years of experience, I have used this text in my graduate courses on security case law and security management for more than eight years with more than 400 students at two universities. The clarity of the author's text and the case-based format makes it an ideal text.

However, without a recent update or new edition, the example cases are now sadly out of date. In addition, newer topics in the area of cyber-security and updated laws on the regulation and powers of private security personnel are not addressed in the text.

Use of this text now requires considerable work by the professor to bring in new materials and update nearly twenty years of case law decisions. In fairness to the author, however, I am not aware of any text on this topic that is more useful -- even in today's classrooms.