Revealed: government plans for police privatisation

[Celefin]

Source: Guardian

Private companies could take responsibility for investigating crimes, patrolling neighbourhoods and even detaining suspects under a radical privatisation plan being put forward by two of the largest police forces in the country.

[snip]

The contract is the largest on police privatisation so far, with a potential value of £1.5bn over seven years, rising to a possible £3.5bn depending on how many other forces get involved.

[snip]

The home secretary, Theresa May, who has imposed a 20% cut in Whitehall grants on forces, has said frontline policing can be protected by using the private sector to transform services provided to the public, but this is the first clear indication of what that will mean in practice. May said on Thursday that she hoped the "business partnership" programme would be in place next spring.

[snip]

The breathtaking list of policing activities up for grabs includes investigating crimes, detaining suspects, developing cases, responding to and investigating incidents, supporting victims and witnesses, managing high-risk individuals, patrolling neighbourhoods, managing intelligence, managing engagement with the public, as well as more traditional back-office functions, such as managing forensics, providing legal services, managing the vehicle fleet, finance and human resources.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/02/police-privatisation-security-firms-crime

---

Expected, but horrifying nonetheless. Policing for profit. What could go wrong?

[MindMover]

1. With a prison population of less than 100,000......

I would probably be looking for privatization tooo....

[midnight]

2. Privatization ends up costing communities more.... Just ask Milwaukee County...

[DJ13]

3. What could go wrong?

[sofa king]

5. Or...

[Jkid]

27. What movie that screencap came from?

[bvar22]

30. Clockwork Orange (NT)

[sofa king]

33. Specifically,

Young Malcolm McDowell emerged from prison to discover that the government had dealt with the issue of crime and violence by turning his former gang members into police officers.

That did not work out so well for Malcolm, or anyone else in that dystopia.

[Alexander]

14. +1

[kentauros]

19. "Good business is where you find it."

Dick Jones: I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!

[liberalmike27]

26. Funny

I was thinking about Robo-Cop too.

[saras]

4. Like many, I just don't recognize private police as legitimate.

They're thugs with guns, no more and no less. They deserve the "respect" you'd give to a scorpion in your sleeping bag, no more, no less.

[nineteen50]

8. What's wrong working or acting merely for money or other reward

that's capitalism grand huh?

[JDPriestly]

24. No. It is capitalism disintegrating into fascism.

It is capital investing in the public sphere because there is too much capital in the hands of too few people. The wealthy are looking for something to do with their money, but there is no risk for producing products so they want to take over the business of government. This is actually the end of capitalism and the beginning of the police state that will turn on private enterprise and destroy it.

[denverbill]

6. The libertarian douchebags are chasing government spending.

They look for the biggest piles of money and chase it down like a dog on a car. Education? Privatize. Social Security? Privatize. Medicare? Privatize. Military? Privatize. Prisons? Privatize.

Find the biggest pile of public money and try to divert it to private gain, regardless of whether it works better or saves money. THAT is the goal of the libertarian/fascists.

[bongbong]

10. Exactly!

And once they accomplish their privitization, suddenly spending and taxation will no longer be "bad" according to the repigs. It will be every citizen's Holy Duty to pay their "Holy Fees To Keep Society Running" (that will be the new name for "evil taxes" once the 'pigs take everything over)

Only one thing will stay the same: "Job creators will need LOWER TAXES NOW!"

[tclambert]

16. This is partly how the Roman Empire fell.

They refused to pay enough for Roman citizens to accept the hardships of becoming soldiers, so they privatized the army, hiring Germanic mercenaries. Then when those mercenaries wanted land and houses of their own and the Romans denied them, they revolted and overthrew the last emperor.

I think that means OCP would eventually take over the United States, and their CEO would declare himself King of America.

[JDPriestly]

25. Yes! And that is where we are headed.

[LeftishBrit]

29. Note: this time it's not the United States but Britain

I'm sure there's huge influence from the American Right, however. The British Right and American Right are rather good at getting together and ending up with the worst of both cultures: i.e. when American worship of capitalism and the free market marries the British class system, they end up producing monsters.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

31. Is this a big story in Britain?

I'd think the police unions (if there are such things) would be resisting this trend.

[nilram]

7. Wow, they could have jackets just like NASCAR drivers,

with all their different sponsors.

"This incited riot brought to you by ..."

[rhett o rick]

9. Make that "prison profitization".

A caller on Thom Hartmann today suggested that the word profitization should be used in lieu of privatization, as it is more appropriate.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. So, that means taxes will go down, right?

Surely they do not mean for public money to be used to pay for-profit services.

[midnight]

12. Exactly....

[Alexander]

13. There's a company called OCP that's running Detroit's police force...

Wait, I think I saw this in a movie somewhere.

[cstanleytech]

15. OH Justice for hire!!!

And if your poor dont bother because you wont be able to afford the cost.

[99th_Monkey]

17. WHAT? This is insane!!!! .. next we'll be "privatizing" our politicians

but wait, I guess with Citizens United and ALEC we've already done that. Never mind.

[dfgrehe]

18. Spam deleted by cbayer (MIR Team)

[happyslug]

20. Yes, lets bring back Pennslysvania WORLD FAMOUS Private Police, the Coal and Iron Police

Last edited Sat Mar 3, 2012, 10:55 PM - Edit history (2)

The Coal and Iron Police has been called the greatest terrorist organization in American History.

Wikipedia tries to be nice to them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_and_Iron_Police

Part of the Transcript of the 1915 US Senate investigation on the Coal and Iron Police:
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5661/

. Take the Westmoreland coal strike as an example of a large strike. Then in a situation of that kind the deputy sheriffs provide thugs imported there from wherever they can get them, usually from the slums of the great cities, not natives; in very few cases they are natives. These men are clothed with the power and authority of deputies, and are therefore armed, with the right to arrest. Now, the coal and iron police are a little different. He is really more like a detective. He is a gum-shoe man, as it were, in the situation. And word may come to picket men saying that a train is bringing a carload of strike breakers in, to meet at a certain time at the station, and the thugs will gather, and when the train unloads its passengers, these pickets call out to them and say, “There is a strike on.” "Don’t go out, don’t take our jobs." And sometimes they reach them—sometimes they get in close communication with them and sometimes not. That is when the imported thug comes in. He starts something. The coal and iron police, most of the time, are on the scene, and when they start something it is because the thugs and the coal and iron police are armed and the strikers are not armed, and are not permitted to be armed; and they are beaten up by the thugs, and that is about the time the constabulary appear on the scene, and they come around, mounted like cavalry, and they come around and see the disturbance, and they always take good care to arrest only the strikers. That is the part they play in that, and when they had this Westmoreland strike, which extended over a very considerable time in Westmoreland County, and not in one instance did we get any aid from the constabulary. We had men who wished to go home, and tried to go home, and the thugs would waylay them and would beat them up, and the constabulary—we telephoned and asked for protection and never got it.

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5661/

Here is a 1928 ACLU paper on the Coal and Iron Police:
http://debs.indstate.edu/a505s5_1928.pdf

In the above ACLU report is a report of the Coal and Iron Police in a "School Shooting" at Broughton PA, in the Southern Part of Allegheny County, the County seat of Allegheny County is Pittsburgh Pa:

“It just happened that I was here that day, when the examination by Squire O’Rourke of that negro who was picked up at a local railroad station when waiting to go away occurred. And he later willingly made a confession to Squire O’Rourke, and in that statement said that the coal and iron police said they would give him and his buddy, a man named Thomas Worrell, $25 apiece to shoot into the barracks windows.”

The Barracks cited was the Broughton School which the strikers were keeping open for their children, most other schools in the Soft coal region of Western Pennsylvania had been closed to Children of Strikers, but open to children of miners who scabbed. Thus the cause of the school shooting in Broughton.

Just some background on one of the best known Private police Forces in history.

[Uncle Joe]

21. That's a most certain path to hellfire and damnation.

Thanks for the thread, Celefin.

[DeSwiss]

22. K&R

Yes, I can see how The Capitalists would come to this conclusion. I mean it cuts out the middle-man of government and allows the cops to be controlled directly by their OWNERS.

- And this way, they'll control both ends of the prison-industrial complex.......

[LeftishBrit]

28. Argh; that's Cameron's basic attitude

If it moves, privatize it!

[Monk06]

32. Thatcherite union busting. Fucking Tories they never change.