Texas Town Fires Police Dept., Hires Private Citizens For Security -- Guess What Happened to Crime?

by Jackson Marciana and M. David
Counter Current News
Aug. 28, 2015

The community of Sharpstown, Texas decided that they didn’t need the police any longer. They made a controversial decision to fire the local police department and hire private citizens, granted no special rights that ordinary citizens do not have, to keep them safe.

That was back in 2012, and since then, Sharpstown residents say the private security company, SEAL Security Solutions, have done a much better job than the police used to. Crimes is down 61% in only 20 months.

James Alexander, the director of operations for SEAL Security Solutions says that, "Since we've been in there, an independent crime study that they've had done [indicates] we've reduced the crime by 61 percent," according to Guns.com.

All of that and they don’t have any special rights that you or I don’t have. That means they can’t arrest for misdemeanor crimes… and why should people be arrested for them anyway? It also means that they are held accountable the same way as anyone else.

The SEAL security patrolmen don’t "receive the same protection, as we are in the private sector," Alexander said. This, he explains, leads to constant accountability and vigilance of their employees making sure they don’t do something to get fired.

They don’t have special privileges, or lobbyist groups protecting them. If they break the law, if they murder someone, they will be treated like anyone else who committed the same crimes.

But so far, nothing like that has been a problem.

There’s the issue of savings too. The firm says they have saved taxpayers approximately $200,000 per year, even though they have more feet patrolling than back when the city employed cops.

"On a constable patrol contract, it's either a 70/30 or an 80/20. Meaning they say they patrol your community 70 percent of the time, [while] 30 percent of the time they use for running calls out of your area or writing reports," Alexander explained.

"The second thing that drastically reduces the crime is that we do directed patrols," he continued."Meaning we don't just put an officer out there and say  'here, go patrol.' We look at recent crime stats, and we work off of those crime stats. So if we have hotspots in those areas say for that month, we focus and concentrate our efforts around those hotspots."

Do you think private security instead of police forces is a good idea?













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