From: bgt <bgt@chrootlabs.org>

On Sat, 2004-01-03 at 07:09, Michael Kalus wrote:

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Where there is no governmental police force, their is demand for private enforcement. And you know what? They regularly do their jobs better than the police.

Of course there is no oversight body, so if they use "excessive force" well, It's all part of doing business and after all they didn't smash YOUR skull so what do you care, right?

The only necessary "oversight body" is the courts. Both public and private police (should) operate under the Rule of Law just like everyone else. As with the public police, if private police have public perception problems related to excessive force, abuse of power, or whatever, they may opt to use a third-party interest to do "self-policing" by fining, firing, etc (much like pro sports organizations do... contractually). This is strictly a business management decision however, the only "legal" oversight should be the court. Police (public or private) should be judged and punished (in the legal sense) in the same way any other citizen is.

http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm Seton Hall Constitutional L.J. 2001, 685 ARE COPS CONSTITUTIONAL? Roger Roots* ABSTRACT Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ "textualist" and "originalist" methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles.