Public Safety and Private Police

Among the most important duties of public administrators is that of securing public safety-police and fire protection. Today, the major question confronting administrators, police officials, and the public is the provision of public safety at a level that is both financially acceptable and appropriate to the needs of the community. In recent years, the major barometers of crime have fallen somewhat.' But these marginal decreases have not persuaded the public that they are adequately protected against crime by the criminal justice system. In fact, social indicators point strongly to the fact that fear of crime is increasing. Calls to police for service, public opinion surveys, changing shopping and traffic patterns in high-risk neighborhoods, the spread of private prevention devices including alarms, locks, and bars, and the dramatic rise in private security, all underscore public concern about crime. During the past decade, moreover, individuals and communities have asked for more service from the police. A recent survey reveals a 20 percent average increase in calls for service in just the five years between 1976 and 1981.2 In addition to the traditional services, people routinely request police checks of their homes while they are away on vacation, escorts for merchants making bank deposits, extra patrols at business closing times, and the reassurance that police will check out suspicious persons just hanging around. Citizens complain that prostitution, public drinking, and harassment of residents get insufficient police attention despite increasing public expressions of concern. Resources to meet the increasing demand have dwindled. In most major cities, police personnel have declined, and the number of police employees per 1,000 population dropped 10 percent between 1975 and 1985.3 Shrinking tax revenues throughout the country and outright taxpayer revolts in California and Massachusetts have curtailed growth in government. Police, like other public administrators, have become familiar with cutback management. For police in most large urban areas, this has meant hard choices. Services have had to be prioritized and some cut out altogether. Many departments across the country have adopted differential responses to requests for police services. The police now give highest priority to responding to violent crimes or in-progress calls for robbery, murder, sexual assault, assault with a deadly weapon, and burglary. Other calls such as cold * Like other public administrators involved in the delivery of urban services, police confront problems of cutback management brought on by increasing demands and declining resources. One response has been greater public-private sector cooperation in securing and maintaining public safety. More money is now spent on private sector security systems than for all public law enforcement agencies. After reviewing this trend, the author considers the problems of accountability, efficiency, and effectiveness raised by increasing publicprivate sector cooperation. Strategies for managing public-private sector security systems are then assessed in view of the responsibility of government to ensure security and the reality that it cannot provide all protective services itself.