> The church said its "police officers would be restricted to the church's campuses and be able to respond to emergency situations while coordinating with local authorities."
How's this any different from the various University police forces? In terms of numbers, seems about similar (4000 people). They're not going to be enforcing religious law from reading that, so... what's the problem?
Hiring off-duty police officers to provide security for events is very common. Without their own police departments, universities would be doing this constantly and would likely not be able to find sufficient numbers of off-duty officers for all events for which they wanted to provide security. It also allows universities to provide a higher concentration of law enforcement officials on their campuses than would otherwise be provided by the police departments in the surrounding municipalities. There are definitely problems with policing in the US, but notable exceptions notwithstanding, campus police tend to be among the more community-minded LEOs.
The university that I went to has ~40,000 students between undergraduate and graduate students, and an additional ~20,000 faculty, staff and other people there at any given day. There were thousands of people living in student housing on campus and tons of sporting events that could draw crowds near the six figures.
They have a deputized police force of people available 24/7 for things as mundane as walking people home safely and as complicated as enforcing local/state/federal laws. They are sworn officers that have an agreement with the city they operate in that allows their jurisdiction to bleed into the city proper.
I never interacted with them when I was a student, but it's not out of this world to have a small police force for the campus - there were more people there on the average weekday than the city that I grew up in, which also had it's own police force.
Many/most laws in the US are selectively enforced. A university police force is a prudent way for many/most universities to have university matters taken care of in a way that suits the university. Typically this means doing a lot of menial things (e.g., dealing with underage drinking, esp. in public) that might create liability or a PR nightmare for the university that the local police might not be inclined to deal with. The university police can often be more likely to de-escalate certain matters than local police, and this is generally a good outcome for the school.
At wealthier universities, this is also a way to convince parents that their kids are safe. Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Stanford (off the top of my head) are all in or near not-so-safe neighborhoods -- although gentrification of those areas are making this less of an issue these days.
A university police force has police powers within a university campus--it can arrest people. I will add that in my college days, the university police did not carry firearms, though now many do.
I imagine that the custom arose because Anglo-American universities tended to be rural or at least in small towns, unlike the continental ones. Remember that universities until about 1900 were exclusively male, so that one was gathering a large number of young men at prime hell-raising age. A college of 500 students might generate more work for police than a town of 2000 citizens might otherwise have, or care to pay taxes to police.
Because in many parts of the US, the major universities were plunked down in a 10km by 10km square of wilderness, with literally nothing else around.
Sometimes a big town grew alongside.
Sometimes it didn't.
Given that universities are non-profits, and therefore are not required to pay any municipal property tax, there were many that simply could not be patrolled by the neighboring towns. So they had to hire their own police forces.
Ok. So here's an example from Canada. The university of British Columbia technically had its own government. It has to do with the history of the land grant. They have a police force but this police is RCMP (royal Canadian mounted police). They are a federal police force but contracted to smaller towns and cities that don't develop their own. In Ontario many small towns have OPP (Ontario provincial police). Is there a reason why universities simply couldn't contract from a state police force?
Historically, land-grant universities predate state police forces. In fact, in most of the US, state police forces are there primarily to enforce traffic safety laws on the highways, because out in the countryside, drivers cross county lines too quickly for the sheriff's police forces to fill that role.
Also, regardless of the formal chain of command for a university police department, the licensing of police officers (i.e. certifying someone as eligible to wear a badge) is a state matter. A university cop doesn't draw his salary from any government, but he can still get his badge taken away by the state if he misuses it.
A big school in a small town could completely overwhelm the local police department. So schools and towns work together to have a campus police department.
For various reasons, this is very unlikely ever to happen.
Freedom to do whacky stuff like this is unfortunately a privilege, not a right, in Alabama -- even if the law allows it. Briarwood is a ridiculously rich and well-connected church, so they might be able to make this happen.
My guess is that Briarwood will basically be held to a standard that only a very wealthy church can meet in terms of facilities, training, or something like that. These standards will effectively be a moat to prevent non-rich churches (all or most non-white non-Christian churches fall into this category) from having their own police.
That, or the legislation doesn't get passed for precisely the reasons you mentioned.
In this case, no one is "coming for" anyone, but when one religion is asking for special rights, that makes me pause. When the ACLU is against it, that really makes me pause.
Think about Scientology having their own police force with guns. Does that scare you? If it becomes legal for these fine people in Alabama, it becomes legal for Scientology.
> In this case, no one is "coming for" anyone, but when one religion is asking for special rights, that makes me pause. When the ACLU is against it, that really makes me pause.
The Establishment Clause precludes the government from establishing a state religion, or preventing the free exercise of any religion. Of course there is a tension between those two prongs: when you have a government sponsored activity, allowing religious organizations to participate raises the concern of appearing to confer official government sanction to the religion. On the other hand, prohibiting religious organizations from participating in a government-sponsored activity that is open to non-religious organizations is a burden on the free exercise of religion.
The ACLU tends to focus on the establishment prong and ignore the free exercise part, which in my opinion is incorrect. If the Establishment Clause was just about "separation of church and state" (which is what Jefferson believed), it would say that. But the actual language was a compromise among many people, many religious, and protects the "free exercise" of religion. The ACLU tends to see Establishment Clause violations where religious organizations are permitted to participate in activities open to non-religious organizations (and for various reasons, operating private police forces is something non-religious organizations are permitted to do). But precluding such participation would of course single out religious organizations for different treatment and thus burden the free exercise of religion.
In America, some christian religions want more and more rights and want to take away the rights of other religions and people that don't practice their religion. They feel that is what the founding fathers wanted when forming this country so it is OK to do this. This is the "literal meaning" of the constitution in their mind. This is why some other people are very sensitive to issues such as this and why these people feel that a christian prayer at the beginning of a government activity or christian artifacts on government property should be banned. That prayer would not be allowed if it were a prayer to satan, right? It is not about freedom to exercise religion, it is about freedom to exercise a christian religion which is different.
In my opinion, the option that is the most fair to all citizens would be that everyone should be free to practice any religion they like in their private home and in their church. Religion shouldn't be mixed with government, in statues, in prayers unless it is in private.
It makes for really poor PR, but the substance of the situation is that they want to hire off-duty police officers for security with greater regularity than is possible given the availability of off-duty officers in the Birmingham area. This is essentially the only way they can fund the additional officers that would be necessary to staff their security needs.
>The Alabama Senate voted Tuesday to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church to hire fully deputized officers who would carry weapons and have the authority to make arrests.
So presumably the church is paying for these officers? If so, I'm fine with that. Private companies pay for security all the time. But the fact that the officers are fully deputized (having the powers of government police) gives me pause, and may be the thing that makes this unconstitutional.
It becomes unconstituational in the moment those officers make arrest that a normal police office wouldn't.
It's highly questionable that this church needs police instead of normal security officers.
Not questionable if it is a Mosque in 2017, which is the next logical place for this to head. Then we can also have Jewish police, born again police, Catholic police. And what if 2 churches are next to each other? Maybe they can build a wall with turrets.
> But government police forces are all working for the same people.
Not really.
In Arkansas, the county sheriff is elected - as is the Justice of the Peace, who has limited police powers as well. There are also state police, municipal police, and various state and federal agencies with law enforcement powers. Each of these groups work for different entities, some of which are mutually exclusive.
> These religion-based police forces are definitely not.
A police force operated by a church is no more "religion-based" than the Securitas guy standing outside the grocery store is "retail-based".
That depends. To whom do the police officers swear their loyalty?
If their highest authority is The Constitution and they are trained and act as if it is, then maybe it's OK.
But, this is a church. The church's highest authority is not The Constitution and that immediately calls into question who is the highest authority for any police officer hired and sworn by the church.
Since the church and the school are in quite nice areas, this strikes me as a bit of security overkill. The folks affiliated with this church are typically quite well off and are typically staunch Republicans with values that match. I can imagine that they perceive the need to defend themselves with more guns from potential attackers that statistically speaking only exist in their imaginations.
I get the sense that their security plan in general (either with their own police or just hired security) is just based on generating a perception of safety via a display of largely unnecessary force.
> I get the sense that their security plan in general (either with their own police or just hired security) is just based on generating a perception of safety via a display of largely unnecessary force.
Churches often have policing needs, both routine (Sunday traffic, filing reports for legal purposes) and acute (murder, domestic disputes, people with psychiatric issues).
And even if it is just about perception, why not? If your offering counseling services to people, a sense of safety is certainly important.
They have very real routine security needs (esp. traffic). These can easily be handled by minimum wage security or volunteers.
They do not have any reasonable expectation of acute needs.
As for a sense of safety, if you go to their campus (I have been there), you will feel very safe even if no police around.
There are potential ethical and legal issues about why churches shouldn't have police (rather than just security) that strike me as being far more important than protection from an imaginary assailant, but that's a matter that is beyond the scope of this reply.
> These can easily be handled by minimum wage security or volunteers.
You at least need to coordinate with the police to direct traffic in a public street. In many communities it's not that big of a deal to just hire local police officers to do the job. It's even seen as good community engagement by some.
> As for a sense of safety, if you go to their campus (I have been there), you will feel very safe even if no police around.
You're speaking generally. I'm speaking specifically. Some people have abusive ex's and take comfort that actual police officers are around to help with various crazy ex situations if they happen again.
> There are potential ethical and legal issues about why churches shouldn't have police (rather than just security)...
Fair enough. I was just pointing out the reasoning in the other direction. There are also implications to having uniformed Happy Brooks Church Security people handcuff people and remove them from the premises. There are clearly lots of expectations, fair or not, in the training, professionalism, and regulations that apply to a uniformed police officer versus someone with "SECURITY" on his t-shirt.
Sure. They could, and that would be totally reasonable.
That said, I personally don't think that they actually need as much "security" as they have or claim to want/need.
The reason this is an issue is not so much that they are seeking more security as much as they are trying to start the process (potentially a slippery slope) of blurring the distinction between church and state.
This is a terrible idea, in my opinion. The answer should be to hire private security and foster strong relationships with the local police. You don't get to create your own police force.
Why not? It's America, land of the free, right to bear arms, born out of an armed revolution. If you believe in liberty and the tenets the country was based on, you should also believe in the right to create your own police force or whatever.
This is what happens when people watch too much sensationalized news.
What will stop home owner associations and condo complexes from getting their own police forces? Who would they report to? What about privatizing the judiciary too?
Maybe the church should be (paying higher taxes/start paying taxes) to the local government so they have better policing in the community?
> This is what happens when people watch too much sensationalized news.
I understand but there have been mass murders at both schools and churches in the last couple years. And churches routinely have lower-level keeping-the-peace issues, especially involving people with psychiatric issues.
Security isn't optional because churches need to keep their members and guests safe. Having uniformed police officers enforcing normal laws involving assault, stalking, disturbing the peace, etc. isn't a horrible idea compared to having less regulated private security making citizen's arrests. That's why many (not all) churches hire off-duty uniformed officers, at least for traffic management needs.
As for the tax rate, churches do pay the officers already, so if it's not enough to offset the costs of the officer, the rates should be raised. Seems like a fee based payment structure makes the most sense when particular services are needed.
> Churches should use some of their tax-free money to provide assistance to the poor and needy like they're supposed to.
They should and do. Off the top of my head, I have personally seen churches run or partner in addiction recovery programs, social work, employment counseling, relationship counseling, cash-to-pay-bills ministries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and relief-and-rebuilding for for war-torn or disaster-stricken areas. How many hospitals have "Methodist", "Presbyterian", "Saint", etc. in the name?
"Church buys drug dens, renovates them, and turns it into a family homes for poor families" (an actual ministry I've served at) doesn't exactly make headlines, so people get a distorted view of what actually goes on.
> The needy (such as people with mental issues) certainly shouldn't be arrested just because they're going to a church.
Agreed. I could be more clear. The issue here is that churches (the good ones anyway) tend to try to help whoever needs help. So, like hospitals and shelters, tend to help people other places would just as soon deny admission to. An implication of being around mentally unstable people is that they do mentally unstable things sometimes. So you need to provide space for them while still providing safety and healing for everyone.
As a foreigner, I've never really understood why places like universities in America are allowed to have their own police forces.
After all, it creates a conflict of interests - is my job to enforce the law, or to protect the organisation that pays my wages? It's important because if I find myself faced with a nonviolent but disruptive protest against my employer, and I have a truncheon in my hand, there's a risk my loyalty will drive me to do the wrong thing.
Here in the UK, universities' security guards are equivalent to mall cops and nightclub bouncers - they can deal with minor things, but their powers are limited. If someone needs to be arrested, they have to call the real police.
In many places in the US you will have a municipal police force and also a county sheriff (and then layered over that a state police, other state law enforcement officials (game wardens and such) and the various federal agencies that do law enforcement).
University police work closely with the local police. They don't have jails, mourges, or investigation units. Basically they deal with traffic and nuisance complaints.
> especially involving people with psychiatric issues.
The response to people in psychiatric distress should not be police, especially not armed police.
We don't know how many people US police shot and kill each year because they don't count the numbers, but we think that it's about 1000 people per year, and we think that about half of those have mental illness.
> The response to people in psychiatric distress should not be police, especially not armed police.
A uniformed response to an assault, even if that's just taking an official police report, is absolutely a reasonable expectation. You're probably envisioning a specific kind of psychiatric incident. I understand that inference. Let me try to clarify here.
You seem to be speaking more abstractly, but I have personal experience with this sort of thing happening on a small church campus without professional security.
Churches are somewhat special in this area because they don't refuse service just because someone is different, homeless, or strange. And they don't generally consider it someone else's problem and just evict people who aren't lucrative clients or whatever. But they also have to say 'no' or address conflict at times. For example, a true one, a mentally ill person might be refusing professional help, asks for money for rent from the church, and then gets agitated at the conditions attached to the money (see a doctor, take your pills, join a program for the drugs, etc.).
Also you have things like relationship counseling happening on site (domestic-disturbance-type situations, but at church). Schools (mom wants to pick up kids, doesn't have custody, etc.). And lot of this stuff is all volunteer-staffed.
Churches are holistic and generally have to deal with any given problem any particular visitor or member might have. And they have to be sensitive to people who are healing while protecting everyone around. People are just messy, and at scale, there are absolutely advantages to having a public servant in good standing on the scene. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, but it's a lot more complicated and acute than people in these comments seem to realize.
Bottom line is that, despite what people watch on TV shows, churches tend to be for people that need healing of various types. They are often people with issues. Wealthy, balanced, fulfilled people often decide they don't need church, correctly nor not, so there are significant selection effects going on here. Due to the law of averages, the larger churches probably have significant security incidents happen on a regular basis.
If it wasn't for the "armed" part, I'd consider this at the same level as a neighbourhood watch, mall cops, or private security guards - really nothing sensational about it, and with some church communities having tens of thousands of people, it's really not odd to have some kind of security.
And since it's America, going from security to armed security is a small step. Right to bear arms and such.
I don't see the constitutional issue. The University of Chicago (among many others) is a private entity that has a private police force. Not permitting churches to have them just because they're churches would be a free excercise of religion violation.
> The University of Chicago is a private entity that has a private police force.
How come that's legal? I agree that the fact it's a church isn't the big issue (though I would hope a university would make at least some effort towards political neutrality in a way that a church wouldn't (and indeed shouldn't)), but why are we allowing private organizations to run their own police at all?
I would assume anyone or entity could have a private police force. I would think so long as the officers are sworn in peace officers the only thing about it being a private police force is that they are paid and compensated by a "private" person (individual or corporation). These private police forces and officers are still bound to obey and follow the law and can be held liable for any unlawful infractions and offenses they commit.
> they are paid and compensated by a "private" person (individual or corporation).
that in itself is quite a big deal in many other coltures. I think that an important distinction should be made between security guards and private "police".
Every private "person" might need security guard, but they should not be a police force.
The difference between a security guard and a police [officer or force] is the ability to arrest and detain for legal infractions. A sworn (and deputized) peace officer may enforce the laws they are and have sworn to uphold regardless of if they are "on the clock" or being paid. Many security guards are often police officers working a second job.
This decision is getting a lot of hate here in Alabama and I'm surprised to see some support here. The knee jerk reaction is to think this a separation issue, but its really not. States can delegate authority for law enforcement to anyone they choose.
With that being said, its still a dumb idea. Our government is wasting time debating this issue when there are so many topics that are real issues. This church could hire full time security people or outsource to a security company. My alma mater had a university police force, but decided to contract the local police instead because it was more cost efficient.
And Christ never said life was going to be safe. He actually said the opposite.
History truly is a cycle isn't it? It might certainly be hyperbole to claim this is going to be a slide-back process from 'Separation of Church and State', but I wonder if the people in charge at this specific Church are now feeling a special new sense of power - and enjoying it.
Yeah, likely would feel a lot less discomfort. But do regular security guards have the privileges mentioned in this report? Officer status and arrest making for example? What about covert / undercover operations at a small scale? I think these 'private officers' will be able to do those things from the looks of it.
If I was a member of this church, I would be upset by the seemingly misappropriation of resources. Has anyone in the leadership calculated the likelihood of an attack. Have they considered other safely improvements that might statistically save more lives? On-site ambulance during services, speed bumps, etc. What services are going to lose funding? Wouldn't you rather have an extra youth director, give more to the local charities, or have a few free concerts?
Usually we talk about exchanging freedom for safety and about how it is not a good deal. Maybe we should rethink are philosophy because this church believes it's so valuable that it would sell it's soul for it.
This is objectively speaking a bad idea. First, there is the whole issue of conflict of interests. If I report to church officials is my primary job to uphold the law of the land or to protect the interests of the people who pay me. Second, it sets a precedent that it's ok for religious organizations of a certain size to demand their own police force. If this church feels that it's congregation isn't adequately protected it should be sufficient for the current local police department to grant them a permanent fixture of officers. This is how many colleges work. The officers are actual policeman and work a beat on campus but still report to the normal chain of command. Third, is the constitutionality of this. Police are inherently a government function. Okaying a religious police force is at best dubious, per the Establishment Clause (law experts can debate that). Fourth are the obvious bad optics of this, for all of the previously outline reasons. Fifth, this is almost guaranteed to blow up in their faces the second anything even remotely questionable happens. It's such an unnecessary risk to take, because there is going to be a questionable call made (because that happens everyday in police departments everywhere) and they are going to get point blank asked whether they've just deputized a religious police force, and they are going to get sued, and boycotted, and it's really more a matter of when not if.
A couple of thoughts on this I've not seen addressed here:
First, it seems that the fact that this is a church is largely irrelevant. Colleges, including private colleges, have had police departments for quite a while. I don't see what reasonable distinction can be made between a private college, a church, or even a large retailer.
Second, active and retired police officers enjoy some interesting freedoms other civilians cannot access. For instance: under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act[1], it would be legal for a person who is sworn as an active police officer for this church in Alabama to carry a concealed handgun on their person in New York City. It is effectively impossible for any non-resident to do so legally who isn't covered by the LEOSA. Under the same law, anyone who retires from an agency after serving for 10 years or who is deemed by their agency to have a service-connected disability enjoys the same protections for life.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 143 ms ] threadHow's this any different from the various University police forces? In terms of numbers, seems about similar (4000 people). They're not going to be enforcing religious law from reading that, so... what's the problem?
This is bullshit.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-university...
They have a deputized police force of people available 24/7 for things as mundane as walking people home safely and as complicated as enforcing local/state/federal laws. They are sworn officers that have an agreement with the city they operate in that allows their jurisdiction to bleed into the city proper.
I never interacted with them when I was a student, but it's not out of this world to have a small police force for the campus - there were more people there on the average weekday than the city that I grew up in, which also had it's own police force.
At wealthier universities, this is also a way to convince parents that their kids are safe. Harvard, Yale, Penn, and Stanford (off the top of my head) are all in or near not-so-safe neighborhoods -- although gentrification of those areas are making this less of an issue these days.
I imagine that the custom arose because Anglo-American universities tended to be rural or at least in small towns, unlike the continental ones. Remember that universities until about 1900 were exclusively male, so that one was gathering a large number of young men at prime hell-raising age. A college of 500 students might generate more work for police than a town of 2000 citizens might otherwise have, or care to pay taxes to police.
Sometimes a big town grew alongside.
Sometimes it didn't.
Given that universities are non-profits, and therefore are not required to pay any municipal property tax, there were many that simply could not be patrolled by the neighboring towns. So they had to hire their own police forces.
Also, regardless of the formal chain of command for a university police department, the licensing of police officers (i.e. certifying someone as eligible to wear a badge) is a state matter. A university cop doesn't draw his salary from any government, but he can still get his badge taken away by the state if he misuses it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campus_police
Freedom to do whacky stuff like this is unfortunately a privilege, not a right, in Alabama -- even if the law allows it. Briarwood is a ridiculously rich and well-connected church, so they might be able to make this happen.
My guess is that Briarwood will basically be held to a standard that only a very wealthy church can meet in terms of facilities, training, or something like that. These standards will effectively be a moat to prevent non-rich churches (all or most non-white non-Christian churches fall into this category) from having their own police.
That, or the legislation doesn't get passed for precisely the reasons you mentioned.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
In this case, no one is "coming for" anyone, but when one religion is asking for special rights, that makes me pause. When the ACLU is against it, that really makes me pause.
Think about Scientology having their own police force with guns. Does that scare you? If it becomes legal for these fine people in Alabama, it becomes legal for Scientology.
The Establishment Clause precludes the government from establishing a state religion, or preventing the free exercise of any religion. Of course there is a tension between those two prongs: when you have a government sponsored activity, allowing religious organizations to participate raises the concern of appearing to confer official government sanction to the religion. On the other hand, prohibiting religious organizations from participating in a government-sponsored activity that is open to non-religious organizations is a burden on the free exercise of religion.
The ACLU tends to focus on the establishment prong and ignore the free exercise part, which in my opinion is incorrect. If the Establishment Clause was just about "separation of church and state" (which is what Jefferson believed), it would say that. But the actual language was a compromise among many people, many religious, and protects the "free exercise" of religion. The ACLU tends to see Establishment Clause violations where religious organizations are permitted to participate in activities open to non-religious organizations (and for various reasons, operating private police forces is something non-religious organizations are permitted to do). But precluding such participation would of course single out religious organizations for different treatment and thus burden the free exercise of religion.
In my opinion, the option that is the most fair to all citizens would be that everyone should be free to practice any religion they like in their private home and in their church. Religion shouldn't be mixed with government, in statues, in prayers unless it is in private.
Sworn law enforcement can detain someone in more cases than a private citizen may, up to and including using lethal force to do so.
Assaulting a sworn officer is a lot more serious than assaulting a security guard.
A sworn officer may carry a firearm under federal law in many instances where no one else has the ability to legally do so.
So presumably the church is paying for these officers? If so, I'm fine with that. Private companies pay for security all the time. But the fact that the officers are fully deputized (having the powers of government police) gives me pause, and may be the thing that makes this unconstitutional.
But government police forces are all working for the same people. These religion-based police forces are definitely not.
Not really.
In Arkansas, the county sheriff is elected - as is the Justice of the Peace, who has limited police powers as well. There are also state police, municipal police, and various state and federal agencies with law enforcement powers. Each of these groups work for different entities, some of which are mutually exclusive.
> These religion-based police forces are definitely not.
A police force operated by a church is no more "religion-based" than the Securitas guy standing outside the grocery store is "retail-based".
If their highest authority is The Constitution and they are trained and act as if it is, then maybe it's OK.
But, this is a church. The church's highest authority is not The Constitution and that immediately calls into question who is the highest authority for any police officer hired and sworn by the church.
I get the sense that their security plan in general (either with their own police or just hired security) is just based on generating a perception of safety via a display of largely unnecessary force.
Churches often have policing needs, both routine (Sunday traffic, filing reports for legal purposes) and acute (murder, domestic disputes, people with psychiatric issues).
And even if it is just about perception, why not? If your offering counseling services to people, a sense of safety is certainly important.
They do not have any reasonable expectation of acute needs.
As for a sense of safety, if you go to their campus (I have been there), you will feel very safe even if no police around.
There are potential ethical and legal issues about why churches shouldn't have police (rather than just security) that strike me as being far more important than protection from an imaginary assailant, but that's a matter that is beyond the scope of this reply.
You at least need to coordinate with the police to direct traffic in a public street. In many communities it's not that big of a deal to just hire local police officers to do the job. It's even seen as good community engagement by some.
> As for a sense of safety, if you go to their campus (I have been there), you will feel very safe even if no police around.
You're speaking generally. I'm speaking specifically. Some people have abusive ex's and take comfort that actual police officers are around to help with various crazy ex situations if they happen again.
> There are potential ethical and legal issues about why churches shouldn't have police (rather than just security)...
Fair enough. I was just pointing out the reasoning in the other direction. There are also implications to having uniformed Happy Brooks Church Security people handcuff people and remove them from the premises. There are clearly lots of expectations, fair or not, in the training, professionalism, and regulations that apply to a uniformed police officer versus someone with "SECURITY" on his t-shirt.
That said, I personally don't think that they actually need as much "security" as they have or claim to want/need.
The reason this is an issue is not so much that they are seeking more security as much as they are trying to start the process (potentially a slippery slope) of blurring the distinction between church and state.
That's news to me. Citation please.
Whether they are intending to or not, they will be if this is allowed.
I'm banging these out over lunch, so some reading comprehension empathy would be appreciated.
Historically the church informed everyday practices and morals and was the basis of many laws.
The worry was that a singular church would rise up in a region, and aim to use governmental power to put down its rivals.
The idea of a total atheistic separation where no one talks about morals and laws in a religious context was truly alien.
Maybe the church should be (paying higher taxes/start paying taxes) to the local government so they have better policing in the community?
I understand but there have been mass murders at both schools and churches in the last couple years. And churches routinely have lower-level keeping-the-peace issues, especially involving people with psychiatric issues.
Security isn't optional because churches need to keep their members and guests safe. Having uniformed police officers enforcing normal laws involving assault, stalking, disturbing the peace, etc. isn't a horrible idea compared to having less regulated private security making citizen's arrests. That's why many (not all) churches hire off-duty uniformed officers, at least for traffic management needs.
As for the tax rate, churches do pay the officers already, so if it's not enough to offset the costs of the officer, the rates should be raised. Seems like a fee based payment structure makes the most sense when particular services are needed.
The poor certainly can't afford to fight anything in the courtroom.
The needy (such as people with mental issues) certainly shouldn't be arrested just because they're going to a church.
They should and do. Off the top of my head, I have personally seen churches run or partner in addiction recovery programs, social work, employment counseling, relationship counseling, cash-to-pay-bills ministries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and relief-and-rebuilding for for war-torn or disaster-stricken areas. How many hospitals have "Methodist", "Presbyterian", "Saint", etc. in the name?
"Church buys drug dens, renovates them, and turns it into a family homes for poor families" (an actual ministry I've served at) doesn't exactly make headlines, so people get a distorted view of what actually goes on.
> The needy (such as people with mental issues) certainly shouldn't be arrested just because they're going to a church.
Agreed. I could be more clear. The issue here is that churches (the good ones anyway) tend to try to help whoever needs help. So, like hospitals and shelters, tend to help people other places would just as soon deny admission to. An implication of being around mentally unstable people is that they do mentally unstable things sometimes. So you need to provide space for them while still providing safety and healing for everyone.
After all, it creates a conflict of interests - is my job to enforce the law, or to protect the organisation that pays my wages? It's important because if I find myself faced with a nonviolent but disruptive protest against my employer, and I have a truncheon in my hand, there's a risk my loyalty will drive me to do the wrong thing.
Here in the UK, universities' security guards are equivalent to mall cops and nightclub bouncers - they can deal with minor things, but their powers are limited. If someone needs to be arrested, they have to call the real police.
In many places in the US you will have a municipal police force and also a county sheriff (and then layered over that a state police, other state law enforcement officials (game wardens and such) and the various federal agencies that do law enforcement).
The response to people in psychiatric distress should not be police, especially not armed police.
We don't know how many people US police shot and kill each year because they don't count the numbers, but we think that it's about 1000 people per year, and we think that about half of those have mental illness.
A uniformed response to an assault, even if that's just taking an official police report, is absolutely a reasonable expectation. You're probably envisioning a specific kind of psychiatric incident. I understand that inference. Let me try to clarify here.
You seem to be speaking more abstractly, but I have personal experience with this sort of thing happening on a small church campus without professional security.
Churches are somewhat special in this area because they don't refuse service just because someone is different, homeless, or strange. And they don't generally consider it someone else's problem and just evict people who aren't lucrative clients or whatever. But they also have to say 'no' or address conflict at times. For example, a true one, a mentally ill person might be refusing professional help, asks for money for rent from the church, and then gets agitated at the conditions attached to the money (see a doctor, take your pills, join a program for the drugs, etc.).
Also you have things like relationship counseling happening on site (domestic-disturbance-type situations, but at church). Schools (mom wants to pick up kids, doesn't have custody, etc.). And lot of this stuff is all volunteer-staffed.
Churches are holistic and generally have to deal with any given problem any particular visitor or member might have. And they have to be sensitive to people who are healing while protecting everyone around. People are just messy, and at scale, there are absolutely advantages to having a public servant in good standing on the scene. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it, but it's a lot more complicated and acute than people in these comments seem to realize.
Bottom line is that, despite what people watch on TV shows, churches tend to be for people that need healing of various types. They are often people with issues. Wealthy, balanced, fulfilled people often decide they don't need church, correctly nor not, so there are significant selection effects going on here. Due to the law of averages, the larger churches probably have significant security incidents happen on a regular basis.
And since it's America, going from security to armed security is a small step. Right to bear arms and such.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-01-25/news/ct-met-pr...
https://twitter.com/ChurchofSatan/status/852241434551791617
How come that's legal? I agree that the fact it's a church isn't the big issue (though I would hope a university would make at least some effort towards political neutrality in a way that a church wouldn't (and indeed shouldn't)), but why are we allowing private organizations to run their own police at all?
Because states have passed laws to that effect (like the one in this article).
that in itself is quite a big deal in many other coltures. I think that an important distinction should be made between security guards and private "police".
Every private "person" might need security guard, but they should not be a police force.
With that being said, its still a dumb idea. Our government is wasting time debating this issue when there are so many topics that are real issues. This church could hire full time security people or outsource to a security company. My alma mater had a university police force, but decided to contract the local police instead because it was more cost efficient.
And Christ never said life was going to be safe. He actually said the opposite.
First, it seems that the fact that this is a church is largely irrelevant. Colleges, including private colleges, have had police departments for quite a while. I don't see what reasonable distinction can be made between a private college, a church, or even a large retailer.
Second, active and retired police officers enjoy some interesting freedoms other civilians cannot access. For instance: under the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act[1], it would be legal for a person who is sworn as an active police officer for this church in Alabama to carry a concealed handgun on their person in New York City. It is effectively impossible for any non-resident to do so legally who isn't covered by the LEOSA. Under the same law, anyone who retires from an agency after serving for 10 years or who is deemed by their agency to have a service-connected disability enjoys the same protections for life.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_Enforcement_Officers_Safet...