http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8359948.stm

Sounds more like a problem for the police more than anyone else...



First of all, you'd need to sort out the ambiguities with community officers alone before criticizing private patrols.

Secondly, the private sector seems to be good enough as far as the government's concerned, from school's to what leads to military inquiries , so why not 'policing', eh?

Thirdly, it's been clear for some time that the 'poor' have often gone without proper policing

Such ventures wouldn't exist if there wasn't demand...

I agree - the entire reason this exists is because of insufficient police and police stations. There was a situation where a paramedic couldn't take a young girl (think she was about four years old) to hospital because the local youths were harassing the paramedic, had slashed the tyres and one of them had a BB air gun and was threatening to use it.

In this kind of situation, I truly believe lethal action (against the youths) should be acceptable. If they have reached this kind of point in their lives, desperate measures are required and I would accept maiming them (as opposed to killing them) to control their behaviour. There are some kids who have gone so wrong, they are not afraid of authority (police, threat of jail etc).

I think one of the issues here is that private companies can go around practically extorting protection money. What happens if you don’t pay your weekly fee and you need help from them? Remember - they can officially do less than a community support officer. However, I get the feeling that they could get away with a lot more “unofficially” if you get my meaning. This all sounds bad, and smacks of commercial vigilantism.

That's a matter for the people paying them as far as I'm concerned - frankly I'm amazed that a whole street or whatever got together to pay them

It's also a matter for the police; Do they still physically police the area despite the private types walking about?



Probably, but again that's down to the people paying them, and I doubt they'd give a sh1t if Scrotey McScrote took a beating or worse