[ql06] TORT: Rent-a-cops and False Imprisonment
- From: "K.K. Campbell -- LAW'06" <2kc16@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ql06@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:21:44 -0400
Very interesting article, Toronto business communities are moving toward
increased "security" enforcement, over police...
The off-loading of government services (such as police) has been going
on for a couple decades -- part of the neo-conservative economic agenda.
The theory is that contractual services will be more accountable and
thereby superior in both service and cost. I don't want to get into that
debate.
But the "blending" of security and police -- as Nathalie Des Rosiers,
president of the Law Commission of Canada, says below -- is potentially
a bonanza for Tort Warriors, no?
Hell, one could set up your own practice on just the resultant False
Imprisonment charges. Like them New York State injury lawyers, or those
Ex-Copper Traffic People. (Sheldon, you said you were looking for
creative summer work, write a biz plan for a Small Business Loan of
$250k and make some commercials. I can help you make the TV commercials,
I have a broadcast degree. Practice looking into the camera, with great
sincerity, and saying, "I'm Sheldon Erentzen: And I will free you from
those terrible memories of unlawful arrest... WITH BIG CASH!")
What were the TORT guidelines for False Imprisonment?
[1] Restraint must be total, even if only momentary
[2] The restraint can be accomplished through three means:
(a) Barriers
(b) Implicit/explicit threats of force
(c) Assertion of legal authority.
The first goes to the affect on the plaintiff, the injured party.
The second goes to the respondent, the method of apply the restraint.
Back in 1997, in business, I had tried to land one security company --
the one you see patrolling the docks area of the Port of Toronto all the
time in their shiny black cars and black uniforms. In one sales call
meeting, the entrepreneurial owner of said company actually said to our
wide-eyed sales guy, "You know why we get so many applications? Because
we give young, sexy people GUNS."
He was being controversially sarcastic -- that was his style. But I
think he was right. These kinds of companies attract wannabes -- wannabe
cops. Cops have many layers of training and oversight. Decades of
conflict and bad behavior have created curbs on what cops can do.
Rent-a-cops don't have that tradition. They attract a lot more "Barney
Fifes."
And that, I'm sure, will lead to an increase of misbehaviors... in which
false imprisonment is BOUND to be a serious factor.
Read up on it, again, Tort Warriors. And MAKE $$$ FAST!
Ken.
--
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
(Who is watching the watchers?)
-- Decimus Junius Juvenal, c. AD 5-130
The Satires
--- cut here ---
Police fume at security firms
KERRY GILLESPIE
CITY HALL BUREAU
TORONTO STAR
Oct. 19, 2003
Business improvement associations want to see more police walking the
beat, but the police say they don't have the time. So private security
guards are hired to do it.
Homeowners want more attention paid to speeders and people who run stop
signs in their neighbourhoods, but police say traffic violations aren't
a priority. So city council asks the province for permission to use
red-light cameras at intersections in residential areas.
It's becoming more common for individuals and groups, unable to get the
police to do what they'd like, to find other ways to get those services.
While the debate among Canadians rages over the benefits and dangers of
two-tiered health care, a kind of two-tiered policing has quietly become
a reality.
"There's no turning back on this, it's a question of ensuring it works
well," said Nathalie Des Rosiers, president of the Law Commission of
Canada, about what she calls the "blending" of security and police.
The commission gives independent advice to government on improvements to
the law and will be making recommendations on this in January.
Police and their supporters say citizens are in danger from the dramatic
expansion of the largely unregulated "rent-a-cop" industry, which is
taking over many traditional police roles. This is happening, the police
union says, because politicians underfund the police.
Security guards, often paid little more than minimum wage and with no
special powers, now do a wide range of jobs from prisoner transport to
fraud investigations to patrolling streets and arresting drug dealers.
Security company owners say police are trying to whip up fears because
police want to retain their historic monopoly on state-sanctioned
security.
Security firms argue they are providing services citizens want and
police don't or can't do — and for a better price.
There are already more than two security guards for every police officer
across Canada. In one decade, the number of security guards increased 69
per cent, compared to 1 per cent growth for police. In those same years,
1991-2001, crime dropped 22 per cent.
So if crime is down and there are more security guards doing jobs police
used to do, for lower salaries and often paid with private dollars, has
the police budget gone down?
No. Even as other city services are frozen or cut, the Toronto police
budget, now at $636 million a year, continues to climb.
Toronto taxpayers spend as much on police as they do on fire and
ambulance services, the TTC, children's services and seniors' homes
combined.
Whether public money spent to keep citizens safe could be more
effectively spent by divvying up jobs between the police (doing the
dangerous difficult jobs) and private security (taking care of low-level
tasks) is something that should be examined, the law commission's Des
Rosiers says.
"There's no doubt the citizen would prefer to see a full-fledged police
officer come to his or her door, but they want them to come within a
reasonable time," Des Rosiers said. "And the dilemma is do they want to
spend all the dollars needed to have that or do they want to have health
care (as well)."
Even in a hotly contested mayoral campaign where candidates make daily
announcements about how they will save money at city hall, there's
hardly a mention of the city's biggest single budget item — the police.
This doesn't surprise veteran Councillor Brian Ashton, who is on the
city's five-year fiscal review committee and one of the few people at
city hall who will talk about the police budget.
"When you give someone guns and bullets, the respect meter goes way up,"
says Ashton. "That's Canadian culture.
"What people don't realize is because of the tremendous regard the
public has for the police, which is a good thing, the police can use the
public's fears (of crime) very effectively to promote their interests
and that stands in the way of creating a better policing system." Taking
a pro-police, tough-on-crime stance gets votes, being tough on police
gets a politician nowhere, says Ashton.
In the 1994 election, then-police chief William McCormick and union
president Art Lymer campaigned against Ashton, because he had raised
questions about police accountability. After the duo made a trip to his
ward, his support dropped 10 per cent overnight, Ashton said.
More recently, when councillors questioned whether police Chief Julian
Fantino was being too strict by banning blankets and food at this
summer's Rolling Stones concert, he issued a news release damning the
councillors by name.
Toronto Police Association executives, including new president Rick
McIntosh, will be meeting this week to choose which political candidates
the union will endorse.
"It takes a lot of courage to stand up and debate the police chief or
stand chest-to-chest with the Toronto police union," Ashton says.
But it needs to be done, he says.
"A mayor with vision and courage could challenge the status quo of how
we do policing in our city."
At a mayoral debate, David Miller took on John Nunziata for campaigning
on crime to get votes.
"Leaders don't go out and scare people to get elected," Miller said.
Miller has said he wouldn't cut the police budget, but would re-allocate
money within it and ask the police to conduct an internal review to find
savings.
John Tory says he'll hire 400 new police officers. He says he'll look
for savings within the police budget to pay for them. But if that can't
be found, "taxpayers will have to pay" more to hire the officers.
Former Toronto mayor Barbara Hall is the only major candidate who says
she'd consider cutting the police budget.
"If waste or inefficiencies can be found in the police budget, they'll
be cut," Hall says.
Councillor Peter Li Preti has said he favours photo radar in
neighbourhoods to catch speeders because police have repeatedly told him
enforcing traffic violations isn't a priority.
Councillor Mike Feldman supports cameras because they are more cheaper
than having highly training, well-paid police do the job.
In January, the starting base salary of a police officer will be $47,000
and rise to $87,000 for an officer with 23 years on the force.
"Police have priced themselves out of the market," says Ross McLeod,
owner of Intelligarde, a Toronto-based security firm.
That's why half his business is with government, he says. Intelligarde
provides security in city-owned housing complexes, parking lots and
government land in the port area.
Intelligarde employees try to reduce crime by banning prostitutes and
drug dealers for trespassing or making citizen's arrests and calling the
police to take them away.
"True emergency calls that require an armed officer to race to the scene
with lights flashing and sirens wailing, that only affects a small
percentage of police work. They are flooded with administrative or
low-level calls," McLeod says.
"Those calls can be diverted to contract providers like us. We can
respond to them, we can take the report, we can do the investigation of
the stolen lawn mowers, the barking dogs, the wandering elderly and the
funny smells."
McLeod figures contracting the low-level work to security guards could
save taxpayers about half the cost of having that work done by police.
But McIntosh, the new city police association president, says if any
police work was contracted out to private security not only would it be
bad for police, who would lose jobs, it would be bad for the public.
"You want as highly trained and skilled people as you can get in these
positions," McIntosh says. The police are understaffed, McIntosh says.
But despite that, "the system we have works pretty well."
"I wouldn't want to be privatizing or downsizing to save money because
if you're saving money, let's face it, something's gotta give. I
wouldn't want to be compromising our system any more than it is."
The problem, the law commission says, is that the current system, and
its laws and regulations, no longer reflects reality.
"The line between public police and private security has blurred," reads
the commission's discussion paper.
If the line has blurred, the law hasn't.
Canadian law draws a bold line between public officials, like police who
are given special powers and held to higher standards, and private
individuals.
Canadian law also draws a distinction between public and private space.
Traditionally, public space, such as sidewalks and parks, were the
responsibility of the police and privately owned building, such as
shopping centres and bars, were left in the hands of private security.
Not anymore.
Today, police on "paid duty" can be hired for $49 an hour to provide
security at the Air Canada Centre during hockey games, or at a bar or
construction site.
That police and security will eventually work together in some
combination was a near universally held opinion at a conference hosted
by the law commission in Montreal earlier this year.
Just as prevalent, though, was a grave concern about allowing private
security to keep expanding.
"This goes to the core values of what it is to be a Canadian," says
Carleton law professor and leading private security expert George
Rigakos, one of the speakers at the conference.
"We intuitively know that this idea of public health care binds us
together. But that the state is allowing its ideological monopoly over
the use of force to slip into corporate hands is even more profound," he
says.
"People really haven't clued into that yet."
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