Alright, gather round as I tell you tales of my experiance in the Private Sector.....
First off there are roughly 18,760 Police Agencys in the United States, from the DOJ-Fed Level all the way down to little 4 Officer Sherrifs Departments out on Indian Reservations. The vast majority of municipal departments are small, having 10 or fewer officers. For Every Police Officer in the Country there are an estimated 8 Private Security Officers (at all levels of the term).
A little background on the situation I was in. I worked in the City of Dayton Ohio as a Private Security Officer this last summer. The City of Dayton is the 10th most dangerous in its size catagory in the country down from 7th in 2004.... go us. There are 4 big Security Companies in the city that hold the lions share of contract work in the city. You have Merchant and Anderson, both national companys with good reputations for officer conduct overall. You have International Security which does mostly Corperate level stuff, officer buildings, banks, ect. Then you have Moonlight, my company. Out of these 4 we were the only ones who had the option available for Lethal Force (Companys like Brinks and such not withstanding). Why would anybody want lethal force, well not everybody does. Many of the contracts we had did not require an armed guard., Why? Because it costs more and the company putting out the contract didnt see it as neccesary to the job. Just being somewhere and being deterrant (I.E. a set of eyes to call the police) is enough for most people to find some place else to break into or buy their drugs. However our company had a reputation, we were the only one in the city that would actually place someone into custody to facilitate an arrest, notice I didnt say arrest I said Facilitate an Arrest. We were also one of the only ones that had any force options whatsoever, Merchant will fire you for defending yourself. We got this reputation because of the places we worked, Western Manor, Hilltop, Cliburn Manor, Cornell, all of these are section 8 housing projects for the city of Dayton. DPD wont go into Hilltop with fewer then 8 officers, Western Manor was the largest inflow point of Heroin in the city of Dayton, we went into these places and cleaned up. Its not somewhere Id want to live no, because it is in the middle of the hood, but its not what it was. This last summer we (Moonlight) had a small war with a local gang at Hilltop manor, at one point we tasked what we called the "A Team." It was a group of handpicked officers, myself included who all had military or police backgrounds. These were the only officers who worked that area, Myself and one other officer being certified OPOTA for shotgun, we carried Longguns for foot Patrols. Now imagine 4 officers in Uniforms that are identical to the local Sherriff department one of them carrying a Shotgun slung, doing foot patrols of the neighborhood your in (the worst one in the city). It looked menecing as hell, but we stopped getting shot at, and it sent the message of you will leave or we will make you leave. Why did we do this, because the Police didnt have the assets to do this, they were only able to respond to a situation and had no real preemptive capabilities. This is however where the tread lightly portion of the job comes into play, and the overall reason I got out. You are asked in many cases to walk like a cop, talk like a cop, act like a cop, however you are not a cop. These companies have boatloads of insurance, especially if they have use of force ability, to protect themselves. You the officer, are basically putting yourself in a very liable position, because your knowledge and training are all that seperates you from being torn appart in civil court for overstepping your grounds. We were only able to pursue up to the property line, we were only able to use force to protect ourselves and bystanders from immediate harm not to protect property (something many companies didnt get). I got out because while I knew my ass was smart enough to know where the line is, I didnt trust the guy next to me. We had guys that would never have made it into real LEO positions, this is the thing you find with a lot of Private Security guys, the wanna-be cop. They get real easy to spot the more you work with them, they are the ones that carry their badges off duty like it means something. They are the guys you worry about when your working because they cause more problems then they solve, our company is going down hill because the new management is one of these guys, hes failed out of 4 police academys. He lacked the academic and physical requirements and guys like me knew it. He however hired enough guys like himself that the guys like me left, as a result the company has taken a big hit as far as the respect given to it by Local PD. When I was there DPD, Trotwood PD, and Montgomery Co loved us, they saw us as basically a great resource to use to find people they were already looking for. They gave us updated lists of active warrants in the area for when we did ID stops, and we would call them and tell them when we had somebody they wanted, we were an extra set of eyes and hands if need be. Now, a lot of that is gone, theres still some good officers but the company as a whole is beginning to slide.
This is the same with Blackwater, they have a reputation, companies know that reputation. And it is the job of the individual officer to uphold that reputation otherwise the company and other officers will feel the effects, no differnt then when somebody in a differnt uniform does something stupid and it effects us all.
Who loves ya, good buddy?
) would have had a field day with you. I susbscribe to the "it's a big sky" theory where there is room enough for both of our opinions. I just think I am more cynical and realistic (?) than you --- I (in my eyes) see the world as it is .... you are probably more idealistic than I and see the world as you wish it were ..... ??? 
