I attended a small private university (in the news recently, for the wrong reasons), and their "police" (aka public safety) force was almost completely on a power trip. I once was asked if they could search my car (with zero due cause), to which I refused. The "officer" verbally escalated the situation until it was obvious he was going to "search" my car or cause me significant problems. I acquiesced. I was later questioned by administrative authority why I refused and my refusal was used as leverage.
Let's leave policing to police.
The medical campus had emergency buttons on blue poles, and if you pressed one, you'd get like 4 or 5 emergency responses. Campus police, city police, and 2 or 3 of the hospitals had security or police on site.
I have heard they have a pretty good collaboration with local municipal police, so anything happening on the campus could be passed off to them if jurisdiction issues arise.
What happened to:
"The law presumes all innocent of crime until proven guilty." (Source: Law Reports of the Supreme Court of Ohio, 1835)
1) Those that are glorified private security firms
2) Those that are actual police with authority to arrest and investigate.
If you go to a school with type (1), they are much more likely to violate these rights as they have no real investigative authority outside the university judicial system. You can sometimes have issues with (2) if they know they will just be referring your case to the internal university judicial system, but they are often more professional in getting any evidence cleanly.
The only reason they should care about the law of the land is when they themselves are violating it, and there is no law that says "all private police and prosecution must also abide by innocent until proven guilty".
But colleges don't follow due process.
[0] This is evidenced by the fact that my initial refusal was brought up later in a meeting with the administration.
[1] Imagine with me: officer assumes that my refusal implies possession of banned substance, uses refusal to file a report in that vein, two days later I'm force to prove to the administration that I didn't have the banned substance at the time. That's obviously impossible.
Edit: grammar.
State universities such as University of Central Florida are owned by the State of Florida, operated on state property (as opposed to county or city property), and thus fall out of the jurisdiction provided by city and county police forces. The university police officers are full police officers, with the same requirements as local police, every ticket they write can be challenged in the court of law (not the university administration). The University Police can request assistance from local LEA, such as bomb squad or SWAT. In recent years, a mentally unstable student placed multiple bombs around UCF, a campus of 60k+ students on a square mile, UCF PD stopped the individual, but called in OCSO to clear the bombs.
It seems even the University of Miami (a private school) has a police force that is empowered by the local city.
If you believe that the same police that deals with city and urban issues would also be as effective in dealing with the same environment of a (usually cloistered) university, then you have way too much faith in bureaucracies.
Something about the phrase $COMPANY Police just makes me uncomfortable.
I think it makes sense for railroads to have police, as the crimes that affect them are multi-jurisdictional by nature and specific to the railroad. Colleges are similar in many ways... US Marshalls + pinkertons provided security to railroads in the 19th century. Professional police alleviate many of the abuses that inevitably happen with security people.
I get a little uncomfortable with private police not tied to an institution. When I was in vacation in South Carolina, the resort rent-a-cops were sworn officers... that sounds like a way to cover up crime to me.
CSX: http://www.csx.com/index.cfm/community/csx-police-department...
NY MTA: http://web.mta.info/mta/police/
Norfolk Southern: http://www.protecttheline.com/ns_police.php
Canadian Pacific: http://www.cpr.ca/en/safety/cp-police-service
These companies exist to be able to operate at a loss to serve a greater benefit to the public, but giving them more power than that doesn't really seem like it would be in the public's interest.
The Supreme Court found that they were much more like a government agency than like a private company, despite their assertions to the contrary.
http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/department-of-tra...
It blows my mind how much pro-police stuff I see on HN and reddit when it comes to discussions of private security and gun law enforcement. The reality is that the police look out for their own, have their own agendas, have their own politics, etc and that rarely fits in with our ideas of law and order.
As far as the "most countries" argument goes, there's no shortage of private security in those countries, they just don't use the term "police" like we do. Not to mention, in the US, gun ownership is trivial, so the ability to shoot up a school or a train is within the means of any weirdo who wants to. Thus the need for armed security.
Basically, regardless whether it's an Actual Police force, or a pretend one, you need to be aware of your rights and never acquiesce simply because you "have nothing to hide."
"...for the purpose of deception" being the operative phrase. Campus "police" aren't attempting to deceive anyone, they're attempting to enforce university rules.
This is true in many countries however many have also merged railroad police in with whatever their federal police organization is. A historical example is Bahnpolizei in Germany. Interestingly enough, all Swiss railroad employees have limited police powers.
What countries have never had private railroad police? All the major countries I could come across seem to have had them at some point.
Railroads in the US have had police forces for a long time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police
That is true on a technicality, at least for Cambridge. Cambridge University has the University Constabulary[1], and for historical reasons its members really do have the powers of constables, though only within a few miles of the traditional centre of Cambridge.
In reality, they are primarily a ceremonial unit and occasionally useful for public order purposes at university events. If anything serious goes wrong, it's going to be regular police officers who come and arrest the guilty parties, and in any event, anyone charged with criminal behaviour in connection with the university will be tried in the same courts as everyone else and prosecuted by the same public authorities as anyone else.
Oxford and Cambridge both go back a long way, and it's true that there have have been some surprising and/or amusing laws relating to them as a result. However, like most widely reported antiquated laws in the UK, a lot of them are either myths or long-since repealed. For example, every summer, we get a few students doing silly things while under the influence and then learning to their cost that the old chestnut about police officers needing permission to enter the grounds of a university college isn't actually going to stop police officers coming in and arresting them.
Pro-tip: If you're ever visiting the Cambridge colleges, be nice to the porters. They are the traditional gatekeepers of the colleges, the role is widely respected for the support they give both students and staff, and for the most part they are very friendly and helpful. However, a surprising number of them are doing it as a change of direction following a distinguished career in the military or police services, and they can be much scarier than the University Constables if anyone makes trouble...
It's also amazing to see Penn Police go from friend mode to cop mode. There were a few armed robberies on campus (non-student criminals) and the Police went from "nice guy in yellow waving on the corner" to "guns drawn behind the squad car" in seconds. They definitely saved lives every year.
Never again. If you travel on land, and can't drive yourself, take a bus. If you want luxury accommodations, buy two seats.
I took Amtrak once and every time we stopped in the middle of nowhere, the AC stopped as well. I've never used Amtrak since.
http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amt...
Edit/ I should mention, in my post, that there is some licensing required to become a private police force /Edit
I worked at a biopharma that had a private police force.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police
Most rail companies have these. They have an interesting history, from evolving out of the Pinkertons in the 1800s, to cracking hobo skulls in the 1930s, all the way up to today where they've been practically deputized into the DHS.
It is unfortunate that this model has been extended to gated communities, universities and datacenters.
Simply put, the most amazing duplicator of work effort ever seen. Our local transit authorities have their own police forces as well, to add onto city, county, and state, forces.
don't even get started with assistance programs.
Government could be so much less expensive and oppressive with consolidation of duplicate work. Less oppressive because the myriad of over lapping services obfuscates the real impact.
That's just bizarre. Companies with their own police force. I was also surprised to see many American universities have police forces.
In many countries that would be considered a major abuse of power, never mind whether the companies are owned by the government or private investors.