A church in Alabama could soon get its own police force
cnn.com
cnn.com
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.