It was very common throughout the city and other regions to find co-ops form around businesses, farmers, home owners, etc. who would pool their money together and hire a private security force.
At our second office, it was the entire main street of shopholders with some of the offices chipping in to hire a dozen fulltime security guards to patrol the street, check cars, etc.
It worked reasonably well. You get to know the guards really well, they get to know the area well, and they were much more effective in responding to incidents than the police or other local authorities (in an earlier incident a man was once stabbed right infront of me, I called the ambulance and waited with him for an hour, he died and his body was eventually picked up later that night).
There were also times it failed. In one incident the guards caught three people trying to jump a fence, they used a disabled toilet in one of the stores as a makeshift prison cell and beat the three 'suspects' up and kept them in there for 24 hours. I can't describe how much blood there was on the floor and walls, but the three were eventually released (I was told they 'have to' do this so that other potential thieves go elsewhere, and that the police wouldn't do anything)
At first I was uneasy with the thought of having private security, but because of the failing of government to provide basic safety I ended up only every moving to areas that had a similar setup.
Residents resorting to self-funded policing is a sign that something is very, very wrong with government administration. I never thought i'd see this play out in a major American city.