Legal Authority of Security Police
All security police derive their authority from two sources:
- the laws of their nation, territory and/or municipality
- the property rights of their employing or contracting agency or activity, which may be public or private or a mixture of both
These powers might include the power to detain, arrest, investigate criminal offenses, carry weapons, employ force, and/or take other actions to protect life and property beyond that of the ordinary citizen. One key distinction is between "sworn" (or bound by oath or affirmation to uphold the laws even at personal risk), and "non-sworn" or "civilian" who are ordinary employees with normal obligations to an employer.
Some security police are full-fledged peace officers with the same powers as regular police. Others have enhanced powers which are limited by law to the properties they protect, or a specified radius or distance. In some cases these powers are expanded by a Memorandum of Understanding or other legal document where other policing agencies delegate additional powers to enforce local law.
Some security police have the more limited powers of security guards in compliance with the laws of their jurisdiction.
These distinctions are of particular importance to security police and their employers.
Read more about this topic: Security Police
Famous quotes containing the words legal authority, legal, authority, security and/or police:
“... whilst you are proclaiming peace and good will to men, Emancipating all Nations, you insist upon retaining absolute power over wives. But you must remember that Arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken—and notwithstanding all your wise Laws and Maxims we have it in our power not only to free ourselves but to subdue our Masters, and without violence throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet ...”
—Abigail Adams (1744–1818)
“If he who breaks the law is not punished, he who obeys it is cheated. This, and this alone, is why lawbreakers ought to be punished: to authenticate as good, and to encourage as useful, law-abiding behavior. The aim of criminal law cannot be correction or deterrence; it can only be the maintenance of the legal order.”
—Thomas Szasz (b. 1920)
“Contact with men who wield power and authority still leaves an intangible sense of repulsion. It’s very like being in close proximity to faecal matter, the faecal embodiment of something unmentionable, and you wonder what it is made of and when it acquired its historically sacred character.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Thanks to recent trends in the theory of knowledge, history is now better aware of its own worth and unassailability than it formerly was. It is precisely in its inexact character, in the fact that it can never be normative and does not have to be, that its security lies.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“To insure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough, a police force is needed as well.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)