Special Police - United States

United States

In United States terminology, special police can mean:

  • Fire Police, members of specialized traffic control units responding with volunteer fire companies;
  • Auxiliary Police, members of volunteer, unpaid or paid, part-time civilian police, security officer units, interns;
  • Special Law Enforcement Officers - used in New Jersey to supplement full-time police officers;
  • Security police; or
  • Company police.

The term can also refer to limited police power granted in some jurisdictions to lifeguards, SPCA personnel, teachers, and other public sector employees which is incidental to their main responsibilities. Special Police Officers (or SPO's) can be employed to protect large campuses such as theme parks, hospital centers, and commerce centers.

Some states, such as Maryland, New York, and the District of Columbia, grant full State Police/peace officer authority to SPOs for use in whatever area they are employed to protect. They can make traffic stops in their jurisdiction if they have had accredited training. They are also permitted to conduct traffic control and investigations pertaining to the area protected by them, while a majority of SPOS are armed with a firearm, some states permit the age for an SPO to be 18, while still they can not carry a sidearm. Special police can make a criminal arrest and run blue strobe lights on their vehicle.

In the United States security officers are involved in law enforcement and have been given the power of police officers, but are operated under a private police agency also known as a security agency. Security officers are special police because they are officers of the law, but employed by private companies offering private police officers to uphold laws, protect, patrol, and guard property under a private party contract.

Read more about this topic:  Special Police

Famous quotes related to united states:

    I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war.
    Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children’s children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)

    In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.... We must be impartial in thought as well as in action ... a nation that neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed in her own counsels and which keeps herself fit and free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.
    Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)

    ... it is probable that in a fit of generosity the men of the United States would have enfranchised its women en masse; and the government now staggering under the ballots of ignorant, irresponsible men, must have gone down under the additional burden of the votes which would have been thrown upon it, by millions of ignorant, irresponsible women.
    Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)