Special Report

Jul 1, 1997 12:00 PM, By DR. STEPHENIE SLAHOR

The future safety and security of people and property will depend on a partnership between the police and private security.

That's the opinion of William Cunningham, president of Hallcrest Systems Inc., McLean, Va., and Charles Connolly, assistant vice president for corporate security for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. and former police commissioner of Yonkers, N.Y. Cunningham says that more cooperation between police and security is essential, especially since private security resources to combat economic crime have soared in the past few years, with the same predicted for the future.

Private security employs about 1.5 million people and accounts for about $52 billion of the business economy, because public law enforcement does not have the time, human resources or money to handle everything, especially the steadily growing crimes involving computers and access devices, employee fraud and other white-collar crime.

A recent National Institute of Justice report profiled the changes of the past 20 years through review of literature, market analyses, interviews and other techniques. The report found that economic crime totaled about $114 billion for 1990 or 2 percent of the gross national product. It is "out of control and on the rise," says Cunningham. Analysts are predicting that by the year 2000, up to $200 billion in economic losses will be directly attributable to crime.

Public fear of crime is reflected in increases in sales of security hardware, more programs such as citizen patrols and growth in litigation in cases involving a lack of security.

This year will see the spending of about $52 billion on proprietary security, access control, armored vehicles, security consultants, forensic experts, employee testing and other segments of the private security sector. The average annual rate of growth of such spending will be about 8 percent per year - $104 billion per year by 2000. Law enforcement will grow in expenditures at a rate of about 4 percent to total about $44 billion in 2000. Employment in security will grow about 2.3 percent by 2000, while law enforcement will grow only about 1 percent, as the national work force grows about 1.2 percent overall.

Cunningham concludes that the year 2000 will see about 75 percent of protection coming from the private sector and only 25 percent carried out by police services. That, he says, underlines the need for partnership between the two.

A larger role for private security There are now about 57,000 security-related businesses, with that number expected to increase to more than 90,000 by 2000. The highest growth has been in the access control manufacturing and distribution segment. Although such things as armored car service have leveled out, none of the security-related businesses have decreased over the past few years, says Cunningham.

He says both private security and police will be confronted with crimes involving higher economic losses and "high tech" elements. Private security personnel tend to be better educated and their ranks more reflective of women and minorities than in the past, but there is still a high turnover rate due to low wages; an unarmed guard averages $7.70 per hour, according to the report.

Connolly, the corporate security professional and former police commissioner, says the public cannot rely on police services to solve the problems in law enforcement and investigation that will come in the 21st century. The traditional ways of taking a case through public law enforcement and the district attorney's office will change, he says, with private security acting as its own expert and consultant and assisting prosecution and the criminal justice system.

Many police officers cannot be expected to know how to handle corporate economic crimes, so industrial security must take the lead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr. Stephenie Slahor is a lawyer and writer specializing in law enforcement and security. She also teaches criminal justice at California State University.

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