Texas 'city' fires police force, hires private firm, experiences 61% drop in crimes

© Free Thought Project

Sharpstown is a Texas community, located just southwest of Houston, and the way they maintain security in this community has gotten our attention.

In 2012, they fired their cops.

The Sharpstown Civic Association then hired S.E.A.L. Security Solutions, a private firm, to patrol their streets.

The statist fearmongers will have you believe that "privatizing" anything would result in mass chaos and a scenarios of warlords and rampant crime. But they are wrong.

"Since we've been in there, an independent crime study that they've had done [indicates] we've reduced the crime by 61%" in just 20 months, says James Alexander, Director of Operations for SEAL.

Government police, despite not acting like it, are still part of the government. This means that any progressive change for the better takes ten times longer than it would in the private sector; if it happens at all. Government police are not driven by efficiency and threats from liability, as neither one of these things are needed when you have a tax farm to rob when things get tight.

Contrary to the government apparatus, private police, must be efficient as well as safe, for one small mistake or claim could end their entire operation. If an inefficiency is spotted within the system, changes must be implemented swiftly to avoid the loss of revenue.

The reason for the success rate of SEAL Security is that they can see a problem and quickly adapt versus trying to spin the rusty cogs of the bureaucratic process. And that is exactly what SEAL did in Sharpstown.

According to guns.com, Alexander cites the continuous patrol of SEAL's officers in their assigned neighborhoods as opposed to the strategy of intermittent presence that the constable embraced. "On a constable patrol contract, it's either a 70/30 or an 80/20. Meaning they say they patrol your community 70 percent of the time, [while] 30 percent of the time they use for running calls out of your area or writing reports."

He continues, "The second thing that drastically reduces the crime is that we do directed patrols, meaning we don't just put an officer out there and say 'here, go patrol.' We look at recent crime stats, and we work off of those crime stats. So if we have hotspots in those areas say for that month, we focus and concentrate our efforts around those hotspots."

Another aspect, and possibly the most important, that sets privatized police apart from agents of the state, is that they have a negative incentive to initiate force. Force and violence are vastly more expensive than today's police lead us to believe.

Causing injury or death, or wrongfully depriving someone of their rights is expensive if these costs are realized for the ones who cause them. The state does not care, however. They can and will defer their liability to the tax farm.

The act of deferment of liability is a function solely reserved for the state, and it creates an incentive to act in an unethical manner. In the case of SEAL Security, each of their officers, as well as their entire operation, can be held liable, both criminally and financially. This is something about which the state knows nothing.

As guns.com points out, over 70 communities in Harris County and most of the major management districts have contracted with SEAL. They're less expensive, better at crime prevention, they do not target citizens for revenue, and, best of all, each officer is personally accountable for his or her actions.

It's time Americans start seriously considering this option.

Law enforcement is a product that we are forced to buy. When any product is not subject to the forces of consumer demand, there is no way of changing it. It is time we applied the fundamental lesson of competition to our supposed protectors.