Westminster to Rent Police to Businesses

In a program touted as the first of its kind in the nation, the city will let businesses buy police officer overtime to increase their security and reduce shoppers’ fear of vandalism, graffiti and petty crime.

The Police/Business Empowered Partnerships program was approved late Tuesday by the City Council, Westminster Police Chief James Cook said Wednesday.

The first customer: a real estate manager who plans to pay $38,000 for 1,200 hours of police overtime at his 40-acre Westminster Center shopping mall.

Simply put, the program allows businesses to buy added police protection that comes with all the fringe benefits of an experienced police force.

Cops working overtime at the center at Westminster Boulevard and Golden West Street will be available to drop their private duties at a moment’s notice to attend to nearby emergency calls, said Cook, who crafted the plan and argues that it offers more protection for everyone.

But some legal experts question whether it creates a double standard in a society increasingly stratified by wealth.

“It raises a fairness or almost moral issue,” said Todd Brower, a constitutional law professor at Western State University College of Law in Fullerton. “This is in some ways like the problems we have in medicine, where if you have Social Security or Medi-Cal you get access to a certain level of care, and if you can afford more, you get more.

“I don’t know if it’s the reality, but the fear would be that wealthy communities will be able to buy more,” Brower said.

Added David Biggs, a professor of criminal law at Western State: “Law enforcement has always been considered to be a piece of governmental property paid for by the entire populace for the purpose of protecting the populace. Offering blocks of time to private individuals seems very close to the line. . . . It could be a dangerous precedent.”

Cook said his department examined the fairness issues in drafting the plan. The extra service provides a safe haven for all residents who go there to shop, regardless of economic status, he said.

“Everywhere in the city, everyone is getting the same amount of police services,” he said. “This is just an enhancement.

“In effect, we are making the whole neighborhood safer, and the business people are creating this safe haven,” Cook said.

Rod Oshita, director of asset management for Summit Commercial, the El Segundo company that recently bought the Westminster Center and signed the first contract for overtime police hours, called the deal a “win-win situation.”

Officers will pass on their intelligence to the beat cops who already patrol the area, and also will be available to respond to any other crime calls in the region, Oshita said. At the same time, they provide a greater service than private security or off-duty cops who don’t rush to city emergencies while on the job.

“We’re getting a lot more bang for our buck,” Oshita said. “We’re getting professionally trained people, not only in terms of crime prevention, but people trained to interact and deal with the public in a professional manner.”

The program is set to begin March 1 with in-depth interviews of shoppers and shopping center tenants to gauge their perception of crime and plan a law enforcement approach, Cook said.

“We’re going to do community policing as it’s really meant to be done, with some free time,” Cook said. “Now we have got that, because the business community has reached out to us.”

The program is expected to cost the city only gasoline for squad cars, and the small amount of administrative time required for scheduling, Cook said.

“It’s innovative,” said Charles Miller, spokesman for the Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services in Washington. Cook shared the plan with Justice Department officials on a recent trip to Washington and said they were enthusiastic.

“We cannot say it’s unique, because we don’t know,” Miller said. “But we have not heard it before.”

The notion of private interests buying police time is not entirely new. Westminster Mall has paid the full-time salaries of two city police officers since late 1993, said Nancy Feightner, the mall’s general manager.

But in that deal, the mall pays the full salaries of both officers, including benefits, and those officers are not available to answer other calls nearby.

“I think what the police chief is proposing gives a lot of other businesses the opportunity to do something similar, probably at a lesser cost, as needed,” said Feightner, who credited the police presence at the mall with a 56% drop in security incidents.

“It brings the police into a partnership with the property owners,” Westminster Mayor Frank Fry Jr. “I think it’s terrific because it puts more cops on the beat. It does something that the city all by itself can’t do.”