Rent-a-Cops’ Arrest Powers Are No Joke

The music is booming. Traffic is flowing. You’re more concerned about getting to that party across town than with the rules of the road.

Then a heart-sinking sight appears in the rearview mirror: a large sedan with decals on the hood and lights on the roof.

You ease off the accelerator until, mercifully, the car passes without incident. Seeing it go by, you chuckle complacently to yourself: It wasn’t even a real police car; it was one of those private security cars.

If that scenario strikes a familiar chord, security companies have a message for you: Not so fast.

“We make a lot of arrests and they usually stick,” said William Corbett, who runs Copper Eagle Patrol & Security, a 10-year-old private security company that is Santa Clarita’s oldest and largest.

“A lot of people think we’re a joke and they think we can’t make an arrest, but contraire, contraire,” Corbett said. “They’ll laugh at us and call us all sorts of names--until they’re being handcuffed.

“Then their tone changes: ‘This isn’t really for real, is it?’ And we say, ‘Yeah, it is.’ ”

Law enforcement officials say that private security guards often use a citizen’s arrest to detain someone until they can get there to make an official arrest.

“They act just as a private citizen in the community would, notifying us of what’s going on, so we try to act on their calls as we would with anyone in the community,” said Deputy Dwayne Bednar of the Lancaster sheriff’s station. “It’s always good to know they’re there. They help us out.”

In communities such as Santa Clarita, whose population explosion has been met by intense residential development, some residents rely on security companies more than law enforcement.

That is largely because private companies are contracted by homeowner associations and development companies to handle situations arising on private lands, especially the increasing number of planned and gated communities.

People are often surprised to hear that many Santa Clarita streets, such as Newhall’s Placerita Canyon Road, are private and therefore subject to a “community standard” of parking enforcement rather than citywide laws, Corbett said.

“We tow a lot of cars,” he added.

The state requires private companies to dress their patrol people in something other than Highway Patrol or sheriff’s colors and to use nothing but amber lights--no blue or red--in their roof racks. Within those restrictions, however, strategies vary widely from company to company and from area to area.

Fritz Maxwell, who formed Maxwell Security Guard and Patrol five years ago, operates in both the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys, which he calls “two totally different worlds” for his line of work.

“Down there, the police bully you,” he said of his relationship with the LAPD in the San Fernando Valley. “But up here, the sheriffs are much cooler and pro-security.”

Santa Clarita residents proudly point to their city’s FBI ranking as the country’s fourth-safest city with a population of more than 100,000. That is hardly a position Los Angeles can approximate.

Maxwell and Corbett said most of their clients in Santa Clarita prefer unarmed protection, even to the point that guards check their firearms at the gate. Bednar said the same largely holds true for the Antelope Valley.

“I see newer companies coming up here trying to capitalize on the growth,” Corbett said.

“And they’ve got their guys with bandoleers of ammunition and dark blue suits, all the things you might see in the LAPD or in ‘Nam. But this community is never going to put up with that. Out here, you tell a guy, ‘Hey, you don’t belong here,’ and he usually drives away.”