https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/6/21/1866322/-Alabama-governor-signs-law-allowing-church-to-have-its-own-police-force?detail=emaildkre

When I read this, my first thought was: "Are the Mormons next?" Then I remembered that the LDS church pretty much controls the politics for the entire state of Utah so the Briarwood Presbyterian Church may be trying to follow the LDS church in this regard. Yet, as the editorial notes, allowing a religious entity to have its own police force does raise some thorny constitutional issues--issues that probably cannot be resolved in this forum. That said, I wonder if we will be reading someday in the future about the Briarwood Presbyterian police force behaving in ways that members of the BYU police force are accused of today.

It doesn't make any sense to me that a church would need its own police force (such as a college or university might have.) Why aren't they hiring off-duty police officers?

Much ado about nothing, really. Any private security is technically a "police force." Anti-Christian nutters just getting themselves riled up as usual.

Security guards are not private police, at least not in the U.S. There is a big difference between a sworn law enforcement officer and a privately hired guard without real law enforcement credentialS.

“Security guard” is not a specifically defined position and could include store employees who may monitor problems and call actual police, though state laws usually allow store employees to detain shoppers whom they suspect of theft until the police arrive.

Some security guards may be permitted to carry weapons, depending on the need. However, private guards are liability issues for their employer: if they harm or hassle someone, they and their employer can get sued for damages.

Law enforcement officers have “qualified immunity” in the U.S. so there is much less of a liability concern. As others have mentioned, they will have access to law enforcement databases and other sensitive resources. They have a substantial amount of power and capability, which private security guards do not. They would be able to hassle and harm people with far less ability for their victims to seek redress. Such power is useful if used wisely by the government, but is a horrible idea in private hands, especially of an ideological group that believes it needs such power.

Churches should not be allowed to take on government powers, period. Let them hire private security guards or off duty police officers, but they should never be allowed to have their own police forces.

In legal terms, security guards are not private police. But they often act like them de facto, and dress in quasi-police uniforms. In most developed countries, private security guards are not allowed to carry weapons. US gun laws blur those lines.

In my opinion, churches should be allowed to have some kind of security. There have been a number of incidents in recent years of people bursting into churches - yes, including LDS - and trying to attack the congregation. The churches are well within their rights to take down someone who presents a physical threat and an intent to maim or kill.

While I agree with you that churches should have access (if they wish) to security (anything from a single security guard to a whole force), I do not believe that these people should be given all of the same powers given to the local police force of a city. As I eluded to in my original post, the BYU force (which does not have full sanction as a police force, I believe) is now in trouble because of some of the information it collected about current BYU students and how both the force and the school administration attempted to use that information against those students. If you give a private church's security force full police powers and database access (as Alabama has done in this case), you increase the risk of what happened at BYU by allowing that security force to gain access to the full police database files and potentially allowing that force to arrest anybody on the premisis who is violating a church commandment but not a state law.

I definitely wouldn't agree with them having access to personal files (unless someone is a sex offender), but there are some circumstances which require people to be physically removed or restrained until real police turn up.

People should have the right to protest, but that is quite different to being violent to any given group. However I also think a private organization has the right to block access to certain individuals if it so chooses, just as we have the right to prevent most people coming into our homes.

I wonder how the Presbyterians will feel if a Mosque is allowed to form their own police force.

You mean Jesus isn't protecting them? An angel with a flaming sword ought to be enough to keep the baddies away.

I bet there are senior admins in the COB that are salivating at the thought.

A "police force" sounds formidable. Maybe it is, maybe not. At the very least, it provides them powers of arrest on their premises, maybe more, such as investigation. Or it could be nothing more than an enhanced security force.

If this constitutes some sort of police "department" officers would probably have to attend (and graduate from) a police academy. If 8000 people visit the church campus every day, the security needs are similar to a community college.

Predictably, Daily Kos is quick to have the ACLU weigh in, and cast the issue in alarmist terms of Civil War and present-day racism.

the scariest aspect of this ..
IMHO ... is access to national & other criminal data bases! That's the most significant difference between 'security' & commissioned police/sheriffs.Law enforcement today is a data (information)-driven operation.


Also the authority to make off-premise arrests.

GNPE1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ...is access to national & other criminal
> data bases!
>
If the church is authorized to have a police "department," then the officers are "sworn," that is, bonafide officers. So yes, they would have access to data, but that must be done for bonafide L.E. and investigative purposes. Everybody who accesses must sign on, leaving an electronic signature. Misuse subjects a person to departmental discipline and/or prosecution. If the department fails to attend to misuses, then their supervising authority comes in (e.g. state public safety office), which has recently happened with BYU PD, when a BYU lieutenant was inappropriately searching sexual offenses around the state.

Because it's a religious organization, I suspect you are inordinately suspicious. Such misuse and abuse can happen with any agency, whether it be officers running the plates of pretty girls, things like that.


> Also the authority to make off-premise arrests.

I don't know Alabama law, but in my state that is not the case. College departments (etc.) do not even have authority to make car stops, except under exigent circumstances.

The Alabama senate would give them all powers of law enforcement but limited to that location:

>>Police officers hired by Briarwood Presbyterian would need to be certified by a state standards and training commission, according to the bill, SB193. The officers' authority would be restricted to the church's campuses and properties.
The officers would be given "all of the duties and invested with all of the powers of law enforcement officers in this state," the bill says.<<


My concern is that I don't trust them to put law enforcement before the church they are defending. If they decided to keep any internal church dirt under the rug, they could. I don't trust them not to put the church interests first as a fair officer of the law.


The Alabamian legislators would be outraged if a Mosque had armed police with equal rights to police officers. I hope there is a Mosque in Alabama who will also want their own force and then we can see if they intend to be fair.


There is already a church in Alabama with a firing range behind it, because, well, Jesus aims.


In fairness to Alabama, they would probably also be happy putting guns and police in any business or organization, including schools. I suppose they don't have confidence in immediate response from their city law enforcement, since every second can count in an active shooter situation.

Be careful what you wish for, Alabama.

FOI by comparison ... not exactly the same but similar intent


The Fruit of Islam (FOI), or "Fruit" for short, is the paramilitary wing of the Nation of Islam (NOI). The Fruit of Islam wear distinctive blue or white uniforms and caps and have units at all NOI temples. Louis Farrakhan, as head of the Nation of Islam, is commander-in-chief of the Fruit of Islam, and his son, Mustapha Farrakhan Sr, is second in command. The women's counterpart to the Fruit of Islam is Muslim Girls Training (MGT).

The Fruit of Islam draws its membership from male members in Nation of Islam temples. While NOI does not release membership figures, estimates for total membership in the NOI range from 10,000 to 50,000.

n 1988 the NOI created a separate security agency using members of the FOI. The agency received contracts primarily to patrol and staff public housing complexes in tough urban areas like Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, and Los Angeles and received at least $20 million in the 1990s for security work.

NOI Security had notable successes in Washington, D.C. projects particularly, but had difficulty in others and faced opposition by some members of the United States Congress and the Anti-Defamation League, among others. It also faced scrutiny from federal agencies for racial and gender preference in hiring and from the Internal Revenue Service for failure to withhold taxes from employees.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_Islam

Daily Kos is the Fox News of the left.

That article is not marked as an op-ed, but it clearly blends opinion with straight reporting.

Jordan, this story is in Alabama news. It's not like Daily Kos made it up. Be clever and find a link about it to a news organization you like.

What a recovery, no?

When I pointed out that Jordan and HWint were one and the same, sharing a detailed and idiosyncratic political viewpoint and terminology, writing with the same "style" and using the same sort of platitudinous labels ("social-justice billionaire," "SJW," "cultural Marxist"), and often appearing in threads merely to compliment each other, Jordan objected. He said that HWint's punctuation style was radically different from his own and that proved they were not facets of the same personality.

And suddenly that was true! HWint stopped capitalizing the first letters of his sentences, omitted other punctuation marks, began dropping initial pronouns (starting sentences with things like "Hard to imagine. . .") and became generally choppier. The change was so stark and so immediate that I worried that perhaps he had suffered a stroke.

Yet here he is, suddenly recovered and writing exactlyl like the old HWint. Thank heaven for such miracles: a stroke whose damage only lasted several days. Would that US healthcare were as splendidly effective as Canada's!

Welcome back, HWint. Welcome back, Jordan!

Once again, a non-denial denial. Honest people deny. They don't explain, excuse, or prevaricate. You, however, explain why you wouldn't use a second name--which is not a denial.

As for your motive, it is glaringly obvious. It is evident in the many times HWint applauds your posts and the number of times he uses your metaphors. We can see it in your occasional compliments to HWint as well.

You are a lonely man, apparently, and you liked having multiple sock puppets. The admins took down one, the hapless LogicalCanuckExMo, so you only have one left. Since you are posting as HWint from a different computer and probably a different IP address, the admins haven't killed this second imposter.

But don't expect us to ignore how much support HWint offers for your ego. Hell, he isn't even a skillfully constructed persona. He's just a pale reflection, resembling in that sense your understanding of Orwell, Marx, Lenin, etc. But for whatever reason, he bolsters your self-confidence and helps keep the demons--those nagging doubts that you don't understand what you are pontificating about--in abeyance.