Private sector police officers
The ambiguity of a new law giving security guards greater powers puts basic rights at risk
Duties that up until now have been carried out by private-sector security guards, such as the protection of buildings or individuals, have been extended to cover public places by a new law. Private-sector security is not at odds with the duties carried out in the public sector, but it needs to be carried out within a carefully defined framework. This is not the case with this new bill, which is pending approval from the Senate. Spanish senators have in their hands an issue that affects the exercise of basic rights.
According to Article 41 of the proposed legislation, private security services will continue to be permitted in residential areas, industrial estates and at sporting occasions but they will now have new powers in pedestrian shopping malls or at “events of significant social importance that are carried out in public thoroughfares or spaces,” as well as in “public thoroughfares and spaces other than those contemplated in this article.”
The ambiguity of the text leaves its application open to all types of situations, although not to political or labor disputes, with the caveat that prior permission is required to carry out such duties, accompanied by the obligation to place anyone arrested at the disposition of public law and order forces. Private-security agents may not interrogate people they have detained, but may check and make a note of “their personal details in order to pass these on to the authorities.”
The professional training of private-sector security agents is not as demanding as that of those who work in public law-and-order forces. Although they work for companies that are obliged to obtain the necessary permits to carry out their functions, they do not operate within the same hierarchical framework as state security forces. A great deal of care is required to guarantee basic rights, because if these already differ according to the public force in question, this could be even more the case when services are provided by a whole gamut of private-sector companies. At the same time, the law provides for the legal protection of private-sector guards “on a level with agents of public forces” against “acts of aggression or disobedience” to which they might be subjected.
A hasty decision
Another point of issue is the nature of the duties they carry out. Protecting a commercial area against petty crime is one thing. But the pursuit of private sector investigations, as witnessed in the Método 3 case (the detective agency that taped a conversation held by the conservative Catalan Popular Party leader Alicia Sánchez-Camacho), are of an entirely different and murky nature.
The government risks abandoning the duties of the state by pursuing a dual situation for the security of the public that, on the one hand, is provided for individuals, companies and institutions who pay for such services, and on the other, by the public authorities with the public forces and legal powers at their disposition.
The provision of private-sector security services is a vast and lucrative area, as has been seen in other countries. But the decision to broaden its application has been taken with too scant and imprecise debate for such a far-reaching step.
