Private forces can’t stop and detain drivers, appeals panel says www.privateofficer.com
Chicago IL Feb 24 2012 Former Lombard police commissioner Ken Poris knew to pull over when he saw a vehicle’s flashing lights behind him while returning to his home in LaSalle County’s Lake Holiday subdivision.
But he quickly realized the person who’d pulled him over, taken his driver’s license back to his squad car and written him a speeding ticket wasn’t a police officer.
In fact, the man wearing a uniform, duty belt and badge was a homeowners association employee with little police training and no state certification. The security force has been pulling drivers over for years and also boarding boats on the development’s man-made lake. But nobody had ever challenged the practice until Poris, a former DuPage County prosecutor, was pulled over.
His case –– a type that lawyers rarely take up because they don’t pay — shines a light on what experts say can be a problem with the proliferating private security teams that now patrol large subdivisions, apartment complexes and even a Chicago neighborhood that taxes itself extra to pay for it.
“It’s a massive, ad hoc privatization of government services,” said Evan McKenzie, a University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of political science and critic who has written two books on the topic. “That’s why you get these weird situations.
“It makes sense to (homeowners groups) from a property-management perspective,” he said. “But if you view it another way, the actions of any government are supposed to be limited by concepts of civil liberties. Civil liberties don’t always apply here.”
An Illinois appeals court in a strongly worded ruling last month found that Lake Holiday’s practice of stopping and detaining drivers for violating homeowners association rules was unlawful. The court also found that the association’s use of amber-colored flashing lights on its vehicles was unlawful and that the association could be held liable for Poris’ false imprisonment claim.
A LaSalle County judge had previously ruled in favor of the homeowners association.
“I think they went overboard, and I think that they decided they could do pretty much what they wanted to,” said Poris about the homeowners association. “I was told by some other people that nobody’s ever beaten Lake Holiday.
“Lake Holiday told me from day one –– they told me this was going to be a fight, and I would have to surrender,” said Poris, who handled his own case with help from several other attorneys.
The appellate court found nothing wrong with the subdivision’s speed limits, but with how they were being enforced. Poris said he wouldn’t have complained if a sheriff’s deputy had pulled him over or if the subdivision used automated speed cameras and sent tickets in the mail.
Private security guards, like any member of the public, generally only have authority to detain someone who violated state laws until sworn police officers arrive –– the so-called citizen’s arrest made famous by the “The Andy Griffith Show.”
This includes store security officers holding an alleged shoplifter until police arrive.
Bruce Lyon, an attorney for Lake Holiday, said there is a “high likelihood” that the association will ask the state Supreme Court to hear an appeal. He declined to comment further, saying the case was pending.
In oral arguments, Lyon told a panel of judges that the case involved a contract rather than a police-powers issue. He also argued that security hadn’t detained Poris.
“Mr. Poris chose to live here –– he chose to live by the rules and regulations of Lake Holiday,” he said. “The majority of the residents like the rules.”
“Under (Poris’) argument, enforcement would be impossible,” Lyon said. “If you went and put graffiti all over a clubhouse of Lake Holiday, (we) can’t enforce it because then you’d be exercising police powers.”
The appeals panel disagreed.
The last three decades have seen the rise of subdivisions and other residential developments with infrastructure, like privately owned streets, that are patrolled by security contractors.
Private security sometimes also patrols public roads, such as in a section of Chicago’s Marquette Park community where residents tax themselves extra for the service. Two squad cars marked “Marquette Park Security” patrol a roughly one-square-mile section of the neighborhood.
No one really knows if, or how often, private security forces are pulling people over, though experts don’t believe it’s unusual. In Will County, sheriff’s police said they have spoken with private security guards in a Plainfield subdivision about their practices.
Records show the LaSalle County sheriff had previously told the Lake Holiday homeowners association to stop using white flashing lights on its squad cars, which are also equipped with audio and video recorders. Sometime after that, the association switched to amber lights.
In Marquette Park, leaders of the special taxing district, which is administered by the nonprofit Lithuanian Human Services Council of the USA, say their officers don’t do traffic stops unless assisting Chicago police.
But the group didn’t respond to a 3-week-old public-records request for enforcement data, saying it still was awaiting clearance from Chicago officials.
The district spends about $340,000 annually paying a Lynwood security company to patrol an area that stretches south from 67th to 75th streets and from Kedzie Avenue east to Bell Avenue, according to city records.
“It does seem to be that the area is a little safer,” said executive director Juozas Polikaitis. The district, which he says has a total budget of about $430,000, also plans to install 13 outdoor security cameras by May 1 that will be monitored by private security.
Polikaitis said most of the work done by the company, Illinois Homeland Security Services Inc., involves breaking up groups of teens or young men loitering on street corners. The service logs between 700 and 1,100 total “incidents” per month, he said.
He said about half of the firm’s employees are armed, off-duty police officers and that they monitor police radio traffic to assist Chicago police officers in the patrol area.
Commissioner Jonas Miglinas, who owns a TV-repair shop in the neighborhood, said residents appreciate the extra security.
“Most people seem to think it is working,” he said. “The vast majority of the people we talk to actually like having two numbers to call if something goes wrong.”
Out in Lake Holiday, Poris said he has paid a social price for fighting his $50 ticket, including a loss of referrals to his law practice and glares at public events.
“It’s been very lonely the past three years,” Poris said, driving his pickup through the subdivision, saying several residents had confronted him for bringing the case.
“Nobody understands what I’m really fighting about,” he said. “They all think I don’t want to pay a $50 ticket and I’m causing all this problem.
“That’s where this type of stuff perpetuates itself, because no attorney is going to take the case,” Poris said.
Source:tribune.com
