[jcc80]

"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security"

This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police. It sounds like they want their own private security but one that has police powers.

What comes to mind is cities that try and fix issues related to the homeless with police because it's a complex human problem that some people & businesses try to solve with punishment/enforcement. At the least, I'll venture to say there's more effective ways to combat truancy than unleashing police on them.

[lutusp]

> This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses.

It's also probably unconstitutional, on the ground that it produces at least the appearance of selective enforcement. This kind of goal is usually achieved by hiring a private security guard, rather than paying a (normally) taxpayer-funded police department to focus its attention on a specific zone.

[jmccree]

I'm not really not sure about the unconstitutional argument, but it's extremely common. Normally it's done more explicitly by hiring off duty officers. NYPD has the paid detail unit to organize private details for businesses. Where I live in Atlanta, every neighborhood you'd want to live in has their own privately paid force of off-duty officers patrolling. I'm more surprised that facebook is basically offering a grant/donation than outright hiring their own off-duty officers.

[otterley]

I'm not familiar with any case law on the issue of the constitutionality of selective enforcement. Are you?

[vellum]

This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses.

It's also safer if they let the cops do the skull-cracking. This way Zuck doesn't have to give an awkward press conference about why his security guards were filmed beating up some teenagers in the parking lot.