LAUSR

When strolling through modern urban Chile, a common feature stands out: the vast presence of non-state security across retail, industrial, office, leisure, and residential areas. Private guards appear to perform comprehensive duties without ever being questioned as to what kind of safety they are providing customers, or even themselves. A tragic but revealing story is the recent death of a guard, Francisco Javier Manríquez, in Parque Arauco, a busy shopping mall located in Santiago’s affluent borough of Las Condes. Trying to repel a band of five caught stealing the money compartment from an automated teller machine (ATM), Manriquez was shot to death. The 61-year-old former state-police officer had worked for 20 years in the security industry and had a record for being the victim of some violent episodes. Indeed, only a month before his passing, he was knocked down with a mallet during a robbery at the same shopping mall. Anecdotal cases like that of Manríquez seem to be the new normal. Overbold security guards are becoming the first responders to many unsafe situations. Because public and semi-public property in the developingworld is constantly superseded by antisocial behaviors, one of the outcomes in trying to consolidate the rule of law has been a hasty growth in the private domestic security market. Private security labor routinely controls entrances and exits in shopping malls, guards public estates, monitors closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in gated communities, transports and tracks goods, and serves as examples of private municipal policing.