Police officers are generally available for hire for private security work -- they are still allowed to use their full police authority during this private work

Police officers are generally available for hire for private security work -- they are still allowed to use their full police authority during this private work. However, they'll cost about $40 to $176/hour (from very low-paid super rural areas to NYC/SF rates, and can depend on the rank of the officer), which is quite prohibitive. The "main issue" driving demand for this very high hourly cost (relative to typical $10-15/hr retail worker and security staff wages) is that liability insurance and corporate legal departments generally won't allow anyone without qualified immunity to restrain or detain anyone suspected/known to be stealing. Therefore hiring police officers who do have qualified immunity and can act in their official capacity "outside of the employment contract". So Walgreens can put in the police officer private contract "do not restrain, detain, or prevent free movement of any individual". Then when a suspected shoplifter is identified, the police officer can say "I quit!"/"I am leaving for 1 hour"/"break the employment contract" to act in their official police capacity to arrest the individual, and if the individual is harmed they can't sue Walgreens because Walgreens was no longer employing the police officer. Also the police officer can't be sued because of qualified immunity. This is currently the most-proffered way for corporations to physically stop lawbreakers on premises before they leave. That said, when I was a bartender we used to apprehend/restrain/detain patrons on a weekly basis in a very leftist college town and never found ourselves in any legal quandary (though we were very Patrick-Swayze-in-Roundhouse about it). http://www.offdutyhouston.com http://www.offdutyhouston.com https://upd.tamu.edu/Pages/Find-the-cost-for-hiring-an-officer.aspx https://upd.tamu.edu/Pages/Find-the-cost-for-hiring-an-offic... https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/special-event-security-bulks-up-sf-police-officers-pay/article_cbd27e7e-54c0-5ac2-bcea-b60233ca84b0.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/special-event-security-bulks... Personally I'm super against the concept of public authorities being able to be hired for private protection but it's important to be aware of the reality and the driving forces involved which "make it so".