Police and security to share radio frequency www.privateofficer.com

TUCSON AZ. DEC. 31, 2007

The downtown private security force won't have to call 911 to get police assistance.
The Downtown Tucson Partnership has given the Tucson Police Department three two-way radios tuned to the same frequency used by the partnership's purple-shirted security team.
The Michael Gillooly, commander of TPD's downtown division.
"We're extremely interested in soliciting any assistance we can from all the downtown stakeholders," Gillooly said. "That just gives us that many more eyes and ears on the street. If we're looking for somebody who shoplifted something from a store, we can enlist them to be our eyes."
The radio link will be established in early January, said Donovan Durband, the partnership's executive director.
Downtown merchants in September publicly complained about what they described as the "criminal homeless," only to be mostly rebuffed by police and the City Attorney's Office, which explained that panhandling, for example, is not illegal.
Police held a training class for the partnership security team on how the law applies to questionable behavior.
"We are empowering them so they can address issues on their own without law enforcement involved, such as people sitting or laying on the sidewalk," Gillooly said. "It puts everybody on the same page on what's acceptable behavior and what's not."
The partnership approached police with the radio idea soon after the police in July launched a 10-officer downtown foot patrol and six-officer bicycle crew dedicated to handling such problems as panhandling, alcoholism and nuisance offenses.
"There is a mutual desire to work better together," Durband said. "Now that (police) do have an increased force downtown, it makes sense (to share radios)."
The partnership has nine security people who patrol downtown on foot and in golf carts 16 hours a day Monday through Saturday and fewer hours Sunday. They have no powers to arrest but can "ask people to behave," Durband said. "Part of it is a visual deterrence."police bicycle, foot and patrol squads will distribute the radios to on-duty officers, said Capt.