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Alabama Senate votes to allow church to form police dep cartesiandaemon April 13 2017, 13:23:06 UTC
WTF? I feel like I'm missing background here.

Is it usual for institutions other than towns to have their own police? I just assumed not, but I know there are some things like that.

Is there some reason this is allowed by the first amendment? It sounds like a trick question on the separation of church and state, "can a church set up its own official police department?" Um, no?

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RE: Alabama Senate votes to allow church to form police dep andrewducker April 13 2017, 13:24:07 UTC
That was my understanding too. I can see this going all the way up...

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RE: Alabama Senate votes to allow church to form police dep cartesiandaemon April 13 2017, 15:53:35 UTC
I feel like, it can't be that obvious or it wouldn't have got this far. But maybe they do just blatantly break the first amendment because they want to. (They do in other situations, albeit more often ones that have always been that way.)

Or maybe they know it will be struck down but want to sound pro-mega-church?

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RE: Alabama Senate votes to allow church to form police dep skington April 13 2017, 16:20:03 UTC
More importantly, it seems to me that there are two reasons for having multiple police forces: (1) because they need expertise that the normal police don't have, and (2) because they'll do things the normal police won't.

Financial police are a good example of the first one: there are crimes that people in the City do that most police wouldn't necessarily even think were crimes. But, with respect to even a large mega-church, I doubt that anyone is seriously planning on e.g. transubstantiation fraud.

Which leaves number two: they want people to get away with things that ordinary police would consider illegal, and/or arrest people for things that the ordinary police would consider perfectly reasonable behaviour.

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