The New York Times-20080126-Only Private Security Will Do- Until It Doesn-t
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Only Private Security Will Do, Until It Doesn't
On a Friday evening exactly 29 years ago, a man in a town house on West 54th Street in Manhattan had a heart attack. His name was Nelson A. Rockefeller; he had built a life of power atop the oil fortune that came down to him from his father, serving as governor of New York and vice president of the United States.
The habits of power -- insulation from everyday life, mediators like private security guards and drivers and people who could fix things in discreet phone calls -- were not, it turns out, nearly as much use as medical help might have been.
Mr. Rockefeller, 70, was with a 25-year-old woman, Megan Marshack, when he fell ill. Her home was just down the street. She called a friend who lived in her building and asked her to send their doorman to get Mr. Rockefeller's chauffeur, who was parked around the corner. An hour after Mr. Rockefeller was stricken, the friend -- by then in the town house with Ms. Marshack and Mr. Rockefeller -- dialed 911. He was dead, or about to be.
This week, when the actor Heath Ledger could not be awakened in his apartment, a masseuse made calls to an actress friend of Mr. Ledger's in California before calling for emergency help. The actress dispatched several private security guards, who happened to be in the neighborhood. They arrived at the same moment as emergency medical workers. Neither the actress nor the security guards have publicly explained what they were supposed to do about an unresponsive man.
You have children 6 years old who know to call 911 when someone is sick, said Lou Palumbo, who owns an agency that provides private security to celebrities and heads of state. What you find is that people in entertainment, sports, politics, people with a lot of money who might not be famous, they're operating with their own set of rules. They're under the impression that concessions are made for them every day. They want us to do damage control.
What has emerged is a moving gated community, protection hired by the hour or kept on retainer that is supposed to solve petty troubles or the most urgent crisis.
Public life, whatever its benefits, can be unsparing for people who want privacy when they get sick or have a quarrel, or want to die with a shred of dignity. But money also buys breaks from trouble, escape routes or control. Steve Davis, a retired police captain who is now in the security business, says that private guards cannot disturb a crime scene or cover up evidence.
They can, however, perform tasks that keep people out of trouble: A hedge fund director gets drunk and foolish at a party; private security will quietly arrive, usher him out, drive him home. A British royal struck with a panic attack can get medical help without being wheeled in the front door at Bellevue. The possessive husband of a star singer wants her watched; private security moves into her life, to the point that she devises ruses, like going for a walk with the dog, handing the security guard the dog, and then racing off, with him unable to follow.
Alongside the rise of security for celebrities of even the faintest wattage, private security power has expanded in far more serious ways. Blackwater Worldwide, a private military company, has played a major role in the American occupation in Iraq, with few of the limits on the use of force that the United States Army is subject to. Blackwater operatives were also sent by federal officials to New Orleans in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina.
Some days after the floods had receded, a helicopter hovered above a parking garage next to a luxury hotel on Canal Street in New Orleans. A bay in the helicopter opened, and men dressed in black commando outfits were lowered by winch onto the garage roof. They climbed down to the street, and headed into the hotel. What were they doing? A removal, one explained. They were private muscle sent to evacuate corporate clients from New York stranded in the hotel.
It was a puzzling moment: the rented commandos, and for that matter, their clients, could just as easily have gotten into cars and driven straight out of town, because the roads were clear and the airport was open. But that would have been quite ordinary. No blades thrumming into the sky, no illusion of a special way out, power without a visible pulse.
[Illustration]PHOTOS: The scene of the shooting. The victim struggled with another man, and witnesses said that when Westchester County officers intervened, he was shot.(PHOTOGRAPH BY ALAN ZALE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES)(pg. B1)