The San Francisco police have 2,000+ officers. The San Francisco Patrol Special Police you refer to have 40. I'd both be interested in the metric you're using to determine "less corrupt" and in how that metric would look if they had 2,000 officers like the SFPD.
The article goes into it from a historical perspective, but one only has to search "SFPD Corruption" to find many examples. And officers who try to be ethical get punished by the others.
As I noted, the SFPD is 50+ times the size, and I'm interested in an actual metric, not anecdotes. I'm pretty suspicious of the contention that a private police force would be somehow immune to corruption - it certainly hasn't been the case with groups like Blackwater.
We have done privatising of public services already in many areas, and I can't remember a single one were it was advantageous for the public. In Germany they started with telephone companies and suddenly many cities (even major ones) lacked coverage, even some smaller towns are left completely without modern technologies. Trains now are nearly unusable, always running late, always being broken, etc.
If you privatise the police force you end up with protecting the rich from the poor, which some might argue is even currently what happens too much. It will be more like that, though, not less. Because then a company does the protection and companies want money and are often not required by law to actually provide real, well spread service. And if you have no imagination for worst case scenarios then have a look what big companies with private armees like Nestle do in third world countries without the government being able to fight back because the companies simply have more fighting power.
We slowly shift from a country based society to a company based society. And sadly we have not fought for any rules considering health care, protection of our goods, etc with companies. We only have rights in the face of countries. No countries, no rights. At least that how it looks more and more.
