In the brand-new trailer for Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, a bumbling mall security guard named Paul Blart punches someone in the gut. As she keels over, Blart’s jaw drops open. The protagonist realizes he’s just assaulted, by mistake, an elderly woman.
Blart—whose character is one long joke mocking mall cops everywhere—immediately apologizes. He’s a bumbling mess, but he tries hard to do right, so we root for him. (The original Paul Blart film grossed $180 million; the sequel comes out in April.) Now to the messier reality: What happens if an actual mall cop brutalizes an actual innocent person?
In the aggregate, we don’t know. There are three times as many private security guards, nationally, than there are local police, according to a 2003 study…