[MattGaiser]

Canadian Pacific is kind of weird as a company as they have their own police force. They literally get to police themselves for historical reasons, so while it is reasonable for a regular company to not act on reports of theft, it is harder to say that about Canadian Pacific.

[xattt]

Rail police is historically codified in Canadian law. It’s a matter of the car being out of the bag for a very long time, rather than CP Rail lobbying the government to have this force in place.

[euroderf]

VR (Finnish national railway) has its own police force too, and AFAICT it's kind of mysterious. Only very rarely discussed in the media. Perhaps someone who knows more can comment.

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, I would say the root problem is the government has outsourced its responsibility to a non governmental entity. Non governments should never have law enforcement authorities.

[devilbunny]

The historic reason for these powers is that it is often difficult to tell in the moment who has jurisdiction. Especially if it's a moving vehicle that can cross state lines.

Railroad police arrest and detain the suspect(s) and turn them over to whatever locale is determined to have jurisdiction after the fact. At the time those laws came into being, there was no really good way around this.