I called the police and they told me all officers were busy on more urgent/violent calls and wouldn't be able to respond.

This was before COVID and the department is even more short-staffed now.

The officer shrugged and walked off in the opposite direction. I think that was the moment that I decided it was time for a change of scenery.

Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.

Which is one of the big problems we have with current policing models. We throw folks trained to use deadly force at issues that are better suited to mental health professionals trained in de-escalation.

I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates and resources.

And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't care about the well-being of other people (as in your example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if they engage in anti-social behaviors.

In fact, many folks would support it if we just killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or unhappy.

The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed in our society.

Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness" black box into a larger black box called "criminals".

As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]:

  The moral test of government is how that
  government treats those who are in the dawn of 
  life, the children; those who are in the twilight 
  of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows 
  of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of other tropes.

Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way, IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.

[0] https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-from...

In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the right to do so.

To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?

I don't disagree with you. At all. This is a complicated set of issues that will require complex solutions (note the plural).

It would be great if we could stop such folks from causing property damage.

Our society is governed by laws and, more importantly, respect for those laws by the vast majority of us.

Unless we kill or imprison everyone who might engage in such activities, I'd say that we'll likely always have some of that sort of activity.

Reducing the number of folks without strong ties to society/the community seems the best way to address these issues over both the medium and long term.

As for short term solutions, that's much more difficult, as we've spent centuries demonizing the mentally ill, the poor and others society has deemed as "lesser."

>To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?

A valid question. Without a lot of reflection I'd say that it's less important to determine whether or not some act (or collection of acts) is "criminal" than it is to identify the appropriate mechanism(s) to minimize the likelihood of such behavior from that individual in the future.

And there are many mechanisms to choose from. That incarceration has been the default for a long time doesn't always (or even most of the time) make it the right mechanism.

A broad and complex set of issues underlie this discussion and I haven't done it justice here. That said, I urge people to look beyond the display and use of force as the only mechanism to address these issues.

They aren't short-staffed, as much as they are deliberately avoiding doing any work. They were also engaged in a lot of overtime grift over the past decade, which the city started to crack down on in 2019.

This was also written in late 2020. There are now 1,080 deployable officers, down from 1,325 as seen here: https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-department...

Yes, you can cherry-pick one of those problems, and claim that uber-for-mob-justice will solve it. Will it make any of these other problems worse? Better? Worse for people who can't pay, better for people who can?

I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but I am not particularly impressed by this.

I think the idea is to try to catch it in the act. The LAPD is notorious for being slow. I was in a hit and run accident where my car was completely totaled and I was in a daze and it took them an hour to come and I'm pretty sure the only reason they actually came was because a bystander was mad and claimed there was injuries after waiting with me for a while. If they wont' come to an accident in a good time, I doubt they come to a break in. lol

An uber ride is cheaper than hiring private security to walk you through the hood. An elderly asian person is more likely to die crossing the road to a bank than be robbed at a bank. Urban photographers who wouldn't already be operating with a small crew are probably too broke to hire a bodyguard, nor is there some big wave or urban photographers being targeted currently. Chances are if that gear is your work its also already insured. The store owner probably already hires private security for not much more than minimum wage, and in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store. Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building. I doubt private security is going to stick out their neck for your little shop more than D.C. police did for the U.S. capitol. You probably aren't hiring Blackwater mercenaries. The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already, the last thing they want is some pricey contract for a job they are already getting done just fine.

I don't think you've been keeping up with the news of the wave of attacks targeting Asian elders. Many of them have been beaten and robbed on the way to run errands.

in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store.

You're way overestimating the number of small business owners who have sufficient insurance to cover a looting event, and way underestimating the extent to which small business owners are willing to protect their store (e.g. Roof Koreans)

Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building

That actually demonstrates the value provided by an app offering on-demand private security. When cops failed to stop the insurrectionists, they faced minimal negative consequences. On the other hand, if your hired private security fails to stop looters, they can expect a negative review from you on the app which in turn threatens their career on the app.

The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already

I said late night restaurants, not bars. When was the last time you've seen a bouncer at a late night restaurant?

I agree that some of the cases I brought up are a bit far fetched. That being said, here's a great use case that I'm sure we can both agree on for on-demand security:

- Domestic violence prevention. In cases where a spouse feels threatened but does not have enough evidence for the cops to get involved, on-demand private security is the best option.

A tragedy like the Adam Matos case would have been prevented had the victim used on-demand private security. The victim was threatened by Matos, her ex, and she called the cops, who didn't/couldn't do anything, which resulted in her and her family being killed by said ex within 24 hours.

I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.

This would be peak gentrifier behavior, but a (hopefully) handful of bad actors are trashing an otherwise nice neighborhood and I'm at the end of my rope.

>I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.

If that's really a serious problem in your area, you and your neighbors can set up a neighborhood watch/surveillance cameras/etc. to address that without hiring private security to do it for you.

Or are you too good to support your neighbors and neighborhood with your time and effort?

Want to have a good neighborhood? Be a good neighbor.

I have no more time but I do have money.

Supporting my neighbors and neighborhood is exactly what I want to do - assuming they also want clean streets - so your criticism is really a stretch.