In that same period of time, also on the West Coast, we’ve seen a shift towards a more lenient model of policing and prosecuting. The idea is to not laden people who are already struggling with homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, or all three with legal problems that arise from those situations. It’s a laudable effort, and a noble goal, but it has meant that people who get arrested for something like auto theft or burglary are quickly released. Sometimes you’ll read in the news about a person who’s been arrested for a serious crime like murder, and the article will mention dozens and dozens of other arrests for things like burglary, assault or theft. The police know this, so they often don’t bother following up on property crimes.
That system as a whole can really make the major West Coast cities feel pretty lawless sometimes, but people don’t really like to talk about it in social settings because it’s hard to talk about problems like that without being misconstrued as a reactionary conservative. But if you get them taking one on one, and they feel like they can trust you, the frustrations come pouring out. So I’m not that surprised that there’s a company trying to capitalize on that sentiment, horrifying as it is. I’ve been feeling for a while now that given the current trajectory of things, a vigilante backlash was likely to become inevitable.
Stuff like that needed to end. But we also need to go further to address the root causes of this problem.
Those folks have a tendency to want to separate themselves from the dirty masses. (Ie gated community) It’s what you did after you sell the family factory business in Ohio and move to Florida or wherever.
Building security theatre was accelerated driven by 9/11 paranoia and federal standards.
At which point the need was filled. No dystopic community mercenary forces were necessary.
This seems like the idea is to supply a rent-a-thug to individuals, on-demand.
Really? How much is a case of beer now?
[you] I think this is for communities
[me] nope. not communities
[you] exactly
There are some very sketchy urban places in the US with legit serious security problems.
There are vast burbs in the US which are actually really safe but have anxious, overzealous citizens.
It's like gated communities on steroids, but starts to include office, mfg and other items like retail (which totally leave places with no security). Can result in shocking differences on both sides of the fence that usually separates these areas. Ironically the police then tend to follow along and provide better security to what are not better areas (if they have any capacity).
As soon as a family has some relatively small amount of wealth they will spend it on ultra-secure apartment buildings, tall walls around their house, razor-wire walls and fences, full coverage security cameras and intruder detection, etc.
(The source of my confusion: I interpreted "overseas" in a quite literal way - I'm from Europe.)
I've always thought security on demand was a great idea- the real killer app in my mind is having a map online of which houses the private security company protects, so as to create an incentive for people who aren't paying to get protection as the thieves know what's ripe for the picking.
Is that 'poorer' measured in actual USD $, or old Italian lira or pesos or something?
#wishiwaspoorthere.
Not really a purely American problem- everybody else has this too- which is why young people are so pissed everywhere that they have no future.
i was a victim of a home invasion and maybe 10 years later a violent crime. In both cases only after the real danger was over did a call for help happen.
In the home invasion it ended when the gunman was forcing my roommate to the garage, my roommate opened the door, the gunman walked out, he then slammed/locked the door behind him and we hit the deck calling 911
In the second case i was jumped from behind and knocked nearly unconscious before being robbed. It took me a full 15min to get the brain fog cleared to even think what to do next.
i don't see how an app is going to offer any protection at all. Maybe it speeds up reporting crime??
Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military weapons/hardware.
"Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
The differences are quite interesting: The soldier swears to always act in ways creditable to the service and the nation, recognizing it as a honored profession not to be disgraced.
While for the warrior the mission always comes first. Honor, credibility, disgrace? Not even in the vocabulary, replaced with "deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the US, in close combat".
Are you just saying that because weed is being legalized?
Economic inequality sure isn't in decline, and there are a lot of 18-24 year old uneducated men out there with nothing to lose. The turmoil in places like Venezuela and Colombia leaves power voids that cartels step in to fill.
Look at the southern border.
"Oh, somebody broke into your car and stole stuff? You shouldn't leave things lying around. We'll never catch the guy. Oh, you have video of the incident and know exactly who it is? Yeah, we can't really do anything with this. Oh you need to file a report for the insurance company? Fill this out and check back with us next month."
I'm very much NOT surprised that people who've actually needed the police for something have decided to there needs to be a private alternative.
The poor get rid of the police in their neighborhoods and the folks who want more policing get it?
We've had a fair bit of retail closing as the police are pulling back out of some areas.
In the 90s when the NYPD started firing lazy/corrupt police commanders and cracking down on street crime, evicting families of drug dealers from public housing, and putting down pit bulls.. poor communities were very much in favor of what was happening.
The tide shifted when the cops went all in on stupid metrics.
The intent behind that movement is to take money spent on policing where it fails and move it to where it might be more effective.
How many lawsuits are there for wrongful deaths where the police showed up for a mental health crisis? Since funding is finite and the police get a lion's share of it (community wise), why not shift some of that money into personnel who are better equipped to handle it?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/12/minneapoli...
Also, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Only in your mind. You cite an opinion piece as fact, when it's, like, an opinion, man.
You're projecting Motte and Bailey now by suggesting that is the intent of the movement, and therefore the movement is "bad".
Policing in America needs to be revisited. The word "reform" has been used in the past and has been found wanting. We could make up a brand new word but its still just a word -- the concept itself is worthy of pursuit.
I think in a lot of major metros, even funded police aren't meeting people's needs. If we aren't getting what we're paying for, we should stop paying.
Am I more likely to have a positive or negative interaction with police? I honestly don't know, and I'm white in a nice area. Crime is low and something like a burglary is extremely unlikely. I think police may be providing an unseen benefit to me by enforcing the law on others - I don't want vehicles doing 50 mph on my residential street, maybe they would without police? Or maybe they wouldn't?
I'm not taking a side on this issue, but I do empathize with those who believe they are unlikely to ever benefit from police presence, and thus don't want to pay for police.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...
https://www.newsweek.com/denying-crime-wave-progressives-are...
You're saying this like the majority these people have a net-positive impact on tax revenue. It's quite the opposite.
This is presumably what some people want, but in general the police as protectors of the status quo is, in my view, a bad thing. The status quo sucks and changing it isn't illegal—yet the cops in the US will treat you as it it were.
It's a bad and fiercely unamerican system.
Personally, I think the underlying issue is a lack of accountability. Address that, and many issues resolve themselves.
The issue might not be funding level but misuse as you point out.
Would you apply that to government services generally, where we're not getting what we pay for?
Given that: yes, we should absolutely stop funding services where society isn’t getting what it’s paying for—or fix them.
There may be one or more options on the ballot this fall to make the department report to someone different, and/or to remove the current minimum number of officers, but even those are yet to be resolved.
This is incorrect. The city council made a non-binding “pledge” to dismantle the police department. But according to the New York Times, the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city's progressive politicians had denounced." [1]
The ideas behind “defund the police” are simply not popular in the US. A majority of Americans want a police department - but they want a police department that protects everyone equally.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/us/politics/minneapolis-d...
It seems like a better measure would be something related to their actual goal. So why didn't they measure rate of property crime? Rate of homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? Supposedly these are the real causes of crime and homelessness.
If they did actually measure those things, I think their evaluation of the program would be different [0] [1].
>> "Denver saw significant increases in most types of property crime in 2020. In comparison to the average of the previous four years, burglaries rose 23% in 2020, larceny rose 9%, auto theft rose 61% and theft from cars rose 39%, Denver police data shows." [0]
[0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-crime-...
[1] https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-campi...
https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts...
[1] https://www.ernst.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/ernst-i...
Simply wanting to preserve one's life, liberty, and property and live in relative commity with one's neighbors does not generally lead to excessive violence and destruction.
That's not an argument, essentially. Words don't make truth. Either this trick is going to make people safer or it's going to get someone killed.
[1] See what I did there? Words are fun!
Please don't confuse me for a student of Locke.
> And likewise trying to replace police with this private goon squad[1] looks an awful lot like "tearing down existing institutions" to people like me who think it's a shit idea.
Building UPS or Fedex is not the same thing as destroying USPS.
Its a fallacy to assume it is a failure of a public option when it just as easily can be that we've been marketed that we are vulnerable and unsafe. Almost all stats have TODAY being just about the safest moment for violent crime in the history of humanity.
Dont confuse a change in peoples purchasing habits as a logical response to something intrinsic. Its barely ever correlated.
edit: I actually reread and saw you said "perceived value," I agree with you, I just think its a tragedy people are so scared. Although SF seems to be really having a problem.
Public schools in NY not delivering education some folks expect -> market starts for private schools.
Existing delivery service not able to do guaranteed same or next day delivery -> merchants and others will build out their own capacity.
My guess is that as police are defunded (Minneapolis is getting rid of police department entirely) folks who can pay and see a role for security will probably contract for it. In the bay area this is already happening to a small degree.
It used to be you could walk into a lot of office buildings freely, now pretty tight security in some downtown areas (ie, public security option / service options are very poor and not maintained). So we get elevator passes and lockouts, security person downstairs, turnstiles, bathrooms all got doors with RFID door locks.