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The privatization of policing

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Re: The privatization of policing

#131

Post by [deleted] »

pleasantpeasant wrote: post #85
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. My son was detecting hints of positivity in my reaction to the story; he cautioned me that the opening blurb smelled like crafted propaganda.

The author works at The Federalist Society. A conservative online magazine. Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force. The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.

[deleted]

Re: The privatization of policing

#132

Post by jmugan »

This all sounds good, but to me it highlights the downside of not enforcing laws. If you force people to hire private security, it's going to be hard to ensure that they are all nice and reasonable. Also, it's just a bad way to live with all of these private security forces everywhere.

Re: The privatization of policing

#133

Post by hprotagonist »

T3OU-736 wrote: post #11
hprotagonist wrote: post #2

We don’t need any loogie guns, thank you so very much.

Unfamiliar term: "loogie gun". What does it mean? Neal Stephenson's book Snow Crash comes up from search - is that the reference?

that’s the reference.

as is my user name

Re: The privatization of policing

#135

Post by jancsika »

idiotsecant wrote: post #115
wahnfrieden wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Wage theft is a serious problem but it's an 'orderly' theft- it targets people at the bottom and the people at the top are either uneffected or benefit and life goes on as usual. Property crime is a crime against the order of things. The powerful are impacted as well as the powerless. Crime isn't the problem to be solved,necessarily, it's just a wrench in the social order where the few dominate the many. That order i…

If any of this were relevant then we would expect that employers (the powerful) could steal physical items from the person/vehicle/abode of employees (the people at the bottom) and get away with it.

At least here in NC, I can say that every clear case I've heard of an employer trying to steal the property of an employee (directly off their person, out of their vehicle, out of their abode, or even attempting to steal their vehicle) ended either with the police escorting the employee to retrieve their property, or with the police escorting away the employer[1].

Besides, just take that recent oddball case of that Dept. of Energy person who was apparently stealing luggage from randos at the airport. Do a search and tell me how that has affected Sam's power over the people at the bottom.

Edit:

1: Just to keep things apples to apples, I'm talking about situations that are equivalent to shoplifting: a) person enters a space that belongs to the victim without permission, b) person takes property of that victim, and c) person leaves that property with the stolen goods in hand.

Re: The privatization of policing

#136

Post by xrd »

One thought: isn't this fairer, in that private businesses pay for the security they need? There are obviously some big civil liberties questions, but if a business wants to put their own security into their place of business and tout that fact as a way to bring people back downtown, I have no objections. That these private security companies are doing neighborhood security is one thing, but I know the Portland downtown is hemorrhaging businesses because of the lack of security. I'm sorry that a small mom and pop restaurant needs to foot that bill, but perhaps with a few large hotels it makes it economically viable. And, as a taxpayer, the cops I pay for don't need to do that (and they seem unwilling lately anyway).

Re: The privatization of policing

#137

Post by leeroyjenkins11 »

culi wrote: post #117
pmarreck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> copaganda Police budgets are higher than they've ever been in history and they're spending millions on social media and "strategic communication" https://therealnews.com/police-departments-are-spending-mill...

Maybe because some moron on Twitter can have people calling for the head of cops who shoot people trying to stab other people. And maybe they need to pay police more because no cop wants to make life and death decisions and have uninformed people asking why they couldn't shoot the knife out of their hands. Couple this with DAs unwilling to prosecute crimes and reclassifing crimes to hide how bad things are, also having no cash bail, why would a cop stick around for what used to be a decent salary?

Re: The privatization of policing

#138

Post by giraffe_lady »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #42
giraffe_lady wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing? Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any high…

>What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing? I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police. College students are essentially transients - those who live on urban campuses are typically not homeowners, not car-owners, and not in married/domestic partner/young ch…

This is just restating the assumption: that police mostly solve or prevent violent crime, and violent crime is the reason communities have police.

I don't think this is overall true. Again, only ~5% of policing time is spent on violent crime. Again, is there that much more violent crime on college campuses? That would be widely known if it were true, I think, but maybe it is and I'm just ignorant.

> I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.

IDK what you're trying to say here. I spent my teen years in a group home in woodlawn on the border with hyde park. My associations are certainly out of date but I am also familiar with the dynamics of this specific area in a sense. Do you want to clarify?

Re: The privatization of policing

#139

Post by nibbleshifter »

DoctorOW wrote: post #112
pmarreck wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I dislike the binary of "completely pristine" and the current state of police. One of the professions more likely to be a victim of violent criminals are delivery drivers. Still, if heavily armed delivery drivers started killing innocent people one would be allowed to critique that without being labeled "anti-pizza". That statistic is one of a number of things that are disallowed in conversations before being offered…

> heavily armed delivery drivers

Protagonist from Snow Crash!

Re: The privatization of policing

#140

Post by mikem170 »

brk wrote: post #127
wahnfrieden wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft. The average police department does not get involved in wage theft, which would be something more involving lawyers, maybe ultimately leading to an arrest warrant carried out by a police force. And of course this is another example of an "AND" decision, not an "OR" one. We can enforce and prosecute property theft crimes, which absolutely needs t…

> Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft.

This kind of reinforces the parent's point. They are both theft (shoplifting and wage theft), and yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft).

The fact that the police don't get involved and lawyers are required to rectify wage theft just shows how far we as a society don't care to defend those people. Meanwhile private security can get away with abusing shoplifters and homeless.

Like you said, they are both theft, but for some reason we as a society go after one much more aggressively than the other. Something about that doesn't seem fair.

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