Why not just train staff and carry guns?
Because the city is withholding business licenses until cops are on payroll... rtfa.
Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
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Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#12Why not just train staff and carry guns?
The article is about the MPD forcing businesses to hire off-duty cops or risk losing their business license, rather than an actual security problem requiring security guards.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#13Why not just train staff and carry guns?
Even with guns, minimum wage people aren't gonna want to be heroes and risk their lives protecting the money of their boss, when threatened at gunpoint. Even if they're willing to pull the trigger, your average 7-Eleven employee is no Navy Seal and won't react well under gunpoint pressure and might end up shooting some innocent bystander or himself. Just giving guns to everyone is bad idea on so many levels.
I don't think this point gets plastered everywhere in the entirety of the world enough.
Most humans don't want to shoot other humans. The few who have murder fantasies do, but other than that nobody wants to take a life. The concept of just arming everyone isn't a positive nor even a remote solution.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#14Why not just train staff and carry guns?
Did you read the article? This is about cops setting up a protection racket
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#15Why not just train staff and carry guns?
I'm a 2A fan but if i were a worker and asked by my boss to do this i'd say no thanks. Going toe to toe with an armed criminal isn't in the job description, if it were i wouldn't be interested in the position.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#16[flagged]
Yeah, I just bet if I go down to Sparrows Point and try to breeze in the front door of the Amazon DH there I'll get in no problem. And what's that have to do with a Minneapolis protection racket, anyway?
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#17Why not just train staff and carry guns?
Because this was a protection racket? That's not how those work.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#18Already we've got two top-level comments who think this article is about crime. It isn't. It's about corrupt police shaking down small business owners under threat of losing their business license.
ETA: Please give the pedantry a rest. Of course I know police corruption is criminal. That's not what the people talking about "crime" are talking about.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#19gang behaviour
More like a Mafia protection racket imho. Worthy of a DoJ complaint and investigation.
Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security
#20[flagged]
If you read The Fine Article, you will see it's not actually about security, but about police corruption - pressuring business owners of a certain skin color to hire off-duty cops as security under threat of losing their business license, when white business owners didn't appear to have the same requirements to operate.
The business owner quoted in the article goes on to say that a lot of the time the cops they had to hire weren't even there - they had minimum pay requirements for every shift they "worked" even if they left early or just sat in their car doing nothing.