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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

#401

Post by SauciestGNU »

Semaphor wrote: post #286
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmarts are the epicenter of crime in many small towns. They are experimenting with putting police stations INSIDE the store, now. https://www.grocerydive.com/news/Atlanta-Walmart-reopen-stor...

Only semi related, but we have a synagogue here with it's own small police station. But I'm in Germany, it has been burned twice already.

Pardon the insensitive question, but burned twice since the Holocaust? Is violent antisemitism still so prevalent? Did denazification fail so badly?

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#402

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

bombcar wrote: post #375
quacked wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just told you about a case of a murder in a suburb that was solved. Murderers are caught all the time in the US. Are you claiming that because police don't solve 100% of murders in the US, we should consider police fundamentally useless?

Some people are so privileged they think the police do nothing, the prisons are only filled with the wrongfully convicted, and crime isn’t really a problem. That being said, I’m all for attempting the experiment, preferably far from me.

> Some people are so privileged they think the police do nothing

They do plenty of things. And I'm glad I'm privileged enough that I never suffer them doing things.

No, I started the conversation out talking specifically about "the things they do what we would actually want them to do".

This is because, were they gone, we wouldn't have to worry about them doing "the things they do that we never want done to ourselves, or to anyone else".

You're just confused. It's a confusing subject. You're not used to thinking about these things, no one wants you to contemplate them too carefully.

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#403

Post by b5n »

mcpackieh wrote: post #362
lobf wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does buying a gun have to do with safety?

California's Unsafe Handgun Act is ostensibly intended to protect consumers from cheaply manufactured handguns that might malfunction or otherwise be unsafe to operate. Here is California's Attorney General explaining it: https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bont... > “California’s commonsense gun safety laws save lives, and the Unsafe Handgun Act is no exception,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Acc…

It's worth considering that this is the same attorney general who recently doxed all law abiding concealed carry permit holders, applicants, and others (including but not limited to home address, phone, DL number, etc.) many of whom are victims of domestic violence, stalking, and sexual assault.

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#404

Post by mcpackieh »

Aeolun wrote: post #391
nilespotter wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Racism still plays a big part in the Floyd story even if this is true What makes you think that?

Just a general tendency of all excessive violence always(ish, I can think of one exception) happening to be against colored people?

If you can only think of a single example of the police being excessively violent against a white person, then you are woefully under-informed. I'm not surprised though, I blame the media.

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#405

Post by jancsika »

NullInvictus wrote: post #310

You have to have been raised pretty sweetly to not have known this kind of racketeering was a 'thing' for a very long time. Pressure to hire cops is rampant. 'rent-a-cop' is not aimed at the fact that security companies apply aggressive mimicry to their people, but that these people are themselves often off-duty cops. Security companies are strongly "encouraged" to hire off-duty cops, and find themselves left out to…

> have undue control of local government and politics

Now, some facts:

In North Carolina at least, the Council-Manager form of government provides that the police chief is hired/fired by the city manager-- who is hired/fired by and reports directly to the city council. Depending on the city's charter, the manager may hire/fire the police chief with or without approval of the council.

Apparently there are a few city councils who have a charter that requires the police chief to be hired/fired directly by the city council.

This council-manager form is by far the most popular form of city government in NC. IIRC, there are only two other forms allowed by state law-- one is a city council without a professional manager (only an administrator with the elected council making all the important decisions), and one other one which I can't remember atm.

So on the local level, local sheriffs are hired/fired by the local government-- either directly, or by a professional manager who reports directly to the council.

County sheriffs are elected in NC. But the day to day goings on in a municipality-- i.e., any politics related to businesses hiring 'rent-a-cops'-- would be handled by local police officers. (Outside of perhaps one or two counties out of a 100, and unincorporated towns.)

Apparently, the council-manager form of government comes from a template for local governments that is used by many other states in the U.S. The only way I can think of that NC is special is that there are no county roads-- only state and town (which, again, puts citizens in contact with local police way more often than county police).

In conclusion, the very popular form of council-manager government is counter to your claim that local police have "undue control over local government and politics."

> These are not polite people, and the way one 'deals' with them has far more in common with radical militias rather than state bureaucrats. If you haven't encountered that, you're just lucky enough to have never threatened their interests.

I don't have the stats on radical militias. But I'd wager at least two orders of magnitude lower chance of being killed for threatening retaliation to a police officer in the U.S. than for threatening retaliation to a member of a radical militia.

Edit: threatening retaliation, as in their job/livelihood, to fit with your general statement "threaten their interests."

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#406

Post by scythe »

mrguyorama wrote: post #315
scythe wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least one source gives shoplifting as the plurality of shrinkage at 36%, with employee theft close behind at 30%. But if theft isn't prosecuted, this would seem to affect incentives for both shoplifting and employee theft. https://lithospos.com/blog/shrinkage-in-retail-and-how-to-pr... Together this puts theft at a solid majority (66%) of shrinkage.

No, this puts "shoplifting" on the same level as "employee theft" and "literally just doing a bad job" in terms of losing $100 billion (this is actually a global number) last year. IE, brick and mortar retail reported losing about $35 billion to shoplifting. Out of $6 TRILLION (Just in the US!) worth of brick and mortar retail sales in the same year, in an industry that claims 2% profit margins on the low ends. All t…

>IE, brick and mortar retail reported losing about $35 billion to shoplifting.

>Out of $6 TRILLION (Just in the US!) worth of brick and mortar retail sales in the same year, in an industry that claims 2% profit margins on the low ends.

So shoplifting is 29% of net profits? I'm sorry, which side of this argument are you on, exactly?

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#407

Post by yterdy »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #353
yterdy wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, for the record, this embodies what most people meant when they said, "Defund the police." Not, "Get rid of the institution of law enforcement." Instead, "Lower funding so that the remainder is forced to be put towards necessary tasks which the police are actually effective at," reducing their ability to engage in the kind of paid apathy or harassment the GGP describes, and freeing up funding for preventative soc…

You can't lower the funding. 1. They self-fund. All confiscated cash is for keeps. If they're not allowed to keep it by state law, they're welcome to call in feds who will do the bust and give them 80% as a finders fee. 2. They extort cities into not "defunding". They don't want it, and they play hardball. > nd no one in their right mind, even on the ACAB side, wants police to go away entirely. No one's ever accused…

I don't disagree with most of this. The answer is definitely not simply, "Lower the budget," least of all because, as you say, they have other sources of funding. The loss of LEOs on corners probably wouldn't do much for crime rates, either, true.

But I will also answer the question you posed (in the form of an unfinished short story from a few years ago that I dropped because I realized I was doing more telling than showing (also because it's kind of terrible):

https://pastebin.com/QW6nHTGr

Last paragraph is the most important part. Hence, "containment board."

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#408

Post by WalterBright »

NickC25 wrote: post #344
WalterBright wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Nobody makes providers sell thru Walmart. 2. Nobody makes anyone buy from Walmart. 3. Nobody makes anyone work for Walmart. 4. Anybody is free to spin up a competitor to Walmart. 5. Walmart is not responsible for government wealth transfer programs. > It's totally possible to provide [...] You and anyone else are free to do so.

Have you ever been to a small town in America? Outside of a few regions, Walmart is all they have...so that sort of nixes points 2 and 3. Regarding point 4, and your quoting of me - yes, people have. And some have been lucky in that they've made themselves multigenerational wealth in doing so. The guy who founded Costco did it, and made himself over a billion dollars. However, the Waltons have hundreds of times that…

> Have you ever been to a small town in America? Outside of a few regions, Walmart is all they have...so that sort of nixes points 2 and 3.

Yeah, I've lived in them. My dad was in the AF, and (to save money) my parents would shop on the nearest AF base, which was maybe 30 miles away. They'd go once every 2 weeks or so and fill up the car with groceries.

The indisputable point is people prefer to shop at Walmart. Nobody makes them.

Name one "far right" law Walmart got enacted.

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#409

Post by lobf »

greyface- wrote: post #400
lobf wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that a gun doesn’t make you more safe, but the opposite. Anyone talking about buying a gun shouldn’t be discussing safety, they are unrelated concepts.

Harm reduction is a component of public safety.

If your interest is harm reduction, then you should be focused on reducing the number of handguns in circulation.

You should also consider looking in to the data about what actually happens to your chances of being shot once you buy a gun. It’s pretty stunning.

Re: Small business owners say they're pressured to hire off-duty cops for security

#410

Post by lobf »

mcpackieh wrote: post #394
lobf wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that a gun doesn’t make you more safe, but the opposite. Anyone talking about buying a gun shouldn’t be discussing safety, they are unrelated concepts.

You're [deliberately?] misinterpreting the stated intent of the law. A gun that goes off when dropped is substantially less safe than a gun which doesn't. People who buy guns are in fact justified in considering such factors. I think there's a real case to be made that the Californian law is duplicitous and is actually intended to reduce the availability of handguns in California, but that's not the point being raise…

We shouldn’t be doing anything to increase the number of guns in circulation. It reduces safety for everyone, especially the gun owners.
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