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Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

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Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#21

Post by lutusp »

jcc80 wrote: post #19

"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security" This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police.…

> This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses.

It's also probably unconstitutional, on the ground that it produces at least the appearance of selective enforcement. This kind of goal is usually achieved by hiring a private security guard, rather than paying a (normally) taxpayer-funded police department to focus its attention on a specific zone.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#22

Post by mongol »

ars wrote: post #7

This sets a bad precedent IMO. Are the only people going to get security those that will pay [extra] for it? It just feels wrong to be able to pay government for this kind of thing - kinda like paying the military to do something for you under the color of law.

Agree. Tax money should fund the police and democratic means determine what to use them for.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#23

Post by [deleted] »

bane wrote: post #3
Shenglong wrote: post #2

Interesting. Increased security, faster response times, and public image at such a cheap rate is probably a no-brainer for large tech companies like Facebook. I feel like we're going to see more private funding for public positions in the (perhaps distant) future, but I suppose the obvious question is: at what point does private funding of public officials become theoretically troublesome? Some would call this the st…

There's a movie about this exact subject called Robocop .

[deleted]

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#24

Post by nieve »

Argorak wrote: post #12
bane wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a movie about this exact subject called Robocop .

Privatized police forces are also one of the standard topics of cyberpunk.

It's been obvious for a while now that we're living in a dystopian cyberpunk future, it just snuck up on us:

  * Killer drones. Ubiquitous surveillance by both government & business.  
  * Bad data that destroys one's ability to travel, get credit, find work, or avoid being thrown into jail out of nowhere. 
  * More and more armed citizens shooting each other over minor things. 
  * Flash mobs for every purpose under the sun.  
  * Samizdata.  
  * Manipulating the cops into raiding innocent targets while using software to conceal your identity. Absolute and complete lack of airships. 
  * Corporate domination of the political process with unlimited donations.  
  * Massive and growing wealth inequality.  
  * Political campaigns severally wounded by software failures. 
  * "You're not the customer, you're the product." 
  * DDOS for commercial advantage.
  * Arresting people as "terrorists" to seize embarrassing stolen information.
  * International treaties negotiated at the behest of corporations as backdoors to subverting the legislative process.  
  * No-recruit agreements for the rank & file combined with vicious competition for the top talent.  People carrying half their life in portable computer devices.  
  * Ransomware in a myriad of forms.
  * Vast government computer intrusion programs.
  * Criminalization of access and dissemination of public information.  Criminalization of downloading too much from something you've got access rights to.  Criminalization of downloading from open directories with no warnings on them.
  * New diseases, rising seas, freakish weather.
  * A resurgent, militaristic Russia invading various countries.
  * A resurgent, militaristic USA invading various countries.
Admittedly the cyberware is a bit slow in coming, AI is still the same 10 years off as always, self-driving cars are barely at the testing stage, sub-orbital planes are a pipe dream, and nobod thinks the Net looks like brightly colored blocks, but it's still unsettlingly close.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#25

Post by yeukhon »

trhway wrote: post #6
yeukhon wrote: post #5

Facebook has committed to provide up to $600,000 over three years, enough in the city's estimate to cover the salary and benefits of a full-time officer. According to this http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-f... , NYPD can make 91K after 6 years in the service. Is Facebook paying less? I don't know the cost of benefit and insurance. I really doubt a single police officer will receive more than…

>Also, consider security guards are paid at a lower rate, why can't we help boost their salary sworn officer vs. security guard is like a queen vs. pawn. >It seems like they are just concerned with unauthorized access rather than defeating crime rate. something like 10 years ago (when i was commuting to that Sun's (back then) campus) there were police presence at that station. Not that it was affecting much, at least…

Well I don't argue that security guards are obviously 10x less trained than a cop. But you have to agree that if they want to provide security to employees, they need to hire a GOOD security guard agency. I have never been to FB and I don't know how well trained the security guards at FB are, but these people are really your first responder when a threat occurs on campus, immediately. They are the one going to do the gatekeeping for FB. If they could hire a better security agency, they should. Right now I feel like FB is trying to be cost-effective; instead of spending $1-3M for better security guards, they are just throwing $1M out there to get 3-4 cops.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#27

Post by spacehome »

nieve wrote: post #24
Argorak wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privatized police forces are also one of the standard topics of cyberpunk.

It's been obvious for a while now that we're living in a dystopian cyberpunk future, it just snuck up on us: * Killer drones. Ubiquitous surveillance by both government & business. * Bad data that destroys one's ability to travel, get credit, find work, or avoid being thrown into jail out of nowhere. * More and more armed citizens shooting each other over minor things. * Flash mobs for every purpose under the sun. *…

We have more guns, but fewer armed citizens, and violence has been steadily declining for a couple decades now.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#28

Post by yeukhon »

kiiski wrote: post #13
yeukhon wrote: post #5

Facebook has committed to provide up to $600,000 over three years, enough in the city's estimate to cover the salary and benefits of a full-time officer. According to this http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-f... , NYPD can make 91K after 6 years in the service. Is Facebook paying less? I don't know the cost of benefit and insurance. I really doubt a single police officer will receive more than…

>In the case of bomb threat or shooting, I am damn sure a 911 call is enough to get 100 county officers from MP and nearby county. A single officer will not help much. A single officer in the right place is far more usefull than 100 in a nearby county. Breivik was just one man. He could have been easily stopped by a single officer.

My point is that a single cop can't defend everyone in that area; also, security guards are really the first responder on site to be honest. IMO, FB is trying to be cost-effective; instead of spending more money on good security guards (I don't know how good they are at FB right now), FB is throwing $1M total to get a few police officers.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#29

Post by harlanlewis »

zaroth wrote: post #16

This was in one of the comments; > Get the gang activity under control, and it actually would be > quite nice. The irony is, if it became safe, it probably would > gentrify rapidly, housing prices would go up, and the poor people > who rent would have to find somewhere else to live. Is it just me who thinks it's terribly sad there are people apologizing for decreasing crime and therefore increasing property value? Th…

I absolutely agree with the sentiment, but density housing on high value property tends to result in high rise luxury units rather than affordable apartments.

There are worse things, but it doesn't really address the problem.

Re: Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

#30

Post by nieve »

spacehome wrote: post #27
nieve wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been obvious for a while now that we're living in a dystopian cyberpunk future, it just snuck up on us: * Killer drones. Ubiquitous surveillance by both government & business. * Bad data that destroys one's ability to travel, get credit, find work, or avoid being thrown into jail out of nowhere. * More and more armed citizens shooting each other over minor things. * Flash mobs for every purpose under the sun. *…

We have more guns, but fewer armed citizens, and violence has been steadily declining for a couple decades now.

I should have phrased that more clearly. The cyberpunk thing is that we've got more aggressively open carrying and more dramaticly stupid shooting incidents like the string in Florida, very much the way a lot of cyberpunk has the trope of heavily armed idiots opening fire at the slightest excuse. We have nothing like cyberpunk levels of violence and as you point out it's mostly getting better, but we do have more incidents that'd fit nicely in a book than we used to and we have more people displaying weapons. I'm thinking about the little color bits thrown into cyberpunk to clue the audience in and things like the Zimmerman, Dunn, and Reeves cases fit in perfectly with that (modulo actual human tragedy).
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