Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

minnesotareformer.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 606 posts

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

#281

Post by wolverine876 »

salamanderss wrote: post #251
wolverine876 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Second Amendment is centuries old. The current interpretation of it is only a decade or two old. For centuries before that, other interpretations prevailed - the oddball is the current radical one. If one more person tells me 'the ship has sailed' or some other hopeless cliche of the moment - yes, the smart trend of the moment is despair! - about anything .... The radical gun people sure don't think that way, and…

You could mail order a machine gun until the 1930s and nonviolent felons could buy guns up until the 60s ( violent ones too a few decades before that ). Not much to challenge federally on some of these points until recent history. Also the bill of rights werent fully incorporated upon the states until well past the signing of the Constitution. In this context it's kind of silly to compare backwards vs many regulation…

Is there somewhere that documents this history? My understanding is that the current interpretation is a new(ish) idea promulgated by the NRA, etc. starting around 1980.

The Bill of Rights point seems like a long stretch.

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

#282

Post by xkekjrktllss »

bko wrote: post #169
nanidin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Walmart in my metro area that is responsible for like 80% of all police calls within their municipality. This is the same Walmart that leeches off society in other ways like paying sub-living wages so that employees need to rely on social safety nets to survive. I'm not sure if they have to hire private security, but this is a prime example of a business that should be securing itself or changing location.

Walmart hourly salaries start at 14-19 an hour depending on location. They also abide by all the rules. What are you comparing it to? Mom and pop shops that have kids working there in getting paid under the counter at a lower wage? https://fortune.com/2023/09/08/walmart-cuts-starting-wage-ne...

14-19 an hour is atrocious in 2023, and of course most of these employees are limited to part-time hours so the company can avoid paying for benefits, all while advising employees to use food stamps. Medicaid is rarely available to such employees because they will often make barely too much income to qualify so they try going without insurance. It's despicable and frankly so is anybody defending such arrangements.

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

#283

Post by gotoeleven »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #79
_moof wrote: post #18

Already 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.

> It's about corrupt police shaking down small business owners I don't believe that there's ever been any other kind of cop. Certainly not outside of fiction. By prefixing the adjective "corrupt" though, you're certainly buying into it. Have you never read the headlines where the entire police union tries to extort the entire city? "If we don't get enough cops on the street, bad things will happen". Hell, even more e…

I hope you didn't spill your latte on your kiffeyeh while typing this.

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

#284

Post by billy99k »

burnished wrote: post #242
billy99k wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

which group has more crime/bad behavior on average? regardless of act, you ramp up security accordingly.

You should look into overpolicing and how it impacts those summary statistics; in brief if you look you will find someone breaking a law but bad behavior in one group gets ignored as an exception whereas in another group each incident is treated as emblematic and needing strong corrective action. In my experience both groups are full of pretty similar young men, which makes questions like yours pretty obviously loade…

"You should look into over policing and how it impacts those summary statistics"

This may have been the case 10 years ago, but we have started defunding the police in many major cities. Have we seen a change in crime stats?

"if you look you will find someone breaking a law but bad behavior in one group gets ignored as an exception whereas in another group each incident is treated as emblematic and needing strong corrective action"

I think if you look at what's actually happening, you might change your opinion on this.

"In my experience both groups are full of pretty similar young men, which makes questions like yours pretty obviously loaded; why are you expecting one to be measurably different?"

This may be your experience, but probably not reality. I don't really think they care about theory and statistics when there are shootings and violent behavior on certain nights of the week.

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

#285

Post by salamanderss »

wolverine876 wrote: post #281
salamanderss wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could mail order a machine gun until the 1930s and nonviolent felons could buy guns up until the 60s ( violent ones too a few decades before that ). Not much to challenge federally on some of these points until recent history. Also the bill of rights werent fully incorporated upon the states until well past the signing of the Constitution. In this context it's kind of silly to compare backwards vs many regulation…

Is there somewhere that documents this history? My understanding is that the current interpretation is a new(ish) idea promulgated by the NRA, etc. starting around 1980. The Bill of Rights point seems like a long stretch.

The most significant acts restricting arms federally are the NFA (1934) which was a (at the time onerous) tax because they weren't sure they had constitutional power for many other methods of regulation.

The other was the GCA passed in 1968.

After the passing of the NFA was the beginning of many modern era challenges such as US v.no legal counsel of dead guy (Miller). Unsurprisingly the undefended dead guy with no counsel lost setting a long precedent and the rest of NFA is history.

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

#286

Post by Semaphor »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #157
nanidin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Walmart in my metro area that is responsible for like 80% of all police calls within their municipality. This is the same Walmart that leeches off society in other ways like paying sub-living wages so that employees need to rely on social safety nets to survive. I'm not sure if they have to hire private security, but this is a prime example of a business that should be securing itself or changing location.

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.

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

#287

Post by techdmn »

gamblor956 wrote: post #243
BWStearns wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a good way to get your business license paperwork lost. Edit: not sure why the downvotes here. If you’re a small business owner you are trying to get through your day and your day gets a lot longer if you piss off casually corrupt city officials who can shut your business down by slow walking needed paperwork. This is a group that happily added 200% to your operating costs via ransoming your business license f…

I think that if what you were describing was true, a federal DOJ investigation would result in a lot of people spending time in federal prison, and your friend walking away with enough money that your friend can drone all he wants from a private beach in the Bahamas while you both sip mai tais. So yes, they can retaliate against your friend. And your friend can retaliate against them and the difference is that their…

The DOJ being notificed could result in a lot of people spending time in prison. It could also result in no action. Retaliation by local officials could be limited to a few hours and a few hundred dollars of lost income. It could also be a lot worse. Based on my personal experience I certainly wouldn't bet a few hundred dollars on the former in either case.

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

#288

Post by quacked »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #131
quacked wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of society are you envisioning that can address antisocial behavior without detaining or investigating anyone?

I am not envisioning any society in particular. Instead, I would ask you a question. It's a little contrived, so bear with me. Imagine a situation that you could plausibly find yourself in where you would feel the need to contact the police. It need not be a 911 call, though those are fine too. Imagine how that would go down... the time of day you contact them. Where you would be when it happened. How you would descr…

The police have shown up to mediate between my sister's abusive boyfriend and my parents, arrested him for beating her and put him in jail, investigated and caught murderers that killed in my parents' neighborhood, etc.

If I had been the one to call the police in any of those situations, I would expect that they did what they did, which was show up and provide a threatening presence to decrease the risk of further uncontrolled violence.

I don't mean to phrase this as an emotionally hostile reaction to your idea. Sometimes people hide their reasons for thinking something and then bring them out after drawing the person they're arguing with out into the open. That's not what I'm trying to do. I'm merely pointing out that sometimes I need a situation to be dealt with by violent people with resources, and that's what they do.

I agree with you that they won't help with break-ins or with bicycle theft. But I would like them to be able to, because I don't like break-ins or bicycle theft and I'd like the people who to that to be put in "societal time out". This would require an agent permitted to detain someone with violence to investigate and catch people committing bicycle theft and break-ins.

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

#289

Post by gotoeleven »

yterdy wrote: post #196
stronglikedan wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Detectives, or tactical teams at the direction of detectives. Street cops are as bad as the parent describes in most areas.

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…

If "defund the police" actually means "reform the police" then why not just say reform the police? And also why burn down police stations?

I think most people who want to "defund the police" plan to live in a place where the police haven't actually been defunded. "Defund the police" is a luxury belief.

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

#290

Post by 8note »

soco wrote: post #53
MattGaiser wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the shortage of cops, I am not sure there is the appetite for this. Politically, cops shaking down businesses people associate with trouble seems more palatable than exacerbating the police shortage.

I'm not sure what is the role of police here. If their role is to extort citizens I see no reason to keep them around. Or you think corrupt cops also protect some neighborhoods? Maybe for a nice price? I can rent my own thugs instead and I bet they'd be cheaper.

The benefit of having cops vs your own thugs is that the cops don't get you in trouble when they kill somebody on your behalf
Post reply on HN