[HN Gopher] Leaked emails show crime app Citizen is testing on-d...
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Leaked emails show crime app Citizen is testing on-demand security
force
Author : codq
Score : 232 points
Date : 2021-05-21 17:56 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| figbert wrote:
| This is the most cyberpunk think I've read all week. Yes please.
| tisFine wrote:
| I predict the demise of this company when one of their entitled
| rent-a-cops gets 2nd Amendmented for harassing people without
| legal authority.
| dang wrote:
| Ongoing related thread: _Citizen CEO offered to personally fund
| LA arson manhunt for the wrong person_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236660
| Gunax wrote:
| This is what will happen when you defund the police.
|
| Its not the end if law enforcement, it's the end of equal
| (supposedly) law enforcement.
| andrewzah wrote:
| Adequately funded police can still take forever to arrive or
| decide not to come at all. This has absolutely zero to do with
| defunding police. Which by the way doesn't mean taking -all- of
| their money away. It means readjusting their budgets and
| allocating some of that money to other types of responders.
|
| There always has been a market for immediate response private
| security, if one has the money.
| ummonk wrote:
| Theoretically, a well-funded government police force could
| actually provide some on-demand services like this to the
| general public.
| realmod wrote:
| The reality is that police funding has maintained even
| throughout the "defund movement", so this situation is not
| caused by police defunding.
| Simulacra wrote:
| "Now a Burbclave, that's the place to live. A city-state with its
| own constitution, a border, laws, cops, everything."
| chasd00 wrote:
| if you use the app and call for help, who shows up to help? If
| it's someone trained and equipped to deal with any emergency i
| don't see how it's going to be even remotely affordable. They
| would have to keep scores of these people all over every part of
| every city.
|
| If it's just a random person who signed up as a responder i think
| they'd make the situation worse instead of better.
| donmcronald wrote:
| People lack critical thinking skills. Anyone who thinks they're
| getting better value from a consumption priced private service
| than from a public institution funded by the progressive tax
| system isn't considering the economics of it.
|
| Like I said in another thread... You're paying $20 per month to
| be a surveillance endpoint so Citizen can sell the real
| services to the rich.
| podric wrote:
| What a brilliant idea from a business standpoint!
|
| Just like how rideshare apps increased the availability of car
| services in areas underserved by traditional taxies, on-demand
| security services like this can provide value in a similar way,
| by making available security services in areas underserved by the
| police.
| scarmig wrote:
| Citizen's implementation aside, I feel like there's a real market
| for something like this. I was walking down the street a few
| months ago and was physically attacked by somebody (as in, the
| man punched and attacked me until I ran out into the middle of
| the street into oncoming traffic for safety).
|
| I feel like there should be some sort of service that's able to
| offer some kind of protection in situations like this, or at
| least able to track down and prevent this kind of person from
| recommitting after he's shown a willingness to violently attack
| other people.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Exactly what do you imagine the hypothetical service's response
| would be?
| scarmig wrote:
| Something that'd disincentivize or prevent him from doing it
| again. Ideally detain him and rehabilitate him. Barring that,
| track him and have people ready to physically intervene when
| he attacks someone.
|
| It's unpleasant to be physically assaulted, and I'd like to
| avoid it in the future.
| kelnos wrote:
| Response time isn't zero, though. Likely the attacker would
| be long gone before these people show up.
|
| I agree it's unpleasant being physically assaulted on the
| street (happened to me 8 years ago and I still think about
| it often), as is the utter lack of interest from the police
| in helping in such situations, but I don't think a private
| security force is going to do much better.
|
| And to your other point, there is already a thing for
| tracking someone down after the fact if the police aren't
| helpful: private investigators.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That might work in Somalia but for a private entity to
| detain a person on the say-so of another private person
| would obviously violate the civil rights of the 2nd party.
| scarmig wrote:
| It also violates the civil rights of a private entity if
| someone beats and attacks him on the street, doesn't it?
| throwaway292893 wrote:
| File a police report. Move somewhere the local government
| backs their police and they do their job.
|
| What you want is the ability to pay to get expedited help,
| to which I say is that the fair option to those who can't
| afford to pay for protection?
| scarmig wrote:
| The idea that police help in situations like this betrays
| a lack of experience living in San Francisco.
|
| Ideally everyone would be protected from random attacks
| on the street, not just those able to pay.
| drusepth wrote:
| The article mentions a security escort service that seems
| like it'd have the chilling effect necessary to quell random
| people attacking you on the street, rather than relying on a
| "response".
| donmcronald wrote:
| What if the problem is groups of random people? How much
| does it cost for an escort with an APC and a dozen guards?
|
| The sad thing about this is that people can't figure out
| that $20 / month won't buy you a 15 minute phone call.
| You're paying $20 per month to be a surveillance endpoint
| so Citizen can sell the real services to the rich.
|
| America is filled with suckers.
| jostmey wrote:
| Short sci-fi film beautifully illustrating the dangers
| https://youtu.be/Eo2OQsPDwBI
|
| It is also entertaining to watch
| toss1 wrote:
| >>Protect also advertises "Instant emergency response to your
| exact location,"
|
| Seems like a bit of overselling here. "Rapid emergency
| response..." would be more like it. Although the request and
| communication to initiate response may take only seconds, the
| actual arrival time is unlikely to resemble "instant".
|
| Marketing getting ahead of the ability to deliver...
| slownews45 wrote:
| This is usually a sign of some perceived failure of the public
| option.
|
| Public schools in NY not delivering education some folks expect
| -> market starts for private schools.
|
| Existing delivery service not able to do guaranteed same or next
| day delivery -> merchants and others will build out their own
| capacity.
|
| My guess is that as police are defunded (Minneapolis is getting
| rid of police department entirely) folks who can pay and see a
| role for security will probably contract for it. In the bay area
| this is already happening to a small degree.
|
| It used to be you could walk into a lot of office buildings
| freely, now pretty tight security in some downtown areas (ie,
| public security option / service options are very poor and not
| maintained). So we get elevator passes and lockouts, security
| person downstairs, turnstiles, bathrooms all got doors with RFID
| door locks.
| newacct583 wrote:
| This is sort of weirdly spun. In fact in Seattle we saw exactly
| what happens when a bunch of local yahoos decide to try to
| police themselves. How exactly do you think this is going to
| turn out differently than the CHAZ/CHOP fiasco, except in the
| clothing choices of the security people?
| swearwolf wrote:
| At least on the West Coast of the U.S. it seems to me like
| there's been a big change over the past ten years or so in what
| kinds of security events could happen in a given public space.
| These days it feels like anything is possible. We've had
| homeless people tailgate employees into the office building
| where I work. One tried to move into the handicapped bathroom
| stall. Another started grabbing things from people's desks in
| an unoccupied area. After Portland began allowing overnight
| camping on public property under the Safe Sleep program, a
| small patch of land across from our office became a campsite
| pretty quickly, as did the sidewalks on adjacent streets. Some
| of the people who were camping there were pretty unstable, so
| you never really knew what to expect.
|
| In that same period of time, also on the West Coast, we've seen
| a shift towards a more lenient model of policing and
| prosecuting. The idea is to not laden people who are already
| struggling with homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction,
| or all three with legal problems that arise from those
| situations. It's a laudable effort, and a noble goal, but it
| has meant that people who get arrested for something like auto
| theft or burglary are quickly released. Sometimes you'll read
| in the news about a person who's been arrested for a serious
| crime like murder, and the article will mention dozens and
| dozens of other arrests for things like burglary, assault or
| theft. The police know this, so they often don't bother
| following up on property crimes.
|
| That system as a whole can really make the major West Coast
| cities feel pretty lawless sometimes, but people don't really
| like to talk about it in social settings because it's hard to
| talk about problems like that without being misconstrued as a
| reactionary conservative. But if you get them taking one on
| one, and they feel like they can trust you, the frustrations
| come pouring out. So I'm not that surprised that there's a
| company trying to capitalize on that sentiment, horrifying as
| it is. I've been feeling for a while now that given the current
| trajectory of things, a vigilante backlash was likely to become
| inevitable.
| zapita wrote:
| > _Minneapolis is getting rid of police department entirely_
|
| This is incorrect. The city council made a non-binding "pledge"
| to dismantle the police department. But according to the New
| York Times, the pledge _" has been rejected by the city's
| mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls,
| and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place
| have been the types of incremental reforms that the city's
| progressive politicians had denounced."_ [1]
|
| The ideas behind "defund the police" are simply not popular in
| the US. A majority of Americans want a police department - but
| they want a police department that protects everyone equally.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/us/politics/minneapolis-d...
| throwkeep wrote:
| Indeed, defunding the police means the poor will be even less
| protected. The rich will always have their private security.
| And now they'll have a larger/cheaper labor force, with ex-
| police officers looking for a new job?
| rlaabs wrote:
| Community based policing, cops on neighborhood patrols, has
| been on the decline for years.
|
| Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military
| weapons/hardware.
|
| "Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's
| Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-
| Ameri...
| noofen wrote:
| The "Rise of the Warrior Cop" seems directly correlated
| with the rise of massive drug cartels.
| ranma4703 wrote:
| This presumes that the police ever protected the poor, when
| the opposite is the case.
| slownews45 wrote:
| In that case this could end up being a win-win situation it
| seems like.
|
| The poor get rid of the police in their neighborhoods and
| the folks who want more policing get it?
|
| We've had a fair bit of retail closing as the police are
| pulling back out of some areas.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Poor people don't want to get rid of police, they want to
| not be hassled by police.
|
| In the 90s when the NYPD started firing lazy/corrupt
| police commanders and cracking down on street crime,
| evicting families of drug dealers from public housing,
| and putting down pit bulls.. poor communities were very
| much in favor of what was happening.
|
| The tide shifted when the cops went all in on stupid
| metrics.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Even for middle class people, the police are basically
| there to file the paperwork you need to file insurance
| claims.
|
| "Oh, somebody broke into your car and stole stuff? You
| shouldn't leave things lying around. We'll never catch the
| guy. Oh, you have video of the incident and know exactly
| who it is? Yeah, we can't really do anything with this. Oh
| you need to file a report for the insurance company? Fill
| this out and check back with us next month."
|
| I'm very much NOT surprised that people who've actually
| needed the police for something have decided to there needs
| to be a private alternative.
| [deleted]
| pstuart wrote:
| "defunding" is a loaded word and ripe for misinterpretation.
|
| The intent behind that movement is to take money spent on
| policing where it fails and move it to where it might be more
| effective.
|
| How many lawsuits are there for wrongful deaths where the
| police showed up for a mental health crisis? Since funding is
| finite and the police get a lion's share of it (community
| wise), why not shift some of that money into personnel who
| are better equipped to handle it?
| slownews45 wrote:
| It's going to be very interesting to watch the folks who
| are replacing their police. I think Minneapolis is going to
| be first. If they can make it work - fantastic!
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/12/minneapol
| i...
| soared wrote:
| Denver has replaced some police with mental health
| professionals and its been great so far.
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-
| experiment-...
| throwkeep wrote:
| There is only one interpretation for defund, and anyone
| saying otherwise is gaslighting or using Motte and Bailey.
| President Obama wisely told progressives to stop saying it.
|
| Also, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police":
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
| sneak wrote:
| > _My guess is that as police are defunded (Minneapolis is
| getting rid of police department entirely) folks who can pay
| and see a role for security will probably contract for it. In
| the bay area this is already happening to a small degree._
|
| I think in a lot of major metros, even funded police aren't
| meeting people's needs. If we aren't getting what we're paying
| for, we should stop paying.
| throwkeep wrote:
| > If we aren't getting what we're paying for, we should stop
| paying.
|
| Would you apply that to government services generally, where
| we're not getting what we pay for?
| jdlshore wrote:
| "We" in this case is public policy about how tax money is
| spent, not individuals' tax payments.
|
| Given that: yes, we should absolutely stop funding services
| where society isn't getting what it's paying for--or fix
| them.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I think a lot of people feel that way.
|
| Am I more likely to have a positive or negative interaction
| with police? I honestly don't know, and I'm white in a nice
| area. Crime is low and something like a burglary is extremely
| unlikely. I think police may be providing an unseen benefit
| to me by enforcing the law on others - I don't want vehicles
| doing 50 mph on my residential street, maybe they would
| without police? Or maybe they wouldn't?
|
| I'm not taking a side on this issue, but I do empathize with
| those who believe they are unlikely to ever benefit from
| police presence, and thus don't want to pay for police.
| noofen wrote:
| > I do empathize with those who believe they are unlikely
| to ever benefit from police presence, and thus don't want
| to pay for police.
|
| You're saying this like the majority these people have a
| net-positive impact on tax revenue. It's quite the
| opposite.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Like all things, it's a complex issue.
|
| Personally, I think the underlying issue is a lack of
| accountability. Address that, and many issues resolve
| themselves.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Black Americans want to retain their current level of
| police presence (or rather, that of the status quo ante).
| This might be because in many cases they _are_ quite likely
| be the victim of a burglary:
|
| https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-
| police-r...
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/denying-crime-wave-progressives-
| are...
| planet-and-halo wrote:
| This is a major part of the problem in these debates.
| People don't measure or argue from what they can't see. We
| often imagine issues as scalars, when more often they are a
| single knob on a complex machine, most of which is
| invisible to even the best informed people.
| sneak wrote:
| If the videos online are any indicator, police do a lot
| more than simply enforce the law: they regularly harass and
| intimidate anyone behaving in ways that are nonstandard
| (including simply existing while being a minority or poor)
| even if no laws are being broken, and suffer no
| consequences whatsoever for such illegal and often violent
| conduct.
|
| This is presumably what some people want, but in general
| the police as protectors of the status quo is, in my view,
| a bad thing. The status quo sucks and changing it isn't
| illegal--yet the cops in the US will treat you as it it
| were.
|
| It's a bad and fiercely unamerican system.
| nkassis wrote:
| Reading a lot of the comment there seems to be a recency bias
| towards complaining a more recent set of policies to change
| police funding and ignoring the more long term problem that
| police may not be meeting the people needs even with large
| budgets.
|
| The issue might not be funding level but misuse as you point
| out.
| CerealFounder wrote:
| Minneapolis is not getting rid of the police department as a
| quick Google would happily show you.
|
| Its a fallacy to assume it is a failure of a public option when
| it just as easily can be that we've been marketed that we are
| vulnerable and unsafe. Almost all stats have TODAY being just
| about the safest moment for violent crime in the history of
| humanity.
|
| Dont confuse a change in peoples purchasing habits as a logical
| response to something intrinsic. Its barely ever correlated.
|
| edit: I actually reread and saw you said "perceived value," I
| agree with you, I just think its a tragedy people are so
| scared. Although SF seems to be really having a problem.
| lolbrels wrote:
| Stretching the scope of violence over the entirety of human
| history is not a good metric considering the mass death and
| wars.
|
| Lowering the scope down to the past decade I would say an
| entire year of BLM riots, mass looting, firebombing
| courthouses, small business owners devastated...you catch my
| drift.
|
| I'm not sure whether your comment was just naive or
| intentionally misleading to downplay what has been happening
| the past year or two. There is definitely a correlation
| between that and increased security presence on site at many
| locations. Especially when the police simply stood by in some
| instances while looters had free reign over entire city
| blocks gleefully snatching whatever they could. Disgusting.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Most of this is perceived bullshit. As the gap between working
| class and affluent people widens, you have a layer of
| professionals with money looking for stuff to do.
|
| Those folks have a tendency to want to separate themselves from
| the dirty masses. (Ie gated community) It's what you did after
| you sell the family factory business in Ohio and move to
| Florida or wherever.
|
| Building security theatre was accelerated driven by 9/11
| paranoia and federal standards.
| xeromal wrote:
| Security is absolutely necessary in down towns. In LA, it is
| out of control. You can't even go inside a 711 without being
| harassed until they hired guards.
| courtf wrote:
| These arbitrary checkpoints also generate a steady stream of
| trivial "security incidents" just by existing, which for the
| paranoid owners is taken as evidence for their necessity, and
| they double down.
| slices wrote:
| Minneapolis is not getting rid of its police department.
|
| There may be one or more options on the ballot this fall to
| make the department report to someone different, and/or to
| remove the current minimum number of officers, but even those
| are yet to be resolved.
| throwaway15579 wrote:
| I'm seeing the same thing in Seattle. Private security has
| become MUCH more common all over the city in the past few
| years. I even see apartment buildings hiring 24/7 private
| security that patrols the building and the street around the
| building as an amenity.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| Has been the case in the mayor's hood for years:
| https://laurelhurstcc.com/security/
| slownews45 wrote:
| Overseas the end results if the police are totally defunded
| or weak is that you tend to end up with really strong
| differences / ghettos around places where there is and is not
| security.
|
| It's like gated communities on steroids, but starts to
| include office, mfg and other items like retail (which
| totally leave places with no security). Can result in
| shocking differences on both sides of the fence that usually
| separates these areas. Ironically the police then tend to
| follow along and provide better security to what are not
| better areas (if they have any capacity).
| tpmx wrote:
| Overseas where?
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| Everywhere? Have you not looked outside?
| throwaway15579 wrote:
| This is how life is in basically every Central and South
| American city, in my experience.
|
| As soon as a family has some relatively small amount of
| wealth they will spend it on ultra-secure apartment
| buildings, tall walls around their house, razor-wire
| walls and fences, full coverage security cameras and
| intruder detection, etc.
| tpmx wrote:
| I saw jarring signs of that when I visited Mexico City in
| 2003 - I stayed with a business partner who lived in a
| walled community guarded by private guards openly
| carrying submachine guns. Can only imagine that the
| security has been dialed up a few notches by now.
|
| (The source of my confusion: I interpreted "overseas" in
| a quite literal way - I'm from Europe.)
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Did you visit one of the armored car dealerships in
| Polanco? They are badass.
| tpmx wrote:
| I did not. I think random violent carjackings had just
| started happening at scale. The guy who hosted me was
| getting a bit worried.
| medium_burrito wrote:
| For the first time in my life I've seen private security in
| my neighborhood. We're in one of the poorer areas of the city
| (ie $1-2.5m houses), so perhaps people cannot afford to
| leave?
|
| I've always thought security on demand was a great idea- the
| real killer app in my mind is having a map online of which
| houses the private security company protects, so as to create
| an incentive for people who aren't paying to get protection
| as the thieves know what's ripe for the picking.
| chasd00 wrote:
| how wold a private security company protect your house? If
| they were there in the driveway 24x7 then maybe. Once your
| house is robbed or being robbed if you have to call someone
| it's already too late.
|
| i was a victim of a home invasion and maybe 10 years later
| a violent crime. In both cases only after the real danger
| was over did a call for help happen.
|
| In the home invasion it ended when the gunman was forcing
| my roommate to the garage, my roommate opened the door, the
| gunman walked out, he then slammed/locked the door behind
| him and we hit the deck calling 911
|
| In the second case i was jumped from behind and knocked
| nearly unconscious before being robbed. It took me a full
| 15min to get the brain fog cleared to even think what to do
| next.
|
| i don't see how an app is going to offer any protection at
| all. Maybe it speeds up reporting crime??
| Cyberdog wrote:
| The same way that police ostensibly protect houses; by
| being there, patrolling randomly, keeping an eye out for
| things that don't look right.
| C19is20 wrote:
| >We're in one of the poorer areas of the city (ie $1-2.5m
| houses
|
| Is that 'poorer' measured in actual USD $, or old Italian
| lira or pesos or something?
|
| #wishiwaspoorthere.
| neither_color wrote:
| I have latin american heritage and that's pretty how much it
| is in the old country for anyone who can afford it. I won't
| be surprised if in a few years barbed wire and glass shard
| fencing becomes more common. The sad thing is America is
| doing this to itself very willfully through some obvious
| policy failures while blaming abstract intangible forces like
| "capitalism."
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Edging closer to "Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong" and the "Central
| Intelligence Corporation".
| exhilaration wrote:
| Yes! Snow Crash is exactly what came to my mind when I read
| this article.
| neither_color wrote:
| Well they did remove "America" from their logo so it's a step
| in that direction.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-14/the-
| ci...
| slickrick216 wrote:
| It's great isn't it. I can't wait to pick out which name to
| call my burbclave. Going to get a full gargoyle gear set.
| danielodievich wrote:
| Nice! I'd say these guys are going to be MetaCops and a soon
| to be discovered competitor will try to be Enforcers.
| soared wrote:
| You're misunderstanding the phrase "defund police". This is
| what it looks like in practice:
| https://www.npr.org/2021/03/08/974941422/6-month-experiment-...
| mycologos wrote:
| There's a pretty wide spectrum of how people interpret
| "defund x". US Republicans have agitated for "defund Planned
| Parenthood" for a while, and by "defund" they meant "don't
| give any tax dollars to it" [1]. In that context, it's not
| really surprising that a big chunk of the population
| "misunderstand[s]" the phrase. They may be inferring the
| wrong context, but the word has definitely been used that
| way.
|
| [1] https://www.ernst.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/erns
| t-i...
| seieste wrote:
| This article talks about a program designed to fix the "root"
| of crime and homelessness. Instead of arresting people,
| they'd call social workers. "Success" was measured by how
| many people were arrested and so the program "succeeded"
| because they responded to 750 calls but didn't arrest anyone.
| But is arrest really related to how well a program solves the
| root of the problem?
|
| It seems like a better measure would be something related to
| their actual goal. So why didn't they measure rate of
| property crime? Rate of homelessness? Poverty? Drug
| addiction? Supposedly these are the real causes of crime and
| homelessness.
|
| If they did actually measure those things, I think their
| evaluation of the program would be different [0] [1].
|
| >> "Denver saw significant increases in most types of
| property crime in 2020. In comparison to the average of the
| previous four years, burglaries rose 23% in 2020, larceny
| rose 9%, auto theft rose 61% and theft from cars rose 39%,
| Denver police data shows." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-
| crime-...
|
| [1] https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-
| campi...
| remarkEon wrote:
| And this is what it looks like _at scale_.
|
| https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-
| casts...
| smoldesu wrote:
| This seems to me like it's setting a bad precedent. I totally
| understand the motivation behind something like this, but
| privatizing it and selling it to the highest bidder not only
| raises ethical concerns, but also ones around how this service
| will be used in the first place. According to citizen it seems
| like these forces will respond to "disturbances", which are
| incredibly vaguely worded. Do I need to be in danger to call
| them? Or do I just need to be "disturbed"?
|
| It seems to me like this will be used by the upper-middle class
| to pester their neighbors over minor annoyances, because they can
| afford a Citizen subscription. Imagine the poor family across the
| street, who gets visited by a black SUV and a group of burly
| looking suited security guards, likely telling them something
| vague about a "disturbance" that was reported.
| shmatt wrote:
| > visited by a black SUV and a group of burly looking suited
| security guards
|
| Not very different than getting visited by a burly looking
| neighbor. Except some people can look weaker, or be afraid to
| approach their neighbor because their small stature
|
| When I had an upstairs neighbor having parties at all hours of
| the night, I wished there was a service where a bigger / more
| intimidating person would knock on their door and ask them to
| cut it out, instead of small and fragile looking me
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I wished there was a service where a bigger / more
| intimidating person would knock on their door and ask them to
| cut it out, instead of small and fragile looking me_
|
| That exists, and it's called the police. If your neighbor is
| violating noise ordinances, they'll get ticketed. If they're
| not, perhaps they're violating building rules, and can be
| fined by the building management. If still not, then you
| unfortunately just live in a shitty building, and hiring a
| thug to harass your neighbor (regardless of how loud they're
| being) sounds like a pretty disgusting (and legally risky)
| thing to do.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| You're being down voted for this comment, and perhaps you
| could have worded it differently, but the core of your
| message seems completely reasonable:
|
| If you don't want to do something, you ask somebody else, if
| you both agree to the terms and costs you have a deal.
|
| The world can be, how should I put this, _difficult_ a place.
|
| The contracted party might agree to not mention you.
| Something like: hey, I live across the street, would you mind
| letting me know if you're going to have music late at night
| because I'll just stay at my partner's place that evening,
| here's my number. No sweat, have a good night, here's a
| complimentary six pack.
|
| It doesn't take a lot of imagination to assume the best
| possible reading of a comment like yours.
|
| Have a lovely day.
| gowld wrote:
| Your solution is to flee your own home and pay the
| perpetrator who is illegally disturbing the peace?
| drusepth wrote:
| I've had problems with my (large) upstairs neighbor for
| the past year. The building repeatedly fined them, the
| police refused to come out, and I knocked on their door
| sometimes several times a day for about 9 months
| straight.
|
| My solution was to offer to pay them $$$ for their moving
| fees and, when they turned that down, I just picked up
| and moved to another building.
|
| That's not really much different.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Ok, and if your neighbor tells your security dude to get
| lost, what happens then?
|
| (Assume everyone involved is armed)
| industriousthou wrote:
| You would call in a private security force to intimidate your
| loud neighbors because you can't? I wonder how else that
| security force might be used to enforce personal preferences.
| majormajor wrote:
| Did you talk to your neighbor ever? Or did you just dream of
| intimidating them while fearing them without meeting them?
|
| (And you weren't afraid of potential fallout from escalating
| things to intimidation either way? What if they hire a BIGGER
| person to go knock on your door?)
| tkzed49 wrote:
| And what if I'm disturbed seeing you walk around the
| neighborhood, and I call some big burly men to give you a
| talk about it? Even if most people are reasonable, this just
| invites the unreasonable people to power trip with private
| security forces.
| chasd00 wrote:
| >I wished there was a service where a bigger / more
| intimidating person would knock on their door and ask them to
| cut it out
|
| heh that's a "hired goon". This whole discussion is like
| standard issue organized crime and protection rackets but in
| app form. Too funny.
| bradj wrote:
| This already happens in some places. For example, in Houston,
| HOAs and other neighborhood management districts will contract
| with Constables to have a dedicated deputy in their
| neighborhood with a separate contact number. Others will
| contract with armed private security to patrol their
| neighborhoods as well.
|
| Also, this is how people use the police already. They call them
| when they are annoyed with their neighbors, the infamous woman
| in Central Park that was covered heavily in the news this year
| comes to mind.
| ffhhj wrote:
| Imagine thieves calling different private forces to confront
| "fake" security guards. Like that guy who asked construction
| workers from craiglist to meet with him next to the bank, but
| now with guns involved.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Imagine the poor family across the street, who gets visited
| by a black SUV and a group of burly looking suited security
| guards, likely telling them something vague about a
| "disturbance" that was reported._
|
| In some ways I would honestly love to get my door buzzed by
| these people so I could tell them to get off my property lest I
| call the actual police to remove them.
|
| (But such is my privilege that I would likely be pretty safe
| and unafraid in such an encounter.)
| kaczordon wrote:
| If rich people can hire private security why can't other people
| have that ability as well? As evidenced from this years riot's
| lots of businesses weren't protected by the police, I'm sure
| plenty of people would have needed this.
| ummonk wrote:
| Yup. Private security has always been a thing. This is just
| democratizing access to the middle class and upper middle
| class.
| swiley wrote:
| I, for one, am very much looking forward to the n-gate write up
| on this thread.
| recursivedoubts wrote:
| I am not a libertarian, but do I have many libertarian friends.
|
| I always wondered why they smirked quietly at calls to defund the
| police...
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| This was the backstory in Robocop (1987), btw.
|
| Detroit was going broke so they privatised Detroit police, OCP
| made the winning bid, then their plan was to replace expensive
| human police with cheap-to-run Robot-cops. That's why the film
| was satire /first/, Hollywood-action-film second.
|
| Unfortunately I don't think Paul Verhoven can save us from
| this...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Two more fiction stories on the same subject:
|
| https://youtu.be/Eo2OQsPDwBI
|
| and
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-
| libertari...
| verhoven_fan wrote:
| I think verhoven has a particular sense of humor and while he
| himself labels some of his movies satire I think he makes a
| particular kind of low brow action movie first and foremost.
| Its more "demolition man" than "a modest proposal". Labelling
| the whole thing as a Satire and pretending to be above
| Hollywood audiences is part of his sense of humor imo.
| reedjosh wrote:
| But in that case the government paid a single company for
| protection. In the private market there will be competition
| for security services.
| asdff wrote:
| Citizen is a dystopian app. It's like the worst elements of the
| boston bombing reddit fiasco packaged into a for profit
| application. The CEO offered a $30k bounty for a random homeless
| person just a few days ago:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447446/citizen-app-inte...
| andrewzah wrote:
| Looks like they explicitly plan on incorporating bounties into
| the app itself.
|
| My prediction is someone will go all viligante and
| beat/maim/kill someone, probably who is innocent. Then the app
| will get pulled.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Westworld has taken a huge downturn (hey, people like the sex
| and killing of robots that don't know they're robots in a
| Wild West theme park... let's remove that entirely from our
| show!)... but this is entirely a central plot device in that
| show.
|
| An app where people accept contracts for quick cash. It's
| supposed to be a dystopian element of their society, not a
| blueprint.
| antonvs wrote:
| There seems to be no dystopian fantasy so bad that someone
| doesn't take it as a blueprint. A kind of Poe's Law for
| dystopias.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| > My prediction is someone will go all viligante and
| beat/maim/kill someone, probably who is innocent. Then the
| app will get pulled.
|
| I think it's more likely the first time this happens the
| person is actually guilty, and there will be a _huge_ debate
| as to whether or not it 's a good thing.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I thought the Rico app in Westworld season 3 was kind of
| silly but I guess not now that it has an upcoming release
| date.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| And the huge debate will suddenly stop when an innocent
| person is killed and everybody will always have been dead
| set against it.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| queue the "if we save only 1 child, its worth it" theme
| music as well.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| ah yes, won't anyone think of the children?
| cratermoon wrote:
| And then it will come out that the vigilante has a sketchy,
| checkered past, possibly including jail time.
| 14 wrote:
| Jail time is not an indicator of a bad person. The US
| likes to lock up people for the crime of being poor.
| cratermoon wrote:
| That's correct. Notice, however, that I mentioned the
| actual crimes first, and added "jail time" as an
| afterthought. There are plenty of criminals who commit
| real crimes and don't get jail time, or even much
| punishment. See e.g. Brock Turner, Shane M. Piche, Zoe
| Reardon, George Zimmerman, Isaac Turnbaugh, etc.
| vanshg wrote:
| But what if they don't?
| hanniabu wrote:
| Then they'll scramble to find anything they can to
| slander the person, such as a parking ticket
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Don't forget about naughty pictures such as the subject
| holding mind-altering drugs such as coffee or alcohol.
| tmh88j wrote:
| >My prediction is someone will go all viligante and
| beat/maim/kill someone, probably who is innocent. Then the
| app will get pulled.
|
| That's always been their intention. Well, not to kill anyone,
| but to track people down. The app was originally called
| vigilante and Apple pulled it from the app store, so they
| rebranded and now we have Citizen. Maybe Apple will do it
| again before anything even worse happens than the recent $30k
| bounty on an innocent person.
| cgb223 wrote:
| Never expected to see "Bounty Hunters as a Service" (BHaaS)
| become a viable tech business model...
| folli wrote:
| I actually don't understand their business model. $20 per
| month will in no way cover the cost to send security guards
| your way, or maybe I'm misunderstanding something here.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It sounds like the current $20 offering is to have a
| remote employee monitoring you when you walk home alone,
| or the like. The contemplated new service, Protect, is
| not currently available to the public, and there's
| nothing indicating it would be $20/mo.
|
| My guess is there will be tiers based on anticipated
| usage, like AAA. Want X number of monthly reports? That
| costs $Y. If you want 2X the reports and expedited
| response time, it costs $2Y.
| cutemonster wrote:
| People paying for getting really intrusively surveiled?
| walleeee wrote:
| A friend startup-pitched exactly this idea to me 6 years
| ago, something about it must run really deep in the
| cultural subconscious
| trhway wrote:
| >$20 per month will in no way cover the cost to send
| security guards your way
|
| it will more than cover a drone. Especially AI based one
| instead of being remotely controlled. You can imagine
| that they can park a lot of drones around the city so the
| reaction time will be in seconds. While real people
| sometimes [think that they] have to use deadly force to
| protect themselves, a drone has no-self-preservation
| concerns (i hope it will be that way at least for some
| near future :) and thus can just blanketly use a lot of
| non-deadly force - acoustic, electric shock, 96GHz beamed
| power, etc.
|
| You're going for a walk late at night - just a click in
| the app would get you a drone or a robot dog to accompany
| you for a walk. The drone or the dog is already imprinted
| with your voice from the app for the duration of the
| walk, so you can command it at any moment.
| gtirloni wrote:
| I'd rather move to a safer place.
| trhway wrote:
| you underestimate the power of marketing and societal
| mass self-delusion :) Just look around - there is no
| children and Ring cameras everywhere. 30 years ago the
| children were playing outside unsupervised.
| swiley wrote:
| Kind of awesome that Apple hasn't pulled an app that is
| literally used for committing violence against innocent people
| but anything pornographic gets banned pretty fast.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Very 'Western Civilization'. Murdering is waaaaay more
| societally acceptable than the sexxors.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| It's uniquely American. Most of Western Civilization is not
| like this. We're like this because this country was full of
| puritans and other religious people at the founding.
| smogcutter wrote:
| What's uniquely American is thinking that our history of
| religious Puritanism is somehow uniquely American.
| thereare5lights wrote:
| Name one other Western Civilization country that has the
| same kind of attitude towards sex.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| The world is bigger than Western countries.
|
| Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries come to mind
| along with the USA when I think of religious puritanism.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Australia and the UK have porn filters on their internet.
| Australia also has weirdly strict child porn law that can
| turn an innocent recording from broadcast TV into illegal
| porn by simple editing. Simpsons porn is illegal too,
| despite the characters having the wrong number of fingers
| to be human.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Who commuted violence?
| mkmk wrote:
| In NYC at least, most crime reports in the app also come with
| comment sections full of overt racism.
| Nav_Panel wrote:
| The one thing I do like about it is knowing why random
| helicopters are flying above my apartment (in NYC) at various
| times of day. Like this past Wednesday, around 6 AM.
| Helicopters hovered overhead keeping me up for an hour. Turns
| out there was a huge fire a few blocks down. I wouldn't have
| known otherwise.
| neither_color wrote:
| It happens in the DC area too. We get a mix of civilian and
| military helicopters at random times every day, the military
| ones annoy me the most because they often make the windows
| shake.
| akudha wrote:
| Shouldn't this be the responsibility of police? How hard
| would it be for the precinct that sent the chopper to also
| take a minute to update their website (if they have one) or
| send out a tweet? "Working on putting out a fire on E 71st"
| ...
| drusepth wrote:
| Ideally yes, but is it a hard-enough responsibility to
| mandate? If not, it seems like there is a financial
| opportunity for a company to fill that request. Especially
| in the case of time-sensitive emergencies, it seems like
| "informing the public as things happen" isn't the number
| one priority.
|
| CIP: Living in downtown Portland, I have way better luck
| searching recent "#portlandprotests" tweets than I do
| checking the PPB Twitter feed. The latter usually shows up
| within 24 hours, but doesn't really solve the immediate
| curiosity of "why is there a helicopter hovering above my
| house right now".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I look forward to using it during Cali fire season
| ncr100 wrote:
| Could also be used to organize a revolutionary movement to
| overthrow a local government.
| cutemonster wrote:
| Storming the Congress
| edoceo wrote:
| Pinkerton, rebranded.
| devwastaken wrote:
| This is exactly how gangs and mob enforcement happens.
| Organization of people whom are more than willing to create their
| own physical enforcement outside of the restrictions of the law
| go out and "protect" for money. And then organize to become both
| the perpetrator and the defender.
|
| Private citizens are not under the same legal scrutiny officers
| are - evidence obtained in violation of the constitution cannot
| be admitted in court if an officer is the one that does it. But
| if a private citizens does it can be acceptable.
|
| If people want rule of law, and not rule of force, then they
| should become officers not 'security force'. But I have a feeling
| that the reason they want to be 'securoty force' is to avoid the
| responsibility.
| na85 wrote:
| >If people want rule of law, and not rule of force, then they
| should become officers not 'security force'. But I have a
| feeling that the reason they want to be 'securoty force' is to
| avoid the responsibility.
|
| The implication here is that police officers stay within the
| bounds of the law, and yet a cursory google search will reveal
| that (at least in the US and Canada) the police are entirely
| corrupt forces of legally-sanctioned mob violence who flout the
| law at will without fear of repercussions or consequences.
|
| If there's a high-blood pressure situation and whether I call
| 911 or if I were to start using Citizen, I have about the same
| level of confidence that extralegal brutality will occur.
| deugo wrote:
| The neighborhood watch is often staffed by amateurs. Security
| forces are trained professionals. If a neighborhood watch is
| necessary, then an on-demand security force seems better.
|
| What would you think happens if you abuse this service to call
| security on your poor neighbors? They keep showing up? I don't
| think so. I do think the neighborhood watch could take it
| personally.
|
| Security force is a perfectly respectable and responsible job,
| and many ex-police and ex-military use their skill set to get
| into this field.
|
| If officers always showed up, and always showed up on time,
| then you would not need private citizens. Rule of law is for
| the government to control. Citizens just want their parents to
| feel safe, and be able to call security to drive through their
| street, when they suspect gang/drug activity.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| I agree with your opinion. I consider "Citizen" filling a
| usefull role of protection for those who can afford it.
| As/when they start becoming problematic, we will figure out
| how to deal with it. Until then, we have to go by the service
| they claim to offer in good faith.
|
| I want my family to feel safe. It is my responsibility to do
| everything in my capacity as a law-abiding citizen to ensure
| their safety.
| gowld wrote:
| This comment applies perfectly aptly to Jim Crow.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| Citizen shareholders should see a massive opportunity in a
| "Protect" product offering which cuts down on neighbors
| spuriously using the service against other customers. The
| addition of protection money to the revenue stream would
| benefit them greatly.
| edoceo wrote:
| Joke right? Cause what you suggest is straight the fsck
| old-school gangster.
| aaron-santos wrote:
| That some people are unsure should be telling.
| newacct583 wrote:
| This is a horrifying equivalence. A "neighborhood watch" is
| at best a surveillance and reporting organization. It's
| literally right there in the name. "Neighborhood watches"
| don't go around making armed attempts to intervene in crime,
| and to the extent they do (c.f. the killing of Ahmaud Arbery)
| it's exactly as disastrous as the dystopia we're discussing
| with respect to "security forces", and for the same reasons.
| deugo wrote:
| I do not equate them. I value unbiased professionals over
| amateurs "protecting their turf".
|
| If there are crimes happening which require armed
| intervention, that is exactly a reason for having a
| professional security force. If the police does not show
| for such a crime, but you need to rely on security force,
| well good luck to you, and glad you have a backup on dial.
|
| A security force is also going to cooperate with the police
| and perform surveillance. Not like they pull up in an
| armored van and exit with weapons drawn, because a neighbor
| called them for an illegal lemonade stand.
|
| I don't think the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was by a
| neighborhood watch. Professionals would probably not have
| let it come that far. Same with Trayvon Martin: if a
| professional force had responded calmly, he may have been
| alive. So if a neighborhood watch is necessary (either for
| the feeling of protection or actual crime fighting) then a
| professional force would seem a lot better.
| newacct583 wrote:
| This is just stunningly naive, sorry. You're imagining a
| bunch of noble professionals, but in practice in history
| when you give a bunch of people weapons and tell them to
| police their neighborhoods, and ESPECIALLY when you make
| them accountable only locally (to the people paying them,
| in this case) and not to society in general...
|
| You get gangs. That's how gangs form. Organized crime,
| almost everywhere, has its roots in this kind of "local
| security" of an underserved disadvantaged population.
| People who can't rely on the police for order end up
| under the thumb of whoever can provide stability.
|
| Now, OK, sure. I get that you're thinking that somehow
| this startup has found a growth hack to disrupt this
| millenia-old industry and do it better than the Mafia.
| Well... maybe. Or maybe it's just another gang.
| deugo wrote:
| If a gang in my street, they better be on my payroll. And
| I expect them to provide stability better than the Mafia
| ever can. But if you say my payment of a private security
| force directly leads to the formation of criminal gangs,
| and I am still in an underserved population, maybe I can
| better pay the Mafia, to avoid the creation of new gangs?
| That sounds naive.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _A security force is also going to cooperate with the
| police and perform surveillance. Not like they pull up in
| an armored van and exit with weapons drawn, because a
| neighbor called them for an illegal lemonade stand._
|
| I am curious as to why you believe that this scenario
| isn't exactly what would happen. Because I think
| eventually this is... exactly what would happen.
| deugo wrote:
| Security forces are professionals, and professionals at
| dealing with such situations. They'd be very bad at their
| job if they armed intervened in non-violent or non-
| pressing crimes. It is like expecting your Uber driver to
| take a short-cut over a pedestrian lane: maybe they
| arrive a tiny bit earlier to the one that paid them, but
| now they lose their license.
|
| If I do imagine this would happen, assume it would be
| true, then just to be clear: I do not agree with armed
| interventions to shut down these illegal lemonade stands,
| and I wished the marketing in the leaked e-mails would
| have made it clear, that armed interventions of all
| crime, is what this service is meant for.
| drusepth wrote:
| Private security has been around for what... hundreds,
| thousands of years?
|
| It hasn't devolved into pulling up in an armored van and
| exiting with weapons drawn yet. Why would yet another
| company among thousands (millions?) entering the field
| change that?
| ummonk wrote:
| Private citizens don't have qualified immunity though.
| yunesj wrote:
| > Private citizens are not under the same legal scrutiny
| officers are
|
| Government police have qualified immunity and are not subject
| to market oversight. As you might expect, this fundamental lack
| of accountability results in abuses, particularly of
| minorities, historically and presently.
|
| I'm much less concerned about the Starbucks security guards
| becoming a gang. Unlike government police, as soon as they
| start bashing gay people or colored people, I can stop
| supporting them.
| gowld wrote:
| When they come to bash your head in, it doesn't help if you
| "stop supporting them" .
| eikenberry wrote:
| Is being able to do something is better than being able to
| do nothing? You're saying it isn't.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| hoping that maybe enough people hear about your case and
| are motivated by it enough to change their spending
| habits even in the face of monopoly and violent threats
| isn't exactly "being able to do something" as a
| vigilante's bullet passes through your skull.
| kibwen wrote:
| _As your skull is stoved in, you smile to yourself,
| euphoric in the knowledge that the market will eventually
| reach an equilbrium._
| barbecue_sauce wrote:
| But what about when entire municipal police forces are
| privatized?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _they should become officers not 'security force'_
|
| Given the moral bankruptcy of America's police force (note:
| force, not every officer), I could certainly see someone
| preferring private security handle their interests over the
| police.
|
| If crime were less prevalent and the police more trusted, such
| a service wouldn't have a niche to exist in.
|
| I don't like this slide into vigilante justice. But fighting
| the symptoms of the underlying problem is the wrong approach.
| notyourday wrote:
| > This is exactly how gangs and mob enforcement happens.
| Organization of people whom are more than willing to create
| their own physical enforcement outside of the restrictions of
| the law go out and "protect" for money. And then organize to
| become both the perpetrator and the defender.
|
| When the law decides it is not interested in protecting the
| citizens you bet this is going to happen.
|
| My block has been invaded by the drug dealers as of last
| summer. Not 1. Not 2. But between a dozen and two dozen at a
| time. They are selling drugs openly on a street so brazen that
| the people who live here have to walk _through_ the drug deals
| being done on a sidewalk to get to their apartments. Apartments
| with rents ranging from $1900 to $6000 a month. Cops don 't do
| anything because the city management frowns upon it. We had
| five shootings over the past 12 months. If there was a way for
| us to pay for our own thugs to ensure the drug dealers moved to
| a different block $200-$500/mo per apartment I'm absolutely
| sure everyone who lives around here would sign up for it.
| gowld wrote:
| "moved to a different block" is your solution?
| notyourday wrote:
| We do not care to solve it as a general problem. The city
| employs NYPD for that, at least in theory.
|
| We, people who live on this block, want them gone from this
| block.
| irrational wrote:
| I can't believe you are writing this not in jest. Just a week
| or two ago we saw a video of an officer planting evidence in
| broad daylight. He was caught because of the video, how many
| officers have not been caught? What about yesterday when the
| police office ran up and kicked a handcuffed man in the head?
| Was that the rule of law or the rule of force?
| Angostura wrote:
| How much better do you think vigilante forces would be?
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I dont think it matters.
|
| What matters is that people are voting with their wallets.
|
| People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for example
| SA, where private security forces are widespread.
|
| The degree of deleriction of duty by public servants has
| been tremendous in the last 2 years. The NYC Major recently
| was on the record stating that "there is no security
| problem in NYC" meanwhile official City hall communication
| channels have implemented a buddy system where city hall
| employees can home in groups [1]
|
| If public servants can't provide security for people, there
| should not be a surprise that the private servicers would
| emerge.
|
| [1]https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-city-hall-
| employee...
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for
| example SA, where private security forces are widespread.
|
| Has that solved crime in SA?
| kibwen wrote:
| Law enforcement does not solve the sort of low-level
| citizen-brigade crime that this app would address, it
| only treats the symptoms. The cause is people driven to
| desperation; put money into social programs to address
| the root of their desperation.
| courtf wrote:
| Prevention is cheaper and results in a friendlier
| environment for everyone. The proliferation of expensive,
| reactive solutions that tend to aggravate the very
| problem they're ostensibly working on is great for
| shareholders though. Public health is boring by
| comparison, and no one gets rich when it works.
| 323454 wrote:
| This is a false dichotomy, but what's worse is that
| social programs are already heavily funded in all the
| major West coast cities. For example, LA spends over half
| a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) on services for
| the homeless every year, to very little effect. It's not
| irrational for someone (even someone who advocates for
| those very programs and services) to look at the full
| situation and conclude that the best available option is
| to just throw in the towel and hire private security.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> look at the full situation and conclude that the best
| available option is to just throw in the towel and hire
| private security_
|
| Someone who is looking at the full situation would
| realize that hiring private security does not cause the
| homeless population to suddenly evaporate. An outsider
| might start to get the impression that the fundamental
| right of the upper-middle class is the right not to be
| reminded that people in poverty exist.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Take for example SA, where private security forces are
| widespread._
|
| I don't think we want to use as a model a place where
| police services are only available to the wealthy.
| gowld wrote:
| That's not what happening here. The money is for the
| "true crime" entertainment and the fun of being part of a
| mob, not crime reduction. That's obvious from the
| substance and tone of the content published in the app.
| joemi wrote:
| What makes you think a private force will be under more
| scrutiny?
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Because they will be more directly accountable to their
| "clients," for one. I cannot fire a "real" cop whose
| behavior I do not approve of.
| avs733 wrote:
| the problem is that it is not in jest. It is accurate and
| reviews both how weak societal oversight of police is and how
| important it is.
|
| Officers are under scrutiny. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
| doesn't, sometimes (not often enough for me) when that
| scrutiny fails changes happen.
|
| What is the oversight process, and the public input on that
| oversight, for Citizen?
|
| Your example is an argument specifically for not letting go
| of that scrutiny, and significantly increasing that scrutiny.
| It, to some, is an argument of why existing state sponsored
| efforts at law enforcement simply need to be rebooted
| entirely - because they operate with scrutiny more akin to a
| private corporation already.
| ben_w wrote:
| Rule of force.
|
| But for all of the highly visible things wrong with certain
| police forces, they do at least _theoretically_ have
| carefully considered constraints and a duty to the public
| rather than just their subscribers.
| creatorbytes wrote:
| This is partly confirmation bias. Millions of officers, we're
| gonna have bad ones. Obviously we need to improve, but to
| think that officers who have at least some amount of vetting
| are going to do worse than a security force is utter denial
| of the human condition.
|
| Look at South Africa, they have security forces. Or look at
| India, they too have a police force. But in South Africa,
| their security force is only available for the wealthy, while
| in India, they're actually corrupt police are paid off daily.
| You don't want to leave your house without cash to bribe a
| cop. And if you don't, you get beat.
|
| I'd rather be in the US with their policing than have a
| citizens army of security, or almost any police force.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Yes, we're gonna have bad officers. What happens next? Are
| they shunned? Forced out of the profession?
|
| This isn't some abstract hypothetical. We have generations
| of police who "washed out" of training because they weren't
| bad enough. It's important to have an accurate diagnosis
| when proposing a course of treatment.
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
| features/racism...
| croutonwagon wrote:
| It is.. But at the same time, its a completely
| decentralized system and there are MANY that do a very
| good job at washing out the bad ones. There are plenty
| that deserve criticism, and even federal
| investigation/intervention. But by and large the system
| works.
|
| There are millions of police, and hundreds of millions of
| encounters daily across a huge range of investigations
| and issues. boiling it down to twitter levels of context
| is bad and applying such broad strokes is also equally
| bad. Its certainly not going to encourage good ones to
| sign up.
|
| I know with the way this type of stuff is being
| portrayed, its a no win for most police, they could
| quadruple the salaries overnight and some would still
| balk, because no matter what it a loss.
| irrational wrote:
| This isn't confirmation bias. This is just the recent ones
| that came immediately to mind. New stories come out daily.
|
| https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
| antonvs wrote:
| There are around 700,000 police officers in the US. If
| one of them is caught doing something bad every day,
| that's 0.00014%.
|
| US police in general have a lot of issues and need to
| improve dramatically, but the stories about cases of bad
| behavior are not representative samples, even if you
| factor in the amount of bad behavior that goes
| undiscovered.
| asdff wrote:
| That's sort of a biased source you link. It lists deaths,
| but often times these deaths come as a result of someone
| threatening a cop with a deadly weapon. There's been like
| two dozen shootings from the LAPD so far this year, and
| most were due to someone charging an armed cop with a
| knife or a similar suicidal incident. I think just
| looking at use of force without context will give you a
| pretty biased view. Certainly it's been overused, but a
| lot of times, especially with the mental health crisis
| going on where people who are insane and a danger to
| others are allowed to refuse treatment, it is justified
| when another life is at stake.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > It lists deaths, but often times these deaths come as a
| result of someone threatening a cop with a deadly weapon.
|
| Other countries also have people who threaten cops with
| deadly weapons, and their numbers are far far lower.
| Hell, suicide-by-cop is a very real and common thing here
| in the USA.
| asdff wrote:
| Once again, you mention nothing about the rate or all the
| latent variables at play here. For example, other first
| world countries generally have stronger social safety
| nets, which means mentally ill people and aged out foster
| youth in those places are less likely to end up on the
| street in the first place compared to the U.S. We also
| have an issue at least in CA where jails are at capacity,
| and people are being turned out when they would have been
| held for bail, and often go on to commit more crimes
| while waiting to be charged for the first one.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| > someone charging an armed cop with a knife or a similar
| suicidal incident
|
| It's weird reading that when I was a kid I was constantly
| told cops are heroes because they put their lives on the
| line where most wouldn't or couldn't. Like I'm an
| untrained bumpkin, unfortunately if someone had a knife
| and I had a gun, I can't really think of much more than
| shooting them.
|
| But somewhere along the line the standard for police
| dropped down to the standard for me? The untrained
| bumpkin?
|
| Since pretty much every time I hear cop by suicide it's
| apparent, and people still say "well what would *you* do"
| like that's the smoking gun...
|
| -
|
| It even extends to more casual cases, the other day there
| was a video of a lady mooning an officer. The thing is
| the lady was clearly let go before that fairly stupid
| act, and last I checked mooning someone doesn't imply
| you've suddenly become a lethal threat.. but the cop was
| just _so out of shape_ that shortly after realizing they
| couldn 't keep up with this not very fast person they
| ended up tasering this person on asphalt.
|
| A fully grown adult out cold at running pace straight
| into asphalt because a cop is so out of shape they can't
| chase a person who mooned them
|
| That's not the picture I grew up with...
|
| -
|
| I honestly don't have a problem with that though! I don't
| think we have to force people to gamble their lives for
| others. There's a certain sense of, "if I can't do it, I
| can't make someone else do it".
|
| But if that's the case then we need to drop a lot of the
| pretence to traditional policing cops have right now.
|
| Like the pay and pensions are all based around the
| hazard, but it's safer than being a cab driver. Maybe
| because now fearing for your life is an out to kill
| people reaching for wallets.
|
| And a lot of interactions they have with people, like
| speed enforcement should probably be dropped, if we're
| just admitting lethal force has moved up a few notches.
|
| And maybe they need to have attachments with them for
| certain calls. If someone is showing signs of mental
| instability, someone experienced with dealing with that
| vs applying lethal force should be directly involved.
| makomk wrote:
| The fact that cops are trained is precisely why they
| shoot people who try and charge them or others with
| knives. The correct first-line strategy for dealing with
| a knife attack is _not allowing the attacker to close
| enough distance with you to use the knife_ , because once
| they do, regardless of how well trained you are how
| untrained they are there's still a high chance you'll end
| up seriously injured or dead. It's that imminent danger
| that justifies the use of deadly force. As I understand
| it, every self defence course worth its salt teaches this
| - even the ones focused on bare-handed fighting. Any
| tactics for dealing with attackers who do close that gap
| are just a high-risk last resort for situations where
| that fails.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| This is missing the forest for the trees so badly it
| hurts.
|
| Why do you think I said I'd be forced to shoot? Because
| even without training common sense tells you "not
| allowing the attacker to close enough distance with you
| to use the knife" is a pretty good course of action
|
| By your logic _the moment_ a person calls 911, the people
| who are supposed to help, the person has been sentenced
| to death. Think about that for a second.
|
| 1. The cops will arrive
|
| 2. "avoid knife getting close to me"
|
| 3. Less than lethal is not reliable, hell even lethal
| force isn't instant, I feared for my life, they're shot
| very dead.
|
| -
|
| It's not an easy problem, but how is that ok? There's not
| many ways to fix it other than trying something other
| than lethal force.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G06mi2hVg8
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgdhxLPJBgQ
|
| Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not
| trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could. It
| requires cops being able to put the most efficient
| response for self-preservation behind trying to save
| someone, which again, I'm not saying we require of
| anyone...
|
| But let's call a spade a spade at that point. That's not
| the concept of policing I see paraded. That's not the
| "thin blue line", it sounds more like a cell of civilians
| that are deployed to bad situations where they then
| "apply self-defense"...
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Have you ever thought about becoming a police officer to
| be the change you want to have? History shows that is how
| things change.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Thanks for making my point that the standard for officers
| is now people who are too scared to put the public before
| themselves... which is pretty much all of us.
|
| > Like the stuff in those videos is not easy, I'm not
| trying to pretend I could do it, or most people could.
|
| I'm not a police officer because I'm not brave enough.
| I'd fear for my life, and I shoot. So instead of putting
| myself in a profession that should ideally require more
| of me, I don't.
|
| Not rocket science.
| na85 wrote:
| >Millions of officers, we're gonna have bad ones.
|
| What are the purported good officers doing about it and why
| aren't they getting any results?
| rorykoehler wrote:
| Just a few bad apples? The fact that they feel comfortable
| doing stuff like the head kicking shows there is a
| organisational cultural issue in the police. If the
| citizens didn't film it they'd be on their merry way and
| not a word would be said.
| [deleted]
| shkkmo wrote:
| Cops have legal protections that let them get away with
| murder when nobody else would.
|
| Some might see that as a downside when selecting who you
| want providing your security.
|
| Instead of comlaining about private security forces, why
| not fix policing in this country so that it actually makes
| people feel safer?
| tisFine wrote:
| Police forces have protections as extension of the state,
| it was decided they're necessary to keep the state from
| being stuck on a catch-22.
|
| The state can't bring criminal charges if the violation
| was due to performing work for the state.
|
| It's legal to sue government agents as private citizens
| for violation of rights.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Considering some states have already removed this
| immunity and others are considering it, I don't think it
| is required. That is to say that the state can and does
| bring charges for violations done while performing work
| for the state.
| tisFine wrote:
| That's fair. I should say instead the historical basis
| for such protections is rooted in logic similar to what I
| wrote.
| watwut wrote:
| The people who pay got vigilante private security don't
| do it to avoid police planting evidence in them.
|
| They do it to have someome to attack the others, someone
| under their control. They have zero incentive to prevent
| private security from planting evidence on others.
|
| Gangs in fact did not ended up to be fair non corrupt
| equivalent of police either.
| shkkmo wrote:
| I'm much less concerned with them planting evidence on me
| than I am with them shooting a friend or family member
| who is experiencing a mental health crisis.
| watwut wrote:
| That is the same category. People who will call private
| security in your friend or family don't mind violence
| that much.
|
| And in case you are the one calling, you don't need
| private security as much as private mental health
| professional. Because that knowledge and exlerience of
| mental health crisis comes with being mental health
| professional - not with security.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| Or shooting my dog just because it's there.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yes, and just imagine how bad the situation will be when the
| police is privatized and accountable only to their
| shareholders.
|
| The current situation is not good, but I have hope that in
| the past year we've hit a turning point where we'll actually
| start seeing some improvements (they will be slow and
| incomplete improvements, but they will be progress in the
| right direction).
|
| Privatized police, on the other hand, is about as dystopian
| as it gets.
| Cyberdog wrote:
| Private security forces are accountable to their customers
| before their shareholders. If I don't like how my private
| security company is behaving, I can cancel my contract and
| switch to another company. When enough contracts are
| cancelled, _then_ these hypothetical shareholders get
| involved.
|
| If I could cancel the "contract" with my local law
| enforcement agencies, I would have done that a long, long
| time ago.
| azernik wrote:
| When private citizens are allowed to do it (see e.g. Stand
| Your Ground states, Trayvon Martin, &c) it's also bad. Only
| without body cams, without even the possibility of
| institutional reform.
| eikenberry wrote:
| Cops are private citizens.
| azernik wrote:
| Not when they're on the clock.
|
| Not for the purposes of the law, nor their employment.
| The state has much more power in how to bring them into
| line than it does for private citizens (it just chooses
| not to use that power in the US).
| deugo wrote:
| I agree about these violent lawless police forces, but those
| crime victims are not exactly innocent either. Most (violent)
| crime is done out of sheer desperation, and the root cause of
| this desperation can often be traced back to the
| (predominantly white) upper-middle class, flaunting their
| riches, and becoming increasingly hard targets, isolating
| themselves from the "unwashed masses" in their ivory towers.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Is there some background information you're referring to?
| Assault makes up the vast majority of violent crimes, so
| it's hard to see what it could mean for them to be done
| "out of sheer desperation". I can see how a desperate
| person might feel shoplifting or burglary are their only
| choice to survive, but how could they expect to benefit
| from punching random people?
| ummonk wrote:
| Everyone is a victim of crimes, not just upper-middle-class
| white folks. In fact, the UMC folks are the ones who can
| afford to just write off the losses caused by property
| crimes, and are less susceptible to fall victim to the
| worst crimes, like murder.
| jl2718 wrote:
| I don't follow these things at all, but it seems we may be in
| a bit of a bad romance with authority figures. These total
| strangers act in perfectly predictable ways given the
| positions we've handed them, and we call it betrayal.
| narrator wrote:
| I doubt that will ever happen in America. America is way too
| organized and professional of a government to ever let things
| get that out of hand.
|
| This sort of thing happens a lot in Latin America though. One
| situation sort of like what you're describing is Columbia in
| the 90s. The cartels throughly corrupted the government, so
| vigilante groups like Los Pepes[1] formed to attack the
| cartels, though they may have mostly just been fronts for other
| cartels. Los Pepes alumni went to form AUC, which was the semi-
| government endorsed death squad in Columbia at the time and
| became its own narcotrafficking syndicate over time[2]. AUC was
| eventually shut down and the leaders arrested for atrocities.
|
| The main left-wing guerrilla movement (FARC) also eventually
| shut down its military activities[3]. The huge economic
| disaster of Venezuela right next door might have weakened the
| appeal of left-wing revolution. I've heard that Columbia is a
| pretty nice place to visit these days where in the 90s it was
| one of the most dangerous countries on earth.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Pepes
|
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Self-
| Defense_Forces_of_...
|
| [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_
| ...
| eric_h wrote:
| My dad did some consulting work in Colombia in the 90s and he
| was provided with armed drivers and they took different
| routes between the plant and the hotel every day.
| [deleted]
| subpixel wrote:
| > I doubt that will ever happen in America. America is way
| too organized and professional of a government to ever let
| things get that out of hand.
|
| This seems written from the perspective of someone who has
| just come back from a six month vacation during which they
| had no access to news.
|
| > I've heard that Columbia is a pretty nice place to visit
| these days
|
| There is literally a country-wide revolt taking place in
| Colombia (correct spelling) at the moment, with some of the
| worst police violence the country has experienced in years.
| ChoGGi wrote:
| There's a pretty entertaining (though stomach churning)
| documentary called "Orozco el embalsamador"about an embalmer
| working in Columbia.
|
| https://imdb.com/title/tt0982908/
| jjt-yn_t wrote:
| It is spelled Colombia as the next poster shows.
| iforgetti wrote:
| I wonder what Citizen would do if someone activated the "protect"
| application during a wrongful use of force incident by police?
| kibwen wrote:
| If the combination Uber/Lyft moonlighters are any indication,
| you'd just make the officer's phone buzz in their pocket.
| harlanji wrote:
| I'm homeless in SF and have had the feeling that something like
| this exists for about a year. Used to be in big tech, might've
| pissed people off with my mouth. I draw diagrams of how
| electronic harassment sustems could be implemented on my IG.
| Living in public isn't scary on its own (1,085 nights), but apps
| like this are.
| deugo wrote:
| I can't afford a private chauffeur, but I can afford an Uber
| Black.
|
| I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford an
| on-demand subscription.
|
| You want to defund the tax-paid police? Go right ahead! Now I
| want to collectively fund my own security force, for crimes that
| the police is understaffed for, what _exactly_ is the problem?
|
| If your concerns about police abuse or neighbors calling security
| on minorities, then focus on fixing that (defund them?) and let
| me interact with the private market. Or is this controversial
| from a rich-get-security perspective?
| EMM_386 wrote:
| So in this dystopian future you require money in order to get
| security protection?
|
| > I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford
| an on-demand subscription.
|
| And if you run into hard times in life and can not afford this
| subscription? Are we going to have "levels" of policing
| depending on which company you are subscribed to and the higher
| cost ones offer "better" policing?
|
| The "defund the police" movement will never be successful in a
| way that dismantles law enforcement. We'd have a lot more
| problems at that point than being forced to deal with for-
| profit security companies.
| deugo wrote:
| To me, your argument amounts to: you are rich enough to
| afford something, but poor people are not, so buying
| something unaffordable to the poor is a bad thing to do.
|
| If anything, if 50% of the neighborhood has this
| subscription, and you are too poor to afford it, you can
| freeload on the enhanced security.
|
| I do agree it is dystopian to require money for basic
| protection, and that this would not be collectively provided
| with tax money. Less if the protection is just enhanced
| (compare basic healthcare vs. being able to afford a private
| clinic).
|
| If it was possible, I'd like to pay more taxes, then vote
| (could be democratic, not scaled to amount paid) on where it
| goes. If the neighborhoods really are problematic, then maybe
| the local government could hire on-demand security forces for
| when their police capacity is low (and hold them accountable
| and to government standards).
| kelnos wrote:
| > _you are rich enough to afford something, but poor people
| are not, so buying something unaffordable to the poor is a
| bad thing to do._
|
| For luxuries, I agree that would be a ridiculous point to
| make (a poor person can't afford a new BMW, but we as a
| society think that's ok). But stratification among basic
| services that everyone should have is the opposite of
| equitable. This is in part why American health care is so
| awful if you're poor, and it's not a situation we want to
| duplicate with policing.
|
| > _then maybe the local government could hire on-demand
| security forces for when their police capacity is low (and
| hold them accountable and to government standards)_
|
| Not exactly the same thing, but we've done that with
| military contractors, and that has not worked out
| particularly well for accountability.
| deugo wrote:
| I think the American health care system is a current
| dystopia: people are going bankrupt in a first-world
| country for contracting the terrible disease.
|
| Once basic protection, education, healthcare, etc. is
| offered to anyone (I do not see America in the future
| relying on private security forces for basic protection,
| so I think basic protection is covered), then private
| protection, education or healthcare should not be a
| problem.
|
| If America really needs private forces for maintaining
| basic protection, then it is probably better they have
| oversight of local government and serve the wider public,
| not secluded to a gated community.
| bserge wrote:
| I come from a country where private security is very common.
| Used to be ubiquitous until people started getting beaten up
| because the employer said so.
|
| So the police force just got funded enough to be bigger than
| all of the private companies. They are now the biggest private
| security service provider (yes, for profit company, separate
| from public police but run by the state, full of ex-
| police/military). It's quite ridiculous tbh.
|
| If you're rich, you're untouchable, while poor people eat dirt
| in prison even if they're not guilty. Not that different from
| the US.
|
| Incidentally, our military is full of used American equipment.
| Great value, maybe a bit too much for a country that wouldn't
| last a week in a war with any neighbour.
| asdff wrote:
| You probably can afford a private security force right now. In
| LA rates are like $20/hr. Not sure what this citizen app is
| offering, except packaging an industry that already exists and
| trying to sell it at markup to people who don't know this
| industry exists. I guess that's a pretty decent business model
| actually.
| kelnos wrote:
| While the "defund the police" movement certainly has a lot of
| different motives and goals, my personal take on it is that we
| should be defunding the police for things that they are a bad
| fit for: handling things like mental health issues and doing
| wellness checks. Funding should be kept at levels high enough
| to handle being first responders to actual crimes and such.
| deugo wrote:
| Completely agree. Should not have taken a jab at it (maybe a
| reaction to those both supporting defunding public police and
| also vocally opposing my decisions in a private market to
| recover my security).
|
| IMO The entire justice system should be revamped with a focus
| on rehabilitation in society and viewing most drug-related
| "criminals" as victims who need treatment for their addiction
| or illness. Also concerned about the militarization of the
| police, and feel their budget could be spend better.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| You know what would be great? If Karens had access to an app that
| could deliver branded cars full of rent-a-cops to their location
| at the push of the button.
|
| What's the problem, Customer? Did that nasty man demand you leash
| your dog in an area where dogs are required to be leashed? Let us
| just sit on him and hit him with sticks for a bit.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| An example cited in the article mentions a Citizen staffer
| wanting an escort to a coffee shop...if these are the types of
| situations where one might want to utilize a private
| service...what's the harm? The police aren't your personal
| bodyguards. Most colleges have walk-home services etc.
|
| In many states, security guards can be armed in public, but so
| can private citizens.
|
| The endgame for this will be large-scale gated communities that
| are town-level. A surefire to prevent homelessness in a
| particular town is for the entire town to be private property. If
| you can't card-in, you don't get in. Dystopian yes, but probably
| inevitable, and the trail was blazed by the modern corporate
| campus that operates on the same principles.
| throwaway15579 wrote:
| I would say the trail was blazed by cities over-correcting from
| the war on drugs and basically making low-level crime
| completely unpunished or enforced.
| klyrs wrote:
| What happens when your private security is infringing my
| rights? Maybe I'll hire my own private security to fight your
| private security. Only a fool brings nonlethal ammo to a knife
| fight...
|
| Funny thing about the second amendment, people always gloss
| over the _well regulated_ militia, and we 're accelerating away
| from that, pedal to the metal
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| Did you read the article? No one is suggesting a private army
| with special legal rights to employ force.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Between these leaked e-mails and the leaked Slack transcripts in
| the Verge article ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27236660
| ) it seems some Citizen employees are at least doing their part
| to push back on this ridiculousness.
| notatoad wrote:
| when employees at facebook or google push back against the bad
| parts of the business, that's an encouraging sign because it
| might cause the company to focus more on the good parts of
| their business.
|
| when the employees at a company that only exists for the sake
| of authoritarian bullshit start pushing back, it's not really
| encouraging in the same way, because Citizen has no "good part
| of the business" to shift to.
| devtul wrote:
| In Brazil the state provides free healthcare and of course,
| security through two polices, the day to day enforcement through
| the Military Police, and the investigative arm the Civil Police.
|
| Since both services are lacking, everyone that can pay, either
| from out of pocket or as a employment benefit, uses the private
| healthcare system. The more well to be pay for private security,
| bullet-proof cars, and other measures.
|
| It's symptomatic to see people using private services, as it may
| show the state provided ones are falling short. Defunding only
| hurts the poor that can't afford to pay for good private
| services.
| yosito wrote:
| I'm currently reading The Sovereign Individual (1999), which
| predicted that the State would start to lose it's monopoly on the
| use of force in the Information Age. I wonder if that's what
| we're seeing happen here. It's a bit disturbing to think that we
| may be going from having a state that (in theory) offers
| protection to all of it's citizens to only the privileged being
| able to hire private security, which is virtually unaccountable
| to the law, at their own expense. I'm hoping that this Citizen
| app is just one organization that's crossing the line that is
| soon to be shut down, but I worry that it represents a larger
| trend.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| Perversely this is where the equity madness leads.. in
| education, since they can't make everyone achieve like asian
| kids, they are going to eliminate programs for advanced
| students. Rich people will go to private schools.
|
| In policing, since they can't figure out how to keep certain
| groups from committing crimes at higher rates than other
| groups, they're going to just stop policing. Rich people will
| get their own police forces.
| asdff wrote:
| If we want to know where we are going, we should just look at
| other countries with similar levels of rampant crony corruption
| and growing inequality. I'd say an example would be Brazil, but
| they actually build a lot more housing and have a stronger
| social safety net than the U.S., and a favela seems like a
| decent place to live compared to a ripped up tarp and some
| cardboard on the sidewalk.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I sincerely hope you are reading that trash just because you
| want to empathize with the libertarian wing of the VC class,
| because it would be sad if you expected it to be the product of
| serious thinking.
| azernik wrote:
| I think that in most countries but the US, the state will stomp
| down on any such infringement _hard_ ; and in the US the state
| will use a much lighter and slower hand.
|
| Every time I can think of that people have predicted (with hope
| or fear) the Information Age will bring about an erosion of
| state authority, the state's control of existing levers of
| power have trumped the mere ability to organize/communicate.
| throwaway15579 wrote:
| One thing that comes to mind here is that on-demand private
| security with fast response times are common-place in high crime
| countries and cities (such as Brazil and South Africa). I'm
| honestly not surprised that people in LA are turning to this and
| I wouldn't be surprised if this catches on pretty quickly where I
| live (Seattle).
|
| From what I can tell it seem like almost complete open season on
| property theft and damage in Seattle.
|
| In short, I don't really blame Citizen for doing this, I blame
| the politicians for not providing an adequately safe or lawful
| city.
| zeppelin101 wrote:
| The popularity of such security services in Brazil and South
| Africa is the first thing I thought about when I heard "defund
| the police" last summer. I then told everyone that people will
| start spending a lot more money on increasing their security,
| be it fencing or private security forces. It's not a
| complicated concept.
| amznthrwaway wrote:
| Try to imagine the police were run as a business, and think
| about how things would be different.
|
| Immense savings could be had just by realizing that you don't
| need to send an officer (fully loaded cost $400k/yr) in a
| $75,000 car to drive to the scene of a non-violent crime to
| fill out a form.
|
| Defunding the police could easily result in lower costs and
| better service to citizens, if (and only if) we can get the
| authoritarian right to stop aggressively defending waste, and
| we actually work to improve the situation.
| jeffbee wrote:
| South Africa and Brazil have a common root cause of their crime
| problem: a tiny but grossly engorged upper class holds the
| majority of the wealth and income while everyone else eats mud.
| As the USA edges closer to that reality, our problems will
| begin to mirror theirs.
| atweiden wrote:
| > South Africa and Brazil have a common root cause of their
| crime problem: a tiny but grossly engorged upper class holds
| the majority of the wealth and income while everyone else
| eats mud.
|
| Studies correlating wealth inequality with criminality are
| less than convincing [1]. A 2016 study,
| controlling for different factors than previous
| studies, challenges the aforementioned findings. The study
| finds "little evidence of a significant empirical
| link between overall inequality and crime", and that
| "the previously reported positive correlation between
| violent crime and economic inequality is largely
| driven by economic segregation across neighborhoods instead
| of within-neighborhood inequality". A 2020 study
| found that in Europe, the inequality-crime
| correlation was present but weak (0.10), explaining
| less than 3% of the variance in crime with a similar
| finding occurring for the United States, while another 2019
| study argued that the effect of inequality on
| property crime was nearly zero.
|
| From that same article, Alaska has the lowest wealth
| inequality in the US and also the highest homicide rate.
|
| Impoverishment doesn't cause criminality, see e.g. post-
| internment Japanese-American and early 20th century
| E.European Jewish American immigrant populations. Rather, the
| root causes of systemic poverty are strongly correlated with
| criminality [2]. Which isn't to say extreme wealth inequality
| isn't bad: the French Revolution readily disproves that
| notion. But the French Revolution is in a different league
| from property crime.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequa
| lity...
|
| [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-
| intelligenc...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-
| is-...
| asdff wrote:
| Private security patrolling exclusive neighborhoods in LA has
| been a thing since the 70s. Even the scientology properties all
| over town have a private security force riding on those mall
| cop segways.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It would be scary to see a country like the US fail to point
| where public police services are abandoned in favor of private
| forces.
|
| I think it could happen too because private police forces
| benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class.
| Why pay for police in the poor neighborhoods if you have walls
| and private police for your gated community?
|
| What we're seeing in western countries worries me. The
| progressive tax system is being attacked IMO because breaking
| it benefits the wealthy. It's much cheaper for the richest 20%
| to fund private police forces for themselves than funding a
| public police force for everyone.
|
| And IMO the reason the police can't keep up is because we've
| had 40 years of underfunding public institutions so the wealthy
| can hoard more and more money. It's not shocking to see
| increased levels of drug abuse and crime because those
| correlate with poverty.
|
| We need to force the rich to pay there fair share of taxes. The
| resources being used for yachts and private jets needs to be
| getting put into education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc..
|
| This is a great example of a misallocation of capital. Instead
| of funding an app for a private police force we'd be better off
| if that money had been collected via taxes and allocated to
| building schools.
| cupcake-unicorn wrote:
| Already happening in Seattle you just have to live in Durkan's
| hood: https://laurelhurstcc.com/security/
| dwt204 wrote:
| Sounds like OmniCorp from Robocop. Private security firms in
| gated communications is well over 60 years old, but now augmented
| with new IT technologies and AI, this could be a problem,
| especially if legislation is passed to legitimize these outfits
| and give them special police powers, which many private security
| firms have now, including carrying firearms.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Who is the American customer for a service like this? I knew
| someone who did VIP protection (standard former military,
| protecting bank execs and families during travel), but the work
| was mainly international travel.
|
| The threat model appears basically to be urban street crime and
| maybe targeted harassment and political pressure. Unsure what
| else. If I could get this for airstrikes, I would totally buy it
| though.
| avs733 wrote:
| I'll likely get flack for this but it's white people. Out of
| touch white people specifically.
| [deleted]
| throwaway15579 wrote:
| In my neighborhood in Seattle I've seen a tweaked-out
| individual literally just walking down the street spray-
| painting cars at around 6pm on a weekday.
|
| I called the police and they told me all officers were busy on
| more urgent/violent calls and wouldn't be able to respond.
|
| This was before COVID and the department is even more short-
| staffed now.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >In my neighborhood in Seattle I've seen a tweaked-out
| individual literally just walking down the street spray-
| painting cars at around 6pm on a weekday.
|
| Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a
| mental health problem than a crime problem.
|
| Which is one of the big problems we have with current
| policing models. We throw folks trained to use _deadly force_
| at issues that are better suited to mental health
| professionals trained in de-escalation.
|
| I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow
| humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates
| and resources.
|
| And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't
| care about the well-being of other people (as in your
| example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they
| shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if
| they engage in anti-social behaviors.
|
| In fact, many folks would support it if we just
| killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or
| unhappy.
|
| The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental
| illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed
| in our society.
|
| Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness"
| black box into a larger black box called "criminals".
|
| As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]: The moral test
| of government is how that government treats those who
| are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are
| in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in
| the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the
| handicapped.
|
| I posit that our current policies and practices fail that
| moral test. Those who are most distressed/needy/lost are
| usually abused, shunned and thrown away by our society,
| rather than nurtured, helped and hopefully brought into
| society as productive members.
|
| Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd
| say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of
| empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like
| "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the
| bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of
| other tropes.
|
| Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way,
| IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.
|
| [0] https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-
| from...
| Cyberdog wrote:
| > Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a
| mental health problem than a crime problem.
|
| In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it
| would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for
| the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the
| person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in
| property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the
| right to do so.
|
| To put it another way, how much more damage does this
| person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term,
| it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay
| for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop
| the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in
| property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has
| the right to do so.
|
| I don't disagree with you. At all. This is a complicated
| set of issues that will require complex solutions (note
| the plural).
|
| It would be great if we could stop such folks from
| causing property damage.
|
| Our society is governed by laws and, more importantly,
| respect for those laws by the vast majority of us.
|
| Unless we kill or imprison _everyone_ who might engage in
| such activities, I 'd say that we'll likely always have
| some of that sort of activity.
|
| Reducing the number of folks without strong ties to
| society/the community seems the best way to address these
| issues over both the medium and long term.
|
| As for short term solutions, that's much more difficult,
| as we've spent centuries demonizing the mentally ill, the
| poor and others society has deemed as "lesser."
|
| >To put it another way, how much more damage does this
| person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
|
| A valid question. Without a lot of reflection I'd say
| that it's less important to determine whether or not some
| act (or collection of acts) is "criminal" than it is to
| identify the appropriate mechanism(s) to minimize the
| likelihood of such behavior from that individual in the
| future.
|
| And there are many mechanisms to choose from. That
| incarceration has been the default for a long time
| doesn't always (or even most of the time) make it the
| right mechanism.
|
| A broad and complex set of issues underlie this
| discussion and I haven't done it justice here. That said,
| I urge people to look beyond the display and use of force
| as the _only_ mechanism to address these issues.
| crimandnakatoya wrote:
| Ha, that's nothing. Two years ago, I walked up to a police
| officer in Seattle and pointed out an individual who was
| splayed face-first on the sidewalk a half-block away, in
| front of a food truck where a line of customers was patiently
| stepping over them.
|
| The officer shrugged and walked off in the opposite
| direction. I think that was the moment that I decided it was
| time for a change of scenery.
| vkou wrote:
| Short-staffed? SPD has one of the largest police presences,
| per-capita, of any American metro area, (while Seattle has
| middling crime statistics).
|
| They aren't short-staffed, as much as they are deliberately
| avoiding doing any work. They were also engaged in a lot of
| overtime grift over the past decade, which the city started
| to crack down on in 2019.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| I don't think your understanding is correct, see this
| article: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/is-
| the-seattl...
|
| This was also written in late 2020. There are now 1,080
| deployable officers, down from 1,325 as seen here:
| https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-
| department...
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| For comparison's sake, New York City and Chicago have about
| 4x more officers per capita than Seattle
| vkou wrote:
| The NYC counts are bloated because they include a whole
| bunch of 'police' that have nothing to do with boots-on-
| the-street policing. Financial regulators and port
| inspectors, for instance, are included in those counts.
| xeromal wrote:
| And that's what this "security" force would solve.
| vkou wrote:
| The problem with police today is that there is no
| _single_ problem with them. They are near-useless for
| solving crime. They are useless for preventing it. They
| are bad at dealing with situations that don 't require a
| thug with a gun. Sometimes, they can't follow the law,
| while trying to enforce it. Other times, they enforce
| something that is not the law. Sometimes, they ignore
| dangerous, illegal behaviour. Sometimes, they employ
| incredibly excessive force to deal with not-dangerous,
| maybe-illegal behaviour. When they screw up, regardless
| of how badly they screwed up, it's nearly impossible to
| hold them accountable for it.
|
| Yes, you can cherry-pick one of those problems, and claim
| that uber-for-mob-justice will solve it. Will it make any
| of these other problems worse? Better? Worse for people
| who can't pay, better for people who can?
|
| I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but
| I am not particularly impressed by this.
| xeromal wrote:
| > Oh? They are going to figure out who stole my catalytic
| converter, and arrest the fence who bought it?
|
| I think the idea is to try to catch it in the act. The
| LAPD is notorious for being slow. I was in a hit and run
| accident where my car was completely totaled and I was in
| a daze and it took them an hour to come and I'm pretty
| sure the only reason they actually came was because a
| bystander was mad and claimed there was injuries after
| waiting with me for a while. If they wont' come to an
| accident in a good time, I doubt they come to a break in.
| lol
| [deleted]
| xsmasher wrote:
| I live in an area where people dump debris (furniture,
| construction debris, yard waste) in the public park and on
| sidewalks every day.
|
| I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report
| them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and
| plate numbers.
|
| This would be peak gentrifier behavior, but a (hopefully)
| handful of bad actors are trashing an otherwise nice
| neighborhood and I'm at the end of my rope.
| asdff wrote:
| you can probably do that right now with someone from fiverr
| motohagiography wrote:
| Just clicked for me that someone on Fiverr living somewhere
| very cheap could pilot an internet connected drone that can
| return to a charging pad and it would replace a lot of
| these use cases.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| > I live in an area where people dump debris (furniture,
| construction debris, yard waste) in the public park and on
| sidewalks every day.
|
| >I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and
| report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with
| descriptions and plate numbers.
|
| If that's really a serious problem in your area, you and your
| neighbors can set up a neighborhood watch/surveillance
| cameras/etc. to address that without hiring private security
| to do it for you.
|
| Or are you too good to support your neighbors and
| neighborhood with your time and effort?
|
| Want to have a good neighborhood? Be a good neighbor.
| xsmasher wrote:
| I spend seven hours a week cleaning up litter, watching for
| dumpers, and reporting garbage; that is the limit of the
| time and effort I can give.
|
| I have no more time but I do have money.
|
| Supporting my neighbors and neighborhood is exactly what I
| want to do - assuming they also want clean streets - so
| your criticism is really a stretch.
| chasd00 wrote:
| This is one of the things neighborhood watch programs are
| aimed to do.
| podric wrote:
| I can see many use cases: - A woman going home late after a
| night out needing to walk thru a dangerous neighborhood -
| Elderly Asian person who needs to withdraw money from a bank -
| Urban photographer who wants to photograph abandoned buildings
| but is afraid of squatters/gangs - Woman who needs to go to a
| heavily-protested abortion clinic - Owner of a store that is
| about to get looted in a riot - Owner of a store who needs
| security personnel at peak shoplifting hours - Owner of a late
| night restaurant who needs security personnel at peak violent
| drunk people hours
| asdff wrote:
| These aren't practical or realistic use cases, though, and
| many are already covered by the existing private security
| industry.
|
| An uber ride is cheaper than hiring private security to walk
| you through the hood. An elderly asian person is more likely
| to die crossing the road to a bank than be robbed at a bank.
| Urban photographers who wouldn't already be operating with a
| small crew are probably too broke to hire a bodyguard, nor is
| there some big wave or urban photographers being targeted
| currently. Chances are if that gear is your work its also
| already insured. The store owner probably already hires
| private security for not much more than minimum wage, and in
| the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would
| rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages,
| than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun
| potentially killing someone in their store. Keep in mind when
| D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a
| mob, they allowed them to breach the building. I doubt
| private security is going to stick out their neck for your
| little shop more than D.C. police did for the U.S. capitol.
| You probably aren't hiring Blackwater mercenaries. The owner
| of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already,
| the last thing they want is some pricey contract for a job
| they are already getting done just fine.
| podric wrote:
| _An elderly asian person is more likely to die crossing the
| road to a bank than be robbed at a bank._
|
| I don't think you've been keeping up with the news of the
| wave of attacks targeting Asian elders. Many of them have
| been beaten and robbed on the way to run errands.
|
| _in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner
| would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the
| damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired
| gun potentially killing someone in their store._
|
| You're way overestimating the number of small business
| owners who have sufficient insurance to cover a looting
| event, and way underestimating the extent to which small
| business owners are willing to protect their store (e.g.
| Roof Koreans)
|
| _Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the
| capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach
| the building_
|
| That actually demonstrates the value provided by an app
| offering on-demand private security. When cops failed to
| stop the insurrectionists, they faced minimal negative
| consequences. On the other hand, if your hired private
| security fails to stop looters, they can expect a negative
| review from you on the app which in turn threatens their
| career on the app.
|
| _The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the
| table already_
|
| I said late night restaurants, not bars. When was the last
| time you've seen a bouncer at a late night restaurant?
|
| I agree that some of the cases I brought up are a bit far
| fetched. That being said, here's a great use case that I'm
| sure we can both agree on for on-demand security:
|
| - Domestic violence prevention. In cases where a spouse
| feels threatened but does not have enough evidence for the
| cops to get involved, on-demand private security is the
| best option.
|
| A tragedy like the Adam Matos case would have been
| prevented had the victim used on-demand private security.
| The victim was threatened by Matos, her ex, and she called
| the cops, who didn't/couldn't do anything, which resulted
| in her and her family being killed by said ex within 24
| hours.
| [deleted]
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Personally, as someone with very little interest in 2A, I'd
| prefer seeing people arm themselves rather than calling on budget
| Pinkertons.
| pklausler wrote:
| Putting aside this particular company, I do think that there may
| be a market for a service that would provide documented
| accountable security responses for situations where subscribers
| have a legitimate hesitancy for ethical reasons to call public
| emergency services that have a history of racism or
| disproportionate violence. I'm not going to call my local PD for
| a noise complaint I can't handle because I worry that they're
| going to kill a person or their dog and I don't want that on my
| conscience.
| analog31 wrote:
| Likewise, there could also be a market for a service that comes
| to your aid when you are targeted by a private security force.
| For instance if someone comes to my house because of a noise
| complaint, I would not want to answer the door, but could call
| either the police or my own security service to hash it out
| with whoever is visiting me.
|
| This could get interesting.
| mike_d wrote:
| Privately owned police departments and privately funded police
| officers already exist in the US. University Police, private
| police forces at nuclear plants and chemical plants, heck I
| know of at least one megachurch that has a SWAT team.
|
| The US Marshalls service has a "special deputy" program where
| bodyguards of the rich and famous become federal law
| enforcement with little to no oversight. This allows them to
| carry firearms nationwide regardless of state or local laws.
| chaostheory wrote:
| This is inevitable. Even before the defund the police movement,
| departments across the country had police shortages where for
| every 5 officers they needed, they only had 3.
|
| Things have gotten worse regardless of which side of the debate
| you're on
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-in-philly-and-be...
|
| I was just expecting AI and robots to take over ala Robocop and
| Little Sister cameras everywhere. I did not foresee the gig
| companies like Bannerman and Citizen doing it, but here we are.
| Black101 wrote:
| Around here they pull over people for simple traffic stops with
| 3 police cars
| chaostheory wrote:
| I'm just the messenger, and anecdotes aren't as useful as
| data.
| chitowneats wrote:
| > First released under the name Vigilante in 2016
|
| Oh, I see.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Hey, someone invented Pinkertons as a service!
|
| I look forward to this being used to violate the rights of
| minorities, union strikers, women, and the homeless!
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