Hacker News Reader

Comment by throwaway15579 | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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).

Overseas where?

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.

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.)

Did you visit one of the armored car dealerships in Polanco? They are badass.

I did not. I think random violent carjackings had just started happening at scale. The guy who hosted me was getting a bit worried.

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.

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??

The same way that police ostensibly protect houses; by being there, patrolling randomly, keeping an eye out for things that don't look right.

>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.

This is American techbro poor, where rampant asset inflation has been occurring ever since the government has been more or less printing money, and now buying corporate bonds (BOJ of course is the ghost of economy future here, having done this since the late triassic).

Not really a purely American problem- everybody else has this too- which is why young people are so pissed everywhere that they have no future.

Has been the case in the mayor's hood for years: https://laurelhurstcc.com/security/

The mayor lives in a different neighborhood, but that one also has paid patrols iirc.

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."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com