Hacker News Reader

Comment by dTal | Hacker News Reader

>I donate to the state troopers every year

Wait, what? ...are they not tax-funded? Forgive me, it's your money, but are underfunded state troopers such a problem that there's nowhere else you'd rather put your charity?

View on HN

I've been getting calls for years at home where the caller would say "Mr XXX, this is the police" and then a pause and then "don't worry, we're just calling to talk to you about <some charity event>".

I have friends who tell me they always donate because they are afraid of repercussions. Lately the calls are actually bots, and very good ones. I had a short conversation with one and I thought they were human, before I hung up. Next call sounded exactly like the first, so I asked "are you human?" and after asking 2-3 times I got transferred to a human and told them to take me off their list. Haven't been called since.

Um. I don't often swear on HN, but what the fuck.

It should go without saying that it is not normal in a civilized society for the police to harass and intimidate random people over the telephone into giving them money - let alone automating it.

There is no mention above about people being harassed and intimidated.

Yes there is. Phoning someone and saying "This is the police", followed by a pause, is calculated to raise people's heart rate and stress them out. They know that because they follow it up with "don't worry" - people shouldn't be worried in the first place. It deliberately plays on people's fear, and that's despicable.

Then there's the fact that some people fear repercussions for not donating. How did they get that impression? An honest misunderstanding, no doubt...

Then there's the repeated robocalling. That would certainly harass me.

or if it's actually the police and not a scam

The police always intimidate. It's how they try to gain control of every situation they are in. If there's no mention, it should be assumed, and should be assumed unless there's specific evidence to the contrary.

> I've been getting calls for years at home where the caller would say "Mr XXX, this is the police" and then a pause and then "don't worry, we're just calling to talk to you about <some charity event>".

This is harassment and intimidation.

If only there was someone that could go arrest them…

First time it happened my heart jumped into my throat. I was fucking pissed off.

I'm Canadian but worked briefly in a call centre during university. We were contracted out by different organizations -- the Veterans of Massachusetts, the Alaska State Troopers, the Hero Fund for Florida, etc., -- and we solicited donations for these organizations. What I learned through the process was that all the organizations were bullshit fronts and the donations flowed to different P.O boxes around the country. Most of the contributors were clueless patriots or dutiful elders. Most of the best callers simply made their own scripts and said whatever they wanted to close the deal. Anyway I left obviously but I think about it now and again.

It's not funding for their jobs. It's funding for associations such as FOP[1] that do some combination of advocacy/lobbying for police interests, and local charitable work.

1: https://fop.net/

These same organizations were the #1 source of lobbying to keep marijuana illegal in the state I was in when they were passing legalization legislation.

For Californian's, there's also the 11-99 foundation[0] which will provide you with a license plate frame for donating $3,000 or more. The foundation ostensibly exists "to provide emergency benefits and assistance to California Highway Patrol employees and their families and scholarships to their children."

It's an open secret that the license plate frames make it much less likely to get pulled over for speeding by California Highway Patrol.

[0]https://chp11-99.org/membership/

They tell me it’s to hand out teddy bears to kids. When they send the paperwork though, it says it’s for all manner of things. I assume they’re telling the truth and this is just CYA, but who really knows.

Is there a reason you think I only donate to one charity? I don’t think we need more people telling people they’re donating to the wrong charity. We need more charity.

No, I don't assume that you only donate to one charity. I do assume that the amount you can donate to charity is capped, and that charity allocation is therefore zero-sum - a dollar you donate to the State Troopers is a dollar you haven't donated somewhere else. I agree that we need more charity, but donating to the "wrong" charity - one that does not use your money to do good effectively - is as bad as not donating.

As for how the State Troopers spend it - I would trust the paperwork.

> They tell me it’s to hand out teddy bears to kids.

This sounds like heavy sarcasm. Anyways, I do believe that “more charity” is a false conclusion. Not everything is charity, especially when the organizations are lobbying against others rights.

More so, when your own research shows that they use your money for various purposes, and other investigations show that most of these charities are corrupt.

you get a little sticker to put on your car when you donate, the usual suspiscion is that people who have those stickers are treated better if the cop sees it, so a lot of people donate.

Carrot and stick? Oh this just gets better and better.

I don’t have a sticker, and have never gotten one, as a single data point.

Interesting. Here in Ohio they advertise it https://www.fopohio.org/?zone=/unionactive/view_page.cfm&pag...

Trooper associations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com