In Chicago, Wealthy Neighborhoods Hire Their Own Private Police as Crime Rises | Hacker News Reader

In Chicago, Wealthy Neighborhoods Hire Their Own Private Police as Crime Rises

wsj.com

I have an alarm system connected to various sensors in and around my house: PIR sensors, IR beams and mag switches on all doors.

The alarm system is armed when Im not home, or at night when I'm in bed.

This system is connected to an armed response agency via a dedicated radio link. No cellular or internet connection.

If something trips the alarm, then their control room phones me immediately. If I dont answer the call, then they dispatch an armed guard to my house, who is there within 5 mins. The guard has access to my property and they can then conduct a search for the cause of the alarm.

The personnel working for this company os significantly better trained and equipped than the local police.

I get all this for less than $2 a month.

And this is pretty much the norm in South African capital city suburbs. Definitely not reserved for the wealthy.

Just thought I'd add my 2 cents to this conversation.

Why do you need all that, though?

SA has (and has had) one of the greatest incidences of violent crime in the world, especially in its urban areas.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/violent-c...

So he lives in an extremely dangerous place with utterly ineffective policing and we're supposed to envy him?

No, the point seems to be that the private sector is able to come up with economical solutions to security when the government will not or cannot.

Applying the same efficiency with bigger budgets in safer areas would likely turn out better.

Privatizing the police seems like a bad idea. For one thing, it exacerbates inequality between those who can pay for security and those who cannot (or can only pay for inferior service.) If private security becomes the go-to for the well-off, who have a very disproportionate say in society, they will stop caring about universally-provided security of the police, and will let the institution wither, increasing inequality further. Inequality is bad for the cohesion of society.

Agree. Although applying efficiency principles learned from the market seems wise, even under socialized policing.

I doubt it would scale very well. It's easy to put a private guard within 5 minutes of nice homes in a high crime area. It's another thing to have guards 5 minutes from everywhere. You run into the same problem as a private sector post office or internet provider. They will not provide the same service to everyone regardless of location. The mail that has to be delivered by helicopter to the top of a mountain costs a stamp. The private shipping company wants a small fortune to delver there. The private internet companies won't provide service to some rural areas at all (even though the government pays them over and over again to increase accessibility)

Do you have any kind of insurance on anything (health, car, home, etc)?

For those reading this, the above is probably a typo. It's more like 20$, but still ridiculously cheap and well worth it. Well worth the money though.

The police here respond to calls after an hour if they even come at all, and that's after they refer you to a different branch because you're not in their area. Bit exaggerated but living here you quickly learn as a middle class person that the only time to call the police is for insurance purposes.

SA is a great example of how private services can function decently. Not perfect.

Private medical Healthcare. Private insurance and retirement plans. Private ambulance services. Private fire fighting. Also private security.

I've heard a similar story about rural Indians and private schools. I don't have a source, but I've read that most poor rural Indians send their children to private schools and its incredibly cheap, because the public schools are a disaster (e.g. teachers don't show up half the time).

It's funny how we think of things as a luxury in the developed world, but in places that don't have a well functioning public sector, you can't afford to not but a private service that's normally provided by the state.

> who is there within 5 mins.

Lots can happen in 5 mins. If things are so dangerous, why not get a guard dog and arm yourself.

> The guard has access to my property and they can then conduct a search for the cause of the alarm.

What is expected from a guard you pay $2 to? Is he even armed? If he has access to your property, what prevents him from stealing from you or harming you?

Well it's an economy of scale thing, I'm sure lots of people are paying the $2 and incidents are rare

[OCP] - Ominicorp International; Providing State-of-the-Art solutions for the frontlines of the war on crime. I hear their ED-209 line of products gives Boston Dynamics a run for their money.

In all seriousness, this isn't all that new. It's a sad state of affairs though and you have to wonder what the key differences are in policing. Chicago needs to revamp their departments, but I would be willing to bet with a decent chunk of change that the issues presented are a direct response to leadership within the City as a whole and this weird utopian dream of minimal arrests.

Three major hot spots (Humbolt park / North Lawndale), (Englewood) and (Pullman, West Pullman) average close to 3 homicides per 10000 people (Chicago Sun Times 2021 crime statistics). Gang violence is largely attributed, yet when the culture of gangs is brought up immediately everyone screams about everything but addressing that specific issues. I lived in inner-city Baltimore and I can tell you first hand, the excess amount of cash dumped into the city, rarely made it to the programs it was claimed to go to. Leadership for the city were all of the same ethnicities and many came from the city as well. So at some point we have to figure out A, how we can improve cultural to reduce the circumstances that push young people to the extremes (reduce poverty, increase opportunities, stabilize families) and B, address crime in a humane but effective manner (treat addicts like human beings and get them into long term care, hold violent offenders accountable and keep them locked up). There are many parts of the US that are extremely poor by standards, but the statistics and nature of crimes aren't repeated outside of a few major metropolitan areas. The main difference is localized cultures, and until people stop flailing arms and screaming that it's an affront to talk about it, things will continue to go down this path.

Finally, defunding the police as a slogan has always been a bad narrative. The issue of low funding leads to lower quality candidates. If anything increasing funding, establishing new training on de-escalation, and putting effort into community out-reach is far more important. Until people see the police with respect (which they have to earn rightfully so) their efforts to police will be more hampered.

I often wonder if a lot of the knee jerk reactions we've had the past 10 years have been seen as the quick answer emotionally, but as a whole have lead to far worse situations than prior. It seems the statistics rising would indicate that.

>If anything increasing funding, establishing new training on de-escalation

Glad you said new and not more. Police months of training so calls for more trainings is like when politicians call for change, same thing said every time.

Part of the problem is SOME of the people who go in to policing are not there to de-escalate. They just have the wrong attitude, can't train that out of them. There are also those who just don't have the thick skin necessary. If you can't lets stupid comments roll off your back, then you should not be hired.

>establishing new training on de-escalation

So I'm old bill and I have yet to find someone who can adequately explain to me what this means.

What if the other party doesn't want to de-escalate, for example? What then?

There is not much to explain. You try to respond in such a way that reduces the conflict.

Right. That's this much vaunted de-escalation training that is going to fix everything, is it?

So I go to arrest someone. He decides that he doesn't want to be arrested. How do you de-escalate that?

Nobody is claiming it would fix everything nor was it implied that it would always work. I specifically used the word "try" in my previous comment.

You go to arrest someone and he doesn't want to go to jail so he runs into his house and hides.

You could escalate the situation by shooting blindly into the building killing innocent people in the process, or you can realize that he isn't going to be able to hide in there forever. He has to come out at some point for food, so you just relax outside and wait for him to come out. You know exactly where he is, he's not hurting anyone, let him come to terms with his situation and realize the futility of hiding from it. Maybe even help him come to terms with his situation so he comes out faster.

That's a de-escalation. Often it just means stop making situations worse or more dangerous than they need to be.

The general attitude in the city seems to be that policing is insufficient almost everywhere. Hyde park (a south side neighborhood) has essentially had a private police force for decades because of the university police.

I'd rather be harassed by a security guard than a cop any day.

You basically never see private rent-a-cops doing the kinds of stuff police get in hot water for because they don't have a legal double standard to protect them and the financial motives to not waste resources result in less incentive for "you can beat the charge but not the ride" behavior.

I have been wondering whether this would happen in the US with ever-increasing income inequality, lack of trust between police and the general populace (a 2-way street IMO), and other factors. Things are moving more and more in the direction of a third-world country here.

We're far from India or Pakistan levels, but the factors I cite above seem to be moving us in that direction as far as the narrow issue of law and order goes.

Christopher Nolan made an excellent mockumentary on this, I think it was called "The Dark Knight trilogy".

Haha

Indeed, as others have said, Batman is a libertarian fantasy

Many would feel safer in southern tech cities in India such as Pune, Banaglore, Hyderabad, then some US cities. Fewer police around but also a lot less guns, and open drug addicts.

Are private police authorized to use violence? What exactly is the distinction between public and private?

Their rules of engagement would be far more strict.

So that would be another benefit over public law enforcement.

>far more strict

That got me wondering what the CPD's use of force policy was and I found this[0].

0. https://home.chicagopolice.org/inside-cpd/use-of-force-polic...

This is what happens when you don't have anyone to protect you from the misuse of violence.

its off-duty cops according to the article. so they can likely argue anything.

https://archive.ph/Qcgus

"In San Francisco, Alan Byard, a licensed police officer who works for private clients under a program dating to the Gold Rush, said he has seen a big increase in interest in his services."

Pinkertons?

Governments are super inefficient with tax dollars because there's no pressure for them to be efficient. If they run out of money they just raise taxes again. There is very little accountability.

Some people believe the solution to this is to privatize everything so that it's more efficient. I can see that point of view, but it doesn't get around the fact that the private corporation doesn't have the pressure either, except at the initial bidding phase. Personally I think we should try to figure out how to pressure governments to be efficient, by tying elections more strongly to efficiency. Politicians should have KPIs.

Reverse-gerrymandering in which races are made artificially competitive so politicians are required to be responsive rather than insulated.

Interesting idea.

I note, though, that one of the situations where people cry "gerrymandering" is when party X is the currently-dominant party in the state, and party Y has a "safe" district, and party X arranges to break up that district as they redraw the lines. That might qualify as a reverse-gerrymander, but people still complain about gerrymandering when it happens.

My plan is entirely unrealistic. Neither party would ever agree to engage with the process because they fundamentally do not want competitive races. It’s essentially asking for mutual disarmament.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com