The privatization of policing
compactmag.com
compactmag.com
Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force.
The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
So a normal police force then?
This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you."
I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1" action taken by them.
I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
Are you exagerating? I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting. Or if they have somewhere, please cite specifically, either with numbers, or with enough context so we can try to find some.
There are some places where shoplifting prosecutions declined due to decisions by prosecutors, for sure. That is not at all the same thing as "declaring entire segments of the criminal code void".
When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating it into the most absolute versions we can imagine while speaking in vague generalities that can't be researched... we can't easily get at what's actually going on instead of our imaginations.
San Francisco where functionally anything under $900 is not prosecuted. That is the big one
NYC has also had its fair share of this.
>>When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating
It is not really exaggerating, I am not talking about individual cases where an Assistant DA looks at a case in their professional review of choose not to prosecute because of some actual legal reason, or because of some deal or something else
I am talking about wide scale refusal at an entire district level to refuse entire classes of cases
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...
https://www.theblaze.com/news/dallas-da-wont-prosecute-crime...
https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...
My first google suggests that shoplifting prosecutions in San Francisco were reduced but not eliminated, and that "organized retail theft" prosecutions (which I see people complaining about on HN a lot) were actually not diminished at all.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/data-shows-chesa-boudin-...
I don't understand how you can claim it was not an exageration to say:
"[declare] entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore"
Was I wrong to read that thinking it meant you were claiming there were zero prosecutions of shoplifting? That's not what those words mean? What "segment of the criminal code" did you mean specifically had been "void", what am I misunderstanding?
No criminal acts have ever been universally prosecuted and punished, ever.
But ok, correcting my reading of your statement, I now understand that your argumentis in fact that the "#1 action" of "reformers" (by which you mean elected district attorney's only, not other kinds of reformers), has been to reduce prosecutions for shoplifting (I'm not sure what a DA can "reform" except what gets prosecuted how!), and that you think that reducing prosecutions for shoplifting will necessarily lead to unaccountable private security.
That's really what you think we should have understood your original statement as? It sounds a lot less apocalyptic or sweeping of a theory this way. But ok, that's what you're saying. OK, cool, interesting theory...
Well, not quite the same, because they can't payoff victims with other people's money.
A few bad police apples create a mass left-wing media outrage which results in the withdrawing of a public good (police protection), which results in people needing to hire private security, which results in even more objectionable actions taken by this less-accountable private security, than there were previously by the taxpaid police force?
You don't say.
I guess the only relative improvement here is that some of these security firms aren't armed with anything more than billy clubs.
I am not sure this is accurate, and it’s similarly unclear to me what exactly you are referring to.
I don’t know what, specifically, you mean by “withhold police protection.” Would you provide some examples? And what evidence do you have that such action happen “often” as a response to police reform?
To me it is bizarre that this hasn't been a bigger part of the narrative around these issues.
A few bad apples spoils the bunch.
Rotten apples produce gases that accelerates fruit ripening and turns everything else in the container rotten more quickly.
You might have one or two here or there that got in, but they wouldn't last long.
Instead you see that even when bad cops are fired from their jobs, they just get hired somewhere else.
The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.
I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.
It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.
In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.
And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).
In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.
I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.
As they say: better the devil you know.
This is a big one. I don't live in the Portland area, but anytime I've considered moving any large distance away from where I am I've always rejected it because my family/friends are all in this area. As much as I might like it a lot somewhere else, I'm not willing to uproot my social ties for it.
As I see it the alternative is to stay and advocate to make things better, and while that's grueling I think it's worth it.
I’ve uprooted for greener pastures twice in my life, and it has paid off both times. If I didn’t, I’d be impoverished and possibly hooked on (the scary) drugs.
If fluffy social aspects outweigh your immediate economic concerns, it stands that you are privileged enough to make the choice to stay still.
On the other hand, uprooting requires a certain resilience and fortitude that not everyone has. People who can torch their old life to chase something better are privileged in a way too, are they not?
All that to say I think you have the privilege statement backwards.
Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.
I think a lot of it is actually more “the pendulum” of attitudes towards things like homelessness and other “nuisances”. When we’re overly strict, the pendulum starts swinging back towards acceptance and laisezz faire because inevitably injustices occur and people decide to become more compassionate. When we’re overly permissive (like many west coast cities right now, though I think the opioid crisis has a big role too) the pendulum starts swinging towards cracking down.
New York has basically gone through this entire process already
I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:
1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)
2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.
Glad you asked! I grew up in a small town in Texas that is now a big town. Portland has some urban growth boundaries that contain its growth, so I was attracted to the idea that a big city is literally up against farm land and wild life. It makes it feel like a little, big town. Portland is also densely packed with trees in my part of town. There's lots of greenery and wildlife for a city this size. It's also set next to rivers with a lot of programs for water and wildlife sustainability. The people are really nice, even the neighbors I mentioned. It's a very working-class community for the most part and that makes me feel like I'm back in Texas. It's an amazing place to live and also, maybe most importantly, one of the areas predicted to deal with climate change better.
Lastly, can't really stress how nice #2 is. The cops don't bug you for simple stuff and it makes life a lot less stressful on the daily. Being in a big city is like camouflage.
This sounds like knee jerk nativism. How many people would it take to move and overwhelm an entire city’s culture? Let’s assume a plurality of 30% could do it. I think a wave of people of that size is going to cause problems whatever their political beliefs are.
but it doesn't take so many newcomers to significantly change political outcomes. even in red states, republican mayors are pretty rare. in practice, this means that the mayoral race is almost always determined by an n-way democratic primary. it's hard to overstate how chaotic this can be. for example, the current mayor of baltimore won the 2020 primary (effectively the general election) with <30% of the vote, with the runner up trailing by only 2%. this was an election where ~25% of the population cast a vote. it would have taken <4000 votes to completely change that outcome.
This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.
A failed city that people are fleeing, with impossibly high taxes, no remaining police, rife with crime, and with corrupt bureaucrats suckling on the government teat at every turn.
I can't square the circle. I know so many people in Chicago and it doesn't seem like they're even describing the same city.
So when I see these hit pieces against the governments on the west coast, and hear anecdotes from west coast Republicans fleeing to the south to escape their purported failures, I take them with a massive gain of salt.
I have no doubt that Portland has its issues, but I can't take these pieces very seriously. As with the mythical failed version of Chicago I keep hearing about, I suspect there is a group of people pushing an extreme version of a narrative that is only loosely based in reality.
As you can see, Portland proper is nearly entirely Democrat. I'm a registered Democrat as well (I'm OP). Prior to this I lived in San Jose. Portland is a lovely city, but talking about what's going on here doesn't make folks Republican.
114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.
There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).
And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.
My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.
The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy. Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.
The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history. I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene. This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.
The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.
An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.
Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.
The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.
I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)
So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?
But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.
But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/car-thefts-dismissed-...
In summary:
- police don’t have time or resources to investigate anything that isn’t a homicide (with some exceptions)
- the DA won’t prosecute, to the point that criminals actively know to commit crimes in MultCo
- if the DA does take the case, it will be dismissed because there aren’t enough public defenders
If the DA gets a $100 Million budget, then the Public Defenders office should have that as well.
Right now it is like 10:1 in alot of cases if not even more lopsided.
I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.
Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go.
The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
If those homeless camps have drug problems - the lowest hanging fruit may seem like enabling a private police force, but the hanging fruit will be in actually helping the drug problem…
I don't know about the discussion, but what I'm taking away from the article is actually what policing could be if the shield of immunity that fuels the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude is taken away.
I think social services, crisis intervention, and mental health/drug help will benefit more and for longer.
That, though, goes against another deep seeded inherent “bonus” to keeping homeless homeless, addicts addicted, and police forces of all styles (pub/priv) in action:
Those “homeless” types scare an entire low/middle class of labor into accepting any wage no matter how exploitative, out of a fear if becoming one of “them.”
while this should be obvious to anyone who has seen the camps, we still get articles that claim "the obvious answer to homelessness" is just more housing. Of course we need more housing but how do cheaper rents convince addicts to change their lifestyle?
it's the conventional argument that's being brought up all the time while claiming "everyone's ignoring it".
doing some novel reporting on homelessness without leaving their homes:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
You would probably spend much more money on maintenance and cleaning than you would on the structure
This also requires a solid policy around social and affordable housing as part of mixed use developments (as opposed to creating social housing "ghettos").
Needle exchanges and safe consumption facilities can be used for initial contact and outreach.
Basically you need to get people into a position where you can help them, then help them to the point where they can help themselves, and provide realistic pathways for this to happen - along with avoiding unrealistic expectations and avoiding pointless gate keeping such as demanding service users remaining clean/sober, etc.
Think of it as solving for Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can fix their drug and mental issues later, right now you need them off the street where they get food/heat/water/shelter, health support, etc.
This is what happens when luxury beliefs are realized.
That’s a really weird thing to believe.
The government here is experimenting with social justice ideas. We've legalized drugs, empowered homeless camping and defunded our police.
I see and empathize with the reasons to legalize drugs, not demonize the homeless or blame people for their addictions or mental health problems... and I understand the academic case for not viewing all social problems through the lense of "how can more policing fix this."
All that said, our family is moving away... at the minimum to the suburbs if not to Idaho or Texas. Portland can't make these decisions in a vacuum, absent thoughtful national policy Portland has become a magnet for drug dealers and chronic drug users who are often homeless as well.
While the rights of all people matter, Portland is too focused on the rights of the people like the kid in the article who are from other states and come here to destroy their lives and our community. They are not focused on my rights as a taxpayer to enjoy a safe walk around my neighborhood.
We need national solutions to these issues, but until we have that I'm moving away and taking my tax dollars with me because I don't want to live in this experiment anymore. It's just not safe for my family.
People playing games with social justice seem to think that they can simply pay away problems like theft and ignore the ensuing consequences of large scale societal distrust that occur afterwards. When you leave they'll be more unhappy about the loss of your money than they will about the loss of your predictable, nonviolent daily habits.
You lost me there. Let's not spread the problems of Portland and SF to the other States where you can still escape.
1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone.
2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
But ignoring homicides traffic violence is at a 70 year high after the traffic policing team was cut to support homicide investigation and patrol. https://www.koin.com/news/portland/portland-sees-rise-in-ped...
By which measure Portland is safer than both of your examples, even after this supposed apocalyptic crime wave caused by defunding the Police
Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results.
Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
I am curious if there is case law to support your theory. It would be hilarious to read about a city or county attorney trying to file a motion to dismiss, when the city or county would not be a party to the case.
No need to look to the future: this has been going on for a long time and is pretty common. Even though case law has built up, to my understanding it still gets pretty messy.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to your comments, there is one “private police force” that is doing well (and good) enough that people have started copying it, and that’s the Cahoots program from White Bird Clinic in Eugene Oregon. They are somewhat of a third party intervention system.
And as a nonprofit they are probably more accurately a public than private sector organization, which might be the key here to avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to the common good. I don’t want bands of hired thugs or the return of the Pinkertons. That’s basically step 2 on the route to a Stephensonian dystopia.
I don't even know how to argue that this is bad. I'll just lose all my faith in society if this ever happens where I live.
If there aren’t private police options, I’ll just produce and distribute illegal arms, like many already do. Johnny Methhead gets 0 control over my life, regardless of how his apologists vote.
[0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
I would love to read a comparison of the two approaches.
https://portlandstreetresponse.org/
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-respo...
No, it is not. Colleges and universities have been doing it for many decades.
"Seventy-five percent of campus law-enforcement agencies have armed officers, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Nine in 10 public campuses had “sworn” officers, meaning those who can carry a gun, have arrest power, and wear a badge; four in 10 private campuses did."[0]
TFA is focused primarily on policing related to homeless persons, while I'm pretty sure with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime (murder, rape, armed robbery, gang-related activity).
[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/univer...
This is pretty common around the country for larger universities.
What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing?
Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any higher than that.
I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
College students are essentially transients - those who live on urban campuses are typically not homeowners, not car-owners, and not in married/domestic partner/young children living situations, since they are usually going to be age 25 or younger. What other types of crimes are they going to be subject to that require police intervention, other than the ones I mentioned?
Granted, there are also faculty/staff who receive police service, but probably many fewer than there are students, and not all of them live on campus.
I don't think this is overall true. Again, only ~5% of policing time is spent on violent crime. Again, is there that much more violent crime on college campuses? That would be widely known if it were true, I think, but maybe it is and I'm just ignorant.
> I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
IDK what you're trying to say here. I spent my teen years in a group home in woodlawn on the border with hyde park. My associations are certainly out of date but I am also familiar with the dynamics of this specific area in a sense. Do you want to clarify?
I'm totally unsurprised that organizations with the means to do so would hire their own private security to try and fill in the gap.
The article clearly has an ideological bent, but as someone living in the area, they're more right than wrong with the observations. Even if you might disagree with the reasoning, the end result is accurately portrayed.
> “If you have an effective criminal-justice system, and you have effective community partners that are assisting towards long-term community transformation, then, yes, traditional security models—the security model of observe and report—works,” he says. “But when you have a breakdown in societal connectivity, you lose the ability to operate out of that business model. So we had to come up with something unique and different.”
And what they came up with is something with probably better outcomes (in terms of reducing violence) than law enforcement.
Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y".
I think it's bound to happen. Money creeps in, the police officers are too expensive to maintain. They get replaced by blender drones.
Luckily, all media will be privatized and anyone reporting might end up in a blender drone accident.
Stop right there. Here's how it could go:
Guard: Wait right here, please.
S: Am I under arrest?
Guard: Please wait. What is your name?
S: So I'm free to go?
Guard: Please wait. What is your name?
S: Buh-bye.
A lot of legal questions come down to a game of chicken, unfortunately. Who is willing to bear the most risk?
Maybe if it really was shoplifting, it goes more like this:
Guard: Wait right here, please.
S: Am I under arrest?
Guard: You are being detained until the police arrive. What is your name?
S: Oh, I'm detained? Funny, I don't notice any cuffs. So I think I'll leave now (drops goods & hops on bike).
Guard: (ponders: If I tackle him, what happens?) Calls police.
Now what?
All of the increases in social problems we’ve seen in the last 40 years are the tax that we pay for increasing wealth inequality.
The defund crowd imagined that if you just got rid of police, you’d get rid of all of the deep-rooted social issues that policing brings to light. If only it were so.
> those who are unable to afford private security enjoy little protection from rising crime. Security—once a public good—is being privatized.
Every institution makes mistakes and has malicious actors. But you have to ask yourself how things would be without that institution. You can't just go "The system has problems, down with the system!".
edit: It might be closer to 6%; different articles seem to have different numbers, and it's not always clear whether the cuts are being described relative to the previous year's budget vs. the proposed budget (often a "cut" is just a smaller-than-expected increase). Either way, it's not very helpful to just cite the raw size of the cut without contextualizing it.
The "defund the police" movement was a doomed endeavor with an awful name like that. I sometimes wonder if Leftists movements are purposely giving their movements god awful names like "anti-work", "quiet quitting", and even "black lives matters".
If your movement's name has to be explained, it's purpose has already failed. You shouldn't need to explain a political movements name.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd...
The Federalist, American Conservative, Former Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.
Alrighty then.
It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly. Articles are written by people, with motivations for writing them, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
It is a blatant ad hominem comment that adds nothing to the discussion of whether or not the arguments in the article are valid, but rather is an attempt to prejudice your opinion.
It is also not prejudiced to evaluate a single work of a writer in its context within their oeuvre, and to consider your own knowledge of their previous works when evaluating a new one. That is merely judgement, friend.
You might would have us so carefully prune away context that judgement becomes impossible, but it's not a moral failure of others that they approach this differently.
> Alrighty then.
is a blatant dog whistle.
Even without the last line, it's not enough to simply say "just providing context!" It's a bit like jumping into a conversation about the affordable care act by saying "President Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. He was mentored by Bill Ayers, a man the FBI described as the leader of a terrorist group."
It is all factual context, utterly irrelevant to the merits of the ACA and adds nothing to the conversation other than the prejudicial implication.
Did associating with Ayers preclude Obama from getting a TSC? Nope. Ayers wasn't active when he was Obama's BFF. He wasn't even a felon. Maybe Ayers was Wundergrounding it up in 2008, but he wasn't, unless I guess he was?
There was a political price paid there[1] - in Obama's choice of mentors - and if that's not perceptible I don't know what to say. Among people who cared, Ayers. was a millstone. Among other people, it was a selling point. Which hits to the point of why everyone's getting so incensed right here and now: Bill Ayers was a hero to a part of America, and to another part of America he was the devil himself.
We're in the same land, but we've come to have completely opposite values, fundamentally different, so that everything becomes an existential threat. The idea that this crisis has been artificially generated is of course scurrilous and would never occur to someone with a generous view of human behavior.
[1] Conveniently steering eyeballs away from Goldman's PAC effectively putting Obama on the DNC board.
Yes, but it's not relevant to the correctness of their argument. Are we here to talk about the argument or the author?
I get just as jiggly when Sagan preaches about nukes, given the . . ahem . . standing of the World Peace Council (WPC)
I walked away from a paycheck with a similar deal[1], because I didn't want that money to be attached to my name. Context, context, context, context.
You think that the money's not going to get inside your judgement? All that Robert Novak? You're a better man than me. I'd be tootin whatever horn the security services brings me in a bloodstained briefcase, just like my hero Bob.
[1] Although it was an aerospace systems integrator that, for whatever reason, boasted about its CEO-led prayer lunches. On its public website. Whew. Sorry folks, Jesus is for after hours.
Leaving aside the quibble about whether anyone literally voted to “defund the police,” I do find this phenomenon interesting. Our “progressive” private school recently hired a former Detroit cop to patrol the campus with a gun. Super nice guy. But gun control is for the proletariat apparently.
This line of reasoning is a contradiction because it leads to the conclusion "The average Joe should carry a gun."
as is my user name