throwaway15579

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 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.

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.

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.

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.