Leaked emails show crime app Citizen is testing on-demand security force
vice.com
vice.com
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447446/citizen-app-inte...
My prediction is someone will go all viligante and beat/maim/kill someone, probably who is innocent. Then the app will get pulled.
That's always been their intention. Well, not to kill anyone, but to track people down. The app was originally called vigilante and Apple pulled it from the app store, so they rebranded and now we have Citizen. Maybe Apple will do it again before anything even worse happens than the recent $30k bounty on an innocent person.
No. Maybe that’s fine by others but any app I can’t put a zip code into is deleted now.
It’s creepy and weird to ask for location data. Where are the apps that default to zip code and offer me the option to have myself tracked everywhere I go for more personalized output?
With VM you could spoof a different location. Some ppl use emulators but I find them too slow usually.
An app where people accept contracts for quick cash. It’s supposed to be a dystopian element of their society, not a blueprint.
I think it's more likely the first time this happens the person is actually guilty, and there will be a huge debate as to whether or not it's a good thing.
No there won't. There have been serial killers who used common apps to find their victims, along with people who rob, assault, harass and stalk people they find on apps. People don't really care. Even the justice system doesn't care because the companies are able to argue that Section 230 means that they aren't liable for what users do with their products[1].
[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publicati...
My guess is there will be tiers based on anticipated usage, like AAA. Want X number of monthly reports? That costs $Y. If you want 2X the reports and expedited response time, it costs $2Y.
it will more than cover a drone. Especially AI based one instead of being remotely controlled. You can imagine that they can park a lot of drones around the city so the reaction time will be in seconds. While real people sometimes [think that they] have to use deadly force to protect themselves, a drone has no-self-preservation concerns (i hope it will be that way at least for some near future :) and thus can just blanketly use a lot of non-deadly force - acoustic, electric shock, 96GHz beamed power, etc.
You're going for a walk late at night - just a click in the app would get you a drone or a robot dog to accompany you for a walk. The drone or the dog is already imprinted with your voice from the app for the duration of the walk, so you can command it at any moment.
Not sure how the owners got it through again, but they somehow slipped it through after the namechange.
I suspect it won’t last long on their, particularly after they very publicly and loudly offered money for vigilantes to go after an innocent person.
CIP: Living in downtown Portland, I have way better luck searching recent "#portlandprotests" tweets than I do checking the PPB Twitter feed. The latter usually shows up within 24 hours, but doesn't really solve the immediate curiosity of "why is there a helicopter hovering above my house right now".
Playing with fire. And I don’t mean the arsonist.
Private citizens are not under the same legal scrutiny officers are - evidence obtained in violation of the constitution cannot be admitted in court if an officer is the one that does it. But if a private citizens does it can be acceptable.
If people want rule of law, and not rule of force, then they should become officers not 'security force'. But I have a feeling that the reason they want to be 'securoty force' is to avoid the responsibility.
Look at South Africa, they have security forces. Or look at India, they too have a police force. But in South Africa, their security force is only available for the wealthy, while in India, they’re actually corrupt police are paid off daily. You don’t want to leave your house without cash to bribe a cop. And if you don’t, you get beat.
I’d rather be in the US with their policing than have a citizens army of security, or almost any police force.
This isn't some abstract hypothetical. We have generations of police who "washed out" of training because they weren't bad enough. It's important to have an accurate diagnosis when proposing a course of treatment.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/racism...
What are the purported good officers doing about it and why aren't they getting any results?
Some might see that as a downside when selecting who you want providing your security.
Instead of comlaining about private security forces, why not fix policing in this country so that it actually makes people feel safer?
The current situation is not good, but I have hope that in the past year we've hit a turning point where we'll actually start seeing some improvements (they will be slow and incomplete improvements, but they will be progress in the right direction).
Privatized police, on the other hand, is about as dystopian as it gets.
If I could cancel the "contract" with my local law enforcement agencies, I would have done that a long, long time ago.
What matters is that people are voting with their wallets.
People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread.
The degree of deleriction of duty by public servants has been tremendous in the last 2 years. The NYC Major recently was on the record stating that "there is no security problem in NYC" meanwhile official City hall communication channels have implemented a buddy system where city hall employees can home in groups [1]
If public servants can't provide security for people, there should not be a surprise that the private servicers would emerge.
[1]https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-city-hall-employee...
But for all of the highly visible things wrong with certain police forces, they do at least theoretically have carefully considered constraints and a duty to the public rather than just their subscribers.
Officers are under scrutiny. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes (not often enough for me) when that scrutiny fails changes happen.
What is the oversight process, and the public input on that oversight, for Citizen?
Your example is an argument specifically for not letting go of that scrutiny, and significantly increasing that scrutiny. It, to some, is an argument of why existing state sponsored efforts at law enforcement simply need to be rebooted entirely - because they operate with scrutiny more akin to a private corporation already.
Government police have qualified immunity and are not subject to market oversight. As you might expect, this fundamental lack of accountability results in abuses, particularly of minorities, historically and presently.
I’m much less concerned about the Starbucks security guards becoming a gang. Unlike government police, as soon as they start bashing gay people or colored people, I can stop supporting them.
Given the moral bankruptcy of America’s police force (note: force, not every officer), I could certainly see someone preferring private security handle their interests over the police.
If crime were less prevalent and the police more trusted, such a service wouldn’t have a niche to exist in.
I don’t like this slide into vigilante justice. But fighting the symptoms of the underlying problem is the wrong approach.
When the law decides it is not interested in protecting the citizens you bet this is going to happen.
My block has been invaded by the drug dealers as of last summer. Not 1. Not 2. But between a dozen and two dozen at a time. They are selling drugs openly on a street so brazen that the people who live here have to walk through the drug deals being done on a sidewalk to get to their apartments. Apartments with rents ranging from $1900 to $6000 a month. Cops don't do anything because the city management frowns upon it. We had five shootings over the past 12 months. If there was a way for us to pay for our own thugs to ensure the drug dealers moved to a different block $200-$500/mo per apartment I'm absolutely sure everyone who lives around here would sign up for it.
We, people who live on this block, want them gone from this block.
Point is, if the state is not providing these services, then the demand will make it profitable for someone to fill the role.
The implication here is that police officers stay within the bounds of the law, and yet a cursory google search will reveal that (at least in the US and Canada) the police are entirely corrupt forces of legally-sanctioned mob violence who flout the law at will without fear of repercussions or consequences.
If there's a high-blood pressure situation and whether I call 911 or if I were to start using Citizen, I have about the same level of confidence that extralegal brutality will occur.
What would you think happens if you abuse this service to call security on your poor neighbors? They keep showing up? I don't think so. I do think the neighborhood watch could take it personally.
Security force is a perfectly respectable and responsible job, and many ex-police and ex-military use their skill set to get into this field.
If officers always showed up, and always showed up on time, then you would not need private citizens. Rule of law is for the government to control. Citizens just want their parents to feel safe, and be able to call security to drive through their street, when they suspect gang/drug activity.
Alas, I cannot afford a security guard any more than I can afford a private driver, hence a part-time app-based security guard (or driver). It doesn't replace the police, and is accountable to the law and police; it just a tool to solve a problem.
If there are crimes happening which require armed intervention, that is exactly a reason for having a professional security force. If the police does not show for such a crime, but you need to rely on security force, well good luck to you, and glad you have a backup on dial.
A security force is also going to cooperate with the police and perform surveillance. Not like they pull up in an armored van and exit with weapons drawn, because a neighbor called them for an illegal lemonade stand.
I don't think the killing of Ahmaud Arbery was by a neighborhood watch. Professionals would probably not have let it come that far. Same with Trayvon Martin: if a professional force had responded calmly, he may have been alive. So if a neighborhood watch is necessary (either for the feeling of protection or actual crime fighting) then a professional force would seem a lot better.
I want my family to feel safe. It is my responsibility to do everything in my capacity as a law-abiding citizen to ensure their safety.
This sort of thing happens a lot in Latin America though. One situation sort of like what you're describing is Columbia in the 90s. The cartels throughly corrupted the government, so vigilante groups like Los Pepes[1] formed to attack the cartels, though they may have mostly just been fronts for other cartels. Los Pepes alumni went to form AUC, which was the semi-government endorsed death squad in Columbia at the time and became its own narcotrafficking syndicate over time[2]. AUC was eventually shut down and the leaders arrested for atrocities.
The main left-wing guerrilla movement (FARC) also eventually shut down its military activities[3]. The huge economic disaster of Venezuela right next door might have weakened the appeal of left-wing revolution. I've heard that Columbia is a pretty nice place to visit these days where in the 90s it was one of the most dangerous countries on earth.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Pepes
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Self-Defense_Forces_of_...
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Armed_Forces_of_...
This seems written from the perspective of someone who has just come back from a six month vacation during which they had no access to news.
> I've heard that Columbia is a pretty nice place to visit these days
There is literally a country-wide revolt taking place in Colombia (correct spelling) at the moment, with some of the worst police violence the country has experienced in years.
Public schools in NY not delivering education some folks expect -> market starts for private schools.
Existing delivery service not able to do guaranteed same or next day delivery -> merchants and others will build out their own capacity.
My guess is that as police are defunded (Minneapolis is getting rid of police department entirely) folks who can pay and see a role for security will probably contract for it. In the bay area this is already happening to a small degree.
It used to be you could walk into a lot of office buildings freely, now pretty tight security in some downtown areas (ie, public security option / service options are very poor and not maintained). So we get elevator passes and lockouts, security person downstairs, turnstiles, bathrooms all got doors with RFID door locks.
In that same period of time, also on the West Coast, we’ve seen a shift towards a more lenient model of policing and prosecuting. The idea is to not laden people who are already struggling with homelessness, mental illness, drug addiction, or all three with legal problems that arise from those situations. It’s a laudable effort, and a noble goal, but it has meant that people who get arrested for something like auto theft or burglary are quickly released. Sometimes you’ll read in the news about a person who’s been arrested for a serious crime like murder, and the article will mention dozens and dozens of other arrests for things like burglary, assault or theft. The police know this, so they often don’t bother following up on property crimes.
That system as a whole can really make the major West Coast cities feel pretty lawless sometimes, but people don’t really like to talk about it in social settings because it’s hard to talk about problems like that without being misconstrued as a reactionary conservative. But if you get them taking one on one, and they feel like they can trust you, the frustrations come pouring out. So I’m not that surprised that there’s a company trying to capitalize on that sentiment, horrifying as it is. I’ve been feeling for a while now that given the current trajectory of things, a vigilante backlash was likely to become inevitable.
Stuff like that needed to end. But we also need to go further to address the root causes of this problem.
Those folks have a tendency to want to separate themselves from the dirty masses. (Ie gated community) It’s what you did after you sell the family factory business in Ohio and move to Florida or wherever.
Building security theatre was accelerated driven by 9/11 paranoia and federal standards.
At which point the need was filled. No dystopic community mercenary forces were necessary.
There are some very sketchy urban places in the US with legit serious security problems.
There are vast burbs in the US which are actually really safe but have anxious, overzealous citizens.
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).
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'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.
Is that 'poorer' measured in actual USD $, or old Italian lira or pesos or something?
#wishiwaspoorthere.
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.
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??
Police funding is now more often used to to acquire military weapons/hardware.
"Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces" is a highly recommended study of this problem.
https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Ameri...
"Oh, somebody broke into your car and stole stuff? You shouldn't leave things lying around. We'll never catch the guy. Oh, you have video of the incident and know exactly who it is? Yeah, we can't really do anything with this. Oh you need to file a report for the insurance company? Fill this out and check back with us next month."
I'm very much NOT surprised that people who've actually needed the police for something have decided to there needs to be a private alternative.
The poor get rid of the police in their neighborhoods and the folks who want more policing get it?
We've had a fair bit of retail closing as the police are pulling back out of some areas.
In the 90s when the NYPD started firing lazy/corrupt police commanders and cracking down on street crime, evicting families of drug dealers from public housing, and putting down pit bulls.. poor communities were very much in favor of what was happening.
The tide shifted when the cops went all in on stupid metrics.
The intent behind that movement is to take money spent on policing where it fails and move it to where it might be more effective.
How many lawsuits are there for wrongful deaths where the police showed up for a mental health crisis? Since funding is finite and the police get a lion's share of it (community wise), why not shift some of that money into personnel who are better equipped to handle it?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/06/12/minneapoli...
Also, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police": https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...
Only in your mind. You cite an opinion piece as fact, when it's, like, an opinion, man.
You're projecting Motte and Bailey now by suggesting that is the intent of the movement, and therefore the movement is "bad".
Policing in America needs to be revisited. The word "reform" has been used in the past and has been found wanting. We could make up a brand new word but its still just a word -- the concept itself is worthy of pursuit.
I think in a lot of major metros, even funded police aren't meeting people's needs. If we aren't getting what we're paying for, we should stop paying.
Am I more likely to have a positive or negative interaction with police? I honestly don't know, and I'm white in a nice area. Crime is low and something like a burglary is extremely unlikely. I think police may be providing an unseen benefit to me by enforcing the law on others - I don't want vehicles doing 50 mph on my residential street, maybe they would without police? Or maybe they wouldn't?
I'm not taking a side on this issue, but I do empathize with those who believe they are unlikely to ever benefit from police presence, and thus don't want to pay for police.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/316571/black-americans-police-r...
https://www.newsweek.com/denying-crime-wave-progressives-are...
You're saying this like the majority these people have a net-positive impact on tax revenue. It's quite the opposite.
This is presumably what some people want, but in general the police as protectors of the status quo is, in my view, a bad thing. The status quo sucks and changing it isn't illegal—yet the cops in the US will treat you as it it were.
It's a bad and fiercely unamerican system.
Personally, I think the underlying issue is a lack of accountability. Address that, and many issues resolve themselves.
The issue might not be funding level but misuse as you point out.
Would you apply that to government services generally, where we're not getting what we pay for?
Given that: yes, we should absolutely stop funding services where society isn’t getting what it’s paying for—or fix them.
There may be one or more options on the ballot this fall to make the department report to someone different, and/or to remove the current minimum number of officers, but even those are yet to be resolved.
This is incorrect. The city council made a non-binding “pledge” to dismantle the police department. But according to the New York Times, the pledge "has been rejected by the city's mayor, a plurality of residents in recent public opinion polls, and an increasing number of community groups. Taking its place have been the types of incremental reforms that the city's progressive politicians had denounced." [1]
The ideas behind “defund the police” are simply not popular in the US. A majority of Americans want a police department - but they want a police department that protects everyone equally.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/us/politics/minneapolis-d...
It seems like a better measure would be something related to their actual goal. So why didn't they measure rate of property crime? Rate of homelessness? Poverty? Drug addiction? Supposedly these are the real causes of crime and homelessness.
If they did actually measure those things, I think their evaluation of the program would be different [0] [1].
>> "Denver saw significant increases in most types of property crime in 2020. In comparison to the average of the previous four years, burglaries rose 23% in 2020, larceny rose 9%, auto theft rose 61% and theft from cars rose 39%, Denver police data shows." [0]
[0] https://www.denverpost.com/2021/03/15/denver-property-crime-...
[1] https://denver.cbslocal.com/2021/05/20/aurora-homeless-campi...
https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/mounting-violence-casts...
[1] https://www.ernst.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2019/1/ernst-i...
Simply wanting to preserve one's life, liberty, and property and live in relative commity with one's neighbors does not generally lead to excessive violence and destruction.
That's not an argument, essentially. Words don't make truth. Either this trick is going to make people safer or it's going to get someone killed.
[1] See what I did there? Words are fun!
Please don't confuse me for a student of Locke.
> And likewise trying to replace police with this private goon squad[1] looks an awful lot like "tearing down existing institutions" to people like me who think it's a shit idea.
Building UPS or Fedex is not the same thing as destroying USPS.
Its a fallacy to assume it is a failure of a public option when it just as easily can be that we've been marketed that we are vulnerable and unsafe. Almost all stats have TODAY being just about the safest moment for violent crime in the history of humanity.
Dont confuse a change in peoples purchasing habits as a logical response to something intrinsic. Its barely ever correlated.
edit: I actually reread and saw you said "perceived value," I agree with you, I just think its a tragedy people are so scared. Although SF seems to be really having a problem.
It seems to me like this will be used by the upper-middle class to pester their neighbors over minor annoyances, because they can afford a Citizen subscription. Imagine the poor family across the street, who gets visited by a black SUV and a group of burly looking suited security guards, likely telling them something vague about a "disturbance" that was reported.
Also, this is how people use the police already. They call them when they are annoyed with their neighbors, the infamous woman in Central Park that was covered heavily in the news this year comes to mind.
This seems like an interesting story, got a link?
Not very different than getting visited by a burly looking neighbor. Except some people can look weaker, or be afraid to approach their neighbor because their small stature
When I had an upstairs neighbor having parties at all hours of the night, I wished there was a service where a bigger / more intimidating person would knock on their door and ask them to cut it out, instead of small and fragile looking me
That exists, and it's called the police. If your neighbor is violating noise ordinances, they'll get ticketed. If they're not, perhaps they're violating building rules, and can be fined by the building management. If still not, then you unfortunately just live in a shitty building, and hiring a thug to harass your neighbor (regardless of how loud they're being) sounds like a pretty disgusting (and legally risky) thing to do.
(Assume everyone involved is armed)
heh that's a "hired goon". This whole discussion is like standard issue organized crime and protection rackets but in app form. Too funny.
(And you weren't afraid of potential fallout from escalating things to intimidation either way? What if they hire a BIGGER person to go knock on your door?)
If you don't want to do something, you ask somebody else, if you both agree to the terms and costs you have a deal.
The world can be, how should I put this, difficult a place.
The contracted party might agree to not mention you. Something like: hey, I live across the street, would you mind letting me know if you're going to have music late at night because I'll just stay at my partner's place that evening, here's my number. No sweat, have a good night, here's a complimentary six pack.
It doesn't take a lot of imagination to assume the best possible reading of a comment like yours.
Have a lovely day.
My solution was to offer to pay them $$$ for their moving fees and, when they turned that down, I just picked up and moved to another building.
That's not really much different.
In some ways I would honestly love to get my door buzzed by these people so I could tell them to get off my property lest I call the actual police to remove them.
(But such is my privilege that I would likely be pretty safe and unafraid in such an encounter.)
I feel like there should be some sort of service that's able to offer some kind of protection in situations like this, or at least able to track down and prevent this kind of person from recommitting after he's shown a willingness to violently attack other people.
It's unpleasant to be physically assaulted, and I'd like to avoid it in the future.
I agree it's unpleasant being physically assaulted on the street (happened to me 8 years ago and I still think about it often), as is the utter lack of interest from the police in helping in such situations, but I don't think a private security force is going to do much better.
And to your other point, there is already a thing for tracking someone down after the fact if the police aren't helpful: private investigators.
What you want is the ability to pay to get expedited help, to which I say is that the fair option to those who can't afford to pay for protection?
Ideally everyone would be protected from random attacks on the street, not just those able to pay.
The sad thing about this is that people can’t figure out that $20 / month won’t buy you a 15 minute phone call. You’re paying $20 per month to be a surveillance endpoint so Citizen can sell the real services to the rich.
America is filled with suckers.
If often, then there's a market for it.
If not often, then you're intentionally using a red herring to distract from the real discussion.
/s (?)
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.
I think it could happen too because private police forces benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and middle class. Why pay for police in the poor neighborhoods if you have walls and private police for your gated community?
What we’re seeing in western countries worries me. The progressive tax system is being attacked IMO because breaking it benefits the wealthy. It’s much cheaper for the richest 20% to fund private police forces for themselves than funding a public police force for everyone.
And IMO the reason the police can’t keep up is because we’ve had 40 years of underfunding public institutions so the wealthy can hoard more and more money. It’s not shocking to see increased levels of drug abuse and crime because those correlate with poverty.
We need to force the rich to pay there fair share of taxes. The resources being used for yachts and private jets needs to be getting put into education, healthcare, infrastructure, etc..
This is a great example of a misallocation of capital. Instead of funding an app for a private police force we’d be better off if that money had been collected via taxes and allocated to building schools.
Studies correlating wealth inequality with criminality are less than convincing [1].
A 2016 study, controlling for different factors than previous
studies, challenges the aforementioned findings. The study finds
"little evidence of a significant empirical link between overall
inequality and crime", and that "the previously reported positive
correlation between violent crime and economic inequality is largely
driven by economic segregation across neighborhoods instead of
within-neighborhood inequality". A 2020 study found that in Europe,
the inequality-crime correlation was present but weak (0.10),
explaining less than 3% of the variance in crime with a similar
finding occurring for the United States, while another 2019 study
argued that the effect of inequality on property crime was nearly
zero.
Impoverishment doesn’t cause criminality, see e.g. post-internment Japanese-American and early 20th century E.European Jewish American immigrant populations. Rather, the root causes of systemic poverty are strongly correlated with criminality [2]. Which isn’t to say extreme wealth inequality isn’t bad: the French Revolution readily disproves that notion. But the French Revolution is in a different league from property crime.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_economic_inequality...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/16/books/what-is-intelligenc...
[2]: https://www.nytimes3xbfgragh.onion/1994/10/16/books/what-is-...
The threat model appears basically to be urban street crime and maybe targeted harassment and political pressure. Unsure what else. If I could get this for airstrikes, I would totally buy it though.
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.
The officer shrugged and walked off in the opposite direction. I think that was the moment that I decided it was time for a change of scenery.
Despite the damage to the cars, that sounds more like a mental health problem than a crime problem.
Which is one of the big problems we have with current policing models. We throw folks trained to use deadly force at issues that are better suited to mental health professionals trained in de-escalation.
I get it that many folks don't really care about their fellow humans except as threats/enemies/potential rivals for mates and resources.
And I also get that, as in your example, many folks don't care about the well-being of other people (as in your example, a 'tweaker'. How do you know that? Were they shooting meth as they spray-painted the cars?), especially if they engage in anti-social behaviors.
In fact, many folks would support it if we just killed/imprisoned anyone who makes them uncomfortable or unhappy.
The issues that we lump into a black box called "mental illness" are poorly understood and even more poorly addressed in our society.
Even worse, more often than not we dump the "mental illness" black box into a larger black box called "criminals".
As Hubert Humphrey put it[0]:
The moral test of government is how that
government treats those who are in the dawn of
life, the children; those who are in the twilight
of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows
of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.
Why is it generally the former rather than the latter? I'd say that it was a culture of selfishness, greed and a lack of empathy buried under several layers of soft-soaping like "personal responsibility", "pulling oneself up by the bootstraps", "poverty is a moral failing" and a bunch of other tropes.
Sentient life is precious. We should treat it that way, IMNSHO. But we don't. And more's the pity.
[0] https://www.columbian.com/news/2016/nov/11/letter-quote-from...
In the long term, I agree with you. In the short term, it would be nice if the people who we are forced to pay for the task of preventing antisocial behavior would stop the person who is causing tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, since broadly speaking nobody else has the right to do so.
To put it another way, how much more damage does this person need to do before you consider it a crime problem?
They aren't short-staffed, as much as they are deliberately avoiding doing any work. They were also engaged in a lot of overtime grift over the past decade, which the city started to crack down on in 2019.
This was also written in late 2020. There are now 1,080 deployable officers, down from 1,325 as seen here: https://www.seattle.gov/police/about-us/about-the-department...
An uber ride is cheaper than hiring private security to walk you through the hood. An elderly asian person is more likely to die crossing the road to a bank than be robbed at a bank. Urban photographers who wouldn't already be operating with a small crew are probably too broke to hire a bodyguard, nor is there some big wave or urban photographers being targeted currently. Chances are if that gear is your work its also already insured. The store owner probably already hires private security for not much more than minimum wage, and in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store. Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building. I doubt private security is going to stick out their neck for your little shop more than D.C. police did for the U.S. capitol. You probably aren't hiring Blackwater mercenaries. The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already, the last thing they want is some pricey contract for a job they are already getting done just fine.
I don't think you've been keeping up with the news of the wave of attacks targeting Asian elders. Many of them have been beaten and robbed on the way to run errands.
in the case of a looting, chances are the store owner would rather you go home and have insurance pay for the damages, than deal with the legal headache of their hired gun potentially killing someone in their store.
You're way overestimating the number of small business owners who have sufficient insurance to cover a looting event, and way underestimating the extent to which small business owners are willing to protect their store (e.g. Roof Koreans)
Keep in mind when D.C. police who were defending the capitol building faced a mob, they allowed them to breach the building
That actually demonstrates the value provided by an app offering on-demand private security. When cops failed to stop the insurrectionists, they faced minimal negative consequences. On the other hand, if your hired private security fails to stop looters, they can expect a negative review from you on the app which in turn threatens their career on the app.
The owner of the bar is paying their bouncers under the table already
I said late night restaurants, not bars. When was the last time you've seen a bouncer at a late night restaurant?
I agree that some of the cases I brought up are a bit far fetched. That being said, here's a great use case that I'm sure we can both agree on for on-demand security:
- Domestic violence prevention. In cases where a spouse feels threatened but does not have enough evidence for the cops to get involved, on-demand private security is the best option.
A tragedy like the Adam Matos case would have been prevented had the victim used on-demand private security. The victim was threatened by Matos, her ex, and she called the cops, who didn't/couldn't do anything, which resulted in her and her family being killed by said ex within 24 hours.
I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.
This would be peak gentrifier behavior, but a (hopefully) handful of bad actors are trashing an otherwise nice neighborhood and I'm at the end of my rope.
>I would love to hire security to watch for dumpers and report them to the city's dumping hotline, along with descriptions and plate numbers.
If that's really a serious problem in your area, you and your neighbors can set up a neighborhood watch/surveillance cameras/etc. to address that without hiring private security to do it for you.
Or are you too good to support your neighbors and neighborhood with your time and effort?
Want to have a good neighborhood? Be a good neighbor.
I have no more time but I do have money.
Supporting my neighbors and neighborhood is exactly what I want to do - assuming they also want clean streets - so your criticism is really a stretch.
Since both services are lacking, everyone that can pay, either from out of pocket or as a employment benefit, uses the private healthcare system. The more well to be pay for private security, bullet-proof cars, and other measures.
It's symptomatic to see people using private services, as it may show the state provided ones are falling short. Defunding only hurts the poor that can't afford to pay for good private services.
when the employees at a company that only exists for the sake of authoritarian bullshit start pushing back, it's not really encouraging in the same way, because Citizen has no "good part of the business" to shift to.
This could get interesting.
The US Marshalls service has a "special deputy" program where bodyguards of the rich and famous become federal law enforcement with little to no oversight. This allows them to carry firearms nationwide regardless of state or local laws.
Really? Which one?
In policing, since they can't figure out how to keep certain groups from committing crimes at higher rates than other groups, they're going to just stop policing. Rich people will get their own police forces.
Every time I can think of that people have predicted (with hope or fear) the Information Age will bring about an erosion of state authority, the state's control of existing levers of power have trumped the mere ability to organize/communicate.
If it's just a random person who signed up as a responder i think they'd make the situation worse instead of better.
Like I said in another thread... You’re paying $20 per month to be a surveillance endpoint so Citizen can sell the real services to the rich.
What's the problem, Customer? Did that nasty man demand you leash your dog in an area where dogs are required to be leashed? Let us just sit on him and hit him with sticks for a bit.
Oh, I see.
This isn’t the cyberpunk dystopia I signed up for.
Now they want to be judge, jury and executioner. This should be banned
Things have gotten worse regardless of which side of the debate you're on
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/police-in-philly-and-be...
I was just expecting AI and robots to take over ala Robocop and Little Sister cameras everywhere. I did not foresee the gig companies like Bannerman and Citizen doing it, but here we are.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/12/675359781/americas-growing-co...
Yes, I agree that US police forces need heavy reform, starting with decreasing the power and influence of their unions, then with limiting their function (e.g. they should be escorted by a health professional for mental health related calls), and then with increasing their increasing pay and expecting better and more educated results.
If we're just going to swing far right ("Nothing is wrong. Everyone else is wrong and we should stay the course"), or far left ("the police can never be reformed, let's abolish it") hammers to solve or ignore the problem, then both solutions will just lead to the same result: no one wants to be a police officer anymore which imo will also increase police brutality and crime as a side effect. If we go down either extreme route, I predict that eventually machines will be our judge, jury, and executioner. I hope I'm wrong.
It is also entertaining to watch
Finally, a Pinkerton in every pocket...
Its not the end if law enforcement, it's the end of equal (supposedly) law enforcement.
There always has been a market for immediate response private security, if one has the money.
* without any of the cool stuff
I always wondered why they smirked quietly at calls to defund the police...
Detroit was going broke so they privatised Detroit police, OCP made the winning bid, then their plan was to replace expensive human police with cheap-to-run Robot-cops. That’s why the film was satire /first/, Hollywood-action-film second.
Unfortunately I don’t think Paul Verhoven can save us from this...
and
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...
I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford an on-demand subscription.
You want to defund the tax-paid police? Go right ahead! Now I want to collectively fund my own security force, for crimes that the police is understaffed for, what _exactly_ is the problem?
If your concerns about police abuse or neighbors calling security on minorities, then focus on fixing that (defund them?) and let me interact with the private market. Or is this controversial from a rich-get-security perspective?
> I can't afford a private security force, but I could afford an on-demand subscription.
And if you run into hard times in life and can not afford this subscription? Are we going to have "levels" of policing depending on which company you are subscribed to and the higher cost ones offer "better" policing?
The "defund the police" movement will never be successful in a way that dismantles law enforcement. We'd have a lot more problems at that point than being forced to deal with for-profit security companies.
If anything, if 50% of the neighborhood has this subscription, and you are too poor to afford it, you can freeload on the enhanced security.
I do agree it is dystopian to require money for basic protection, and that this would not be collectively provided with tax money. Less if the protection is just enhanced (compare basic healthcare vs. being able to afford a private clinic).
If it was possible, I'd like to pay more taxes, then vote (could be democratic, not scaled to amount paid) on where it goes. If the neighborhoods really are problematic, then maybe the local government could hire on-demand security forces for when their police capacity is low (and hold them accountable and to government standards).
For luxuries, I agree that would be a ridiculous point to make (a poor person can't afford a new BMW, but we as a society think that's ok). But stratification among basic services that everyone should have is the opposite of equitable. This is in part why American health care is so awful if you're poor, and it's not a situation we want to duplicate with policing.
> then maybe the local government could hire on-demand security forces for when their police capacity is low (and hold them accountable and to government standards)
Not exactly the same thing, but we've done that with military contractors, and that has not worked out particularly well for accountability.
Once basic protection, education, healthcare, etc. is offered to anyone (I do not see America in the future relying on private security forces for basic protection, so I think basic protection is covered), then private protection, education or healthcare should not be a problem.
If America really needs private forces for maintaining basic protection, then it is probably better they have oversight of local government and serve the wider public, not secluded to a gated community.
This is already a false assumption, you know nothing about me.
> you can freeload on the enhanced security
Great thanks I'm glad I got cancer, had to declare medical bankruptcy, and can now "freeload" off the rest of you hard workers who are doing the exact same thing I did for decades.
Please.
So the police force just got funded enough to be bigger than all of the private companies. They are now the biggest private security service provider (yes, for profit company, separate from public police but run by the state, full of ex-police/military). It's quite ridiculous tbh.
If you're rich, you're untouchable, while poor people eat dirt in prison even if they're not guilty. Not that different from the US.
Incidentally, our military is full of used American equipment. Great value, maybe a bit too much for a country that wouldn't last a week in a war with any neighbour.
IMO The entire justice system should be revamped with a focus on rehabilitation in society and viewing most drug-related "criminals" as victims who need treatment for their addiction or illness. Also concerned about the militarization of the police, and feel their budget could be spend better.
In many states, security guards can be armed in public, but so can private citizens.
The endgame for this will be large-scale gated communities that are town-level. A surefire to prevent homelessness in a particular town is for the entire town to be private property. If you can't card-in, you don't get in. Dystopian yes, but probably inevitable, and the trail was blazed by the modern corporate campus that operates on the same principles.
Funny thing about the second amendment, people always gloss over the well regulated militia, and we're accelerating away from that, pedal to the metal
Well, 'well regulated' did not mean the same thing in 1791 that it does now. And that part of the amendment was the prefatory clause anyway, so it's moot.
I look forward to this being used to violate the rights of minorities, union strikers, women, and the homeless!
Just like how rideshare apps increased the availability of car services in areas underserved by traditional taxies, on-demand security services like this can provide value in a similar way, by making available security services in areas underserved by the police.
Seems like a bit of overselling here. "Rapid emergency response..." would be more like it. Although the request and communication to initiate response may take only seconds, the actual arrival time is unlikely to resemble "instant".
Marketing getting ahead of the ability to deliver...