the Privatized Police thread

[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

its happening under democratic control.

i’m hearing all of the same stuff that i did during/after ferguson about it happening 100% in a vacuum. i mean could you imagine something like that happening in a progressive city like (say) minneapolis? i heard stuff like that.

Just because a city is "progressive" doesn't mean there aren't historical racial issues near the surface.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by TexasPlaya

Unfortunately I feel this way too as there are a handful of metros that have been hollowed out due to decades of industry moving and racial strife.

yeah i mean thats my point. looking at something with western “logic” an engineer would look at the known weak points in a system that’s overall under strain. and sometimes you get failures at places that you thought were strong (mpls) and then you wonder if the entire structure is failing.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by edale

I'm just not sold on the basic idea of St. Louis being a sign of what's to come nationally. If anything, it seems like a metro that's behind the times rather than ahead of them.

time and history doesn't seem to actually reveal itself as linear though does it (except for a brief moment of thought in the 90s where people were drunk on victory?) ever building towards some kind of enlightened solid state of humanity.

no, shit collapses. i’m sorry guys.

[dc_denizen]

minneapolis lacked the drive to restore order and impose authority on rioters and looters. this is specifically an ailment of progressive cities.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by dc_denizen

minneapolis lacked the drive to restore order and impose authority on rioters and looters. this is specifically an ailment of progressive cities.

it could very well be, i don’t know. i tend to believe that looting and rioting is symptomatic.

i do suspect that we will have more opportunity to examine this further, regardless.

[Centropolis]

that's not to excuse rioting and looting. it’s bad.

it’s bad when you have diarrhea blow up the back of your polo seated in one of those plastic burger king chairs that sort of cups around your ass and the force of the blast has nowhere else to go and you’re trapped in times square or whatever because you have food poisoning. but the diarrhea was caused by something.

all bad news.

[Emprise du Lion]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

Rather than create a sense of security this sends the wrong message. You say this is about protection of capital, but honestly I think a modern US Fortune 500 corporation just sees this and says “nah bro, time to relocate our headquarters to Plano or Irvine”. If STL can’t stop being an outlier in violent crime and also police shootings it will crumble. America is a big place and really it stopped being a truly major metro area a long time ago.

It's already happening in other cities. See my comment about Chicago below.

I think if a city gets so broken it can’t police itself, then it is time for the state to come in. I don’t know how Missouri works but in general a state legislature can spin up a fresh new local government entity with taxing powers at its pleasure

Missouri actually had control of the SLMPD up until a few years back. They had control from then until the Civil War. Didn't exactly help the situation.

Create through a law a metro police agency encompassing the whole area with an elected board and civilian oversight committee but put in the charter that it must act to fight crime and give the state legislature power to force it to act.

I believe an idea similar to that was floated with the Better Together plan. Didn't happen. Currently waiting to see what, if any, plan comes in to replace Better Together.

Originally Posted by edale

Of course it matters. There have always been private security guards, so their existence alone isn't troubling. Under what authority are they issuing tickets and arresting people? If they issue a speeding ticket, is it recognized as legitimate by the St. Louis courts? If they arrest people and bring them to the justice center, will they be booked?

Based on the article, it appears to order to work the private company you have to get the approval of the SLMPD. They're subject to the actual internal affairs department within the PD, but that the city's policing power is declining so badly that they've come to rely on this organization of cops working a second job to handle low level calls.

Apparently they don't handle traffic cases, but will do quality of life crimes in their respective districts (downtown, the Grove, Soulard, the Central West End were listed examples). They can't leave their districts either because specific elevated taxes from those districts are paying for them.

Apparently they can issue citations, but don't make arrests. That requires an on duty officer for transportation, but they can aid in investigations and respond to calls within their districts.

A human rights lawyer in the article was raising similar concerns to you in the article, and I share them, but on the face of it it looks like SLMPD will likely face the liability suits when something (inevitably) goes wrong.

I'm just not sold on the basic idea of St. Louis being a sign of what's to come nationally. If anything, it seems like a metro that's behind the times rather than ahead of them.

It's a sign of what can come in cash strapped cities, of which there are many nationwide. This has nothing to do with the larger metro because it's something that's city specific at this time.

As for other cities, I know Chicago was playing around with private security on the streets in neighborhoods like Gold Coast. You'd also see them on and around Halsted in Boystown. Whether they had as much power as these cops, I could not tell you.

[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

yeah i mean thats my point. looking at something with western “logic” an engineer would look at the known weak points in a system that’s overall under strain. and sometimes you get failures at places that you thought were strong (mpls) and then you wonder if the entire structure is failing.

The system has always been under strain, prosperity or lack of it just masks or reveals it. We are also a single country so we do share a lot of issues, especially with racial strife in spite of slavery and jim crow being only in the "south".

Minneapolis has had a strong economy relative to many of its regional peers but clearly its racial history is a long simmering issue.

[Encolpius]

Help me out, guys. I'm not sure I quite understand what's problematic about this.

If this is the 'inevitable outcome of progressives' goal of defunding police' (to paraphrase that Federalist piece), then fine. And? Nobody likes rent-a-cops (or I certainly don't), but that's all the more reason to privatize this sort of overpolicing -- each neighborhood's residents thereby have the opportunity to reject the aggressive policing of minor infractions like loitering and panhandling -- or choose to pay higher taxes to support it. Cities can cut their police budgets that way, and maybe buy buses instead. Anyway it sounds like private officers would be far more accountable to their communities... and far more easily fired for misconduct by their private employer.

Also remember that city councillors are always free to repeal the ordinances against panhandling and loitering, which would leave these rent-a-cops with practically nothing to do.

Spell it out for me. Why exactly is this a problem?

[Buckeye Native 001]

I think it boils down to haves vs. have nots, the same way public schools are now losing money set aside in state/local budgets for "empowerment scholarships" wherein public education funds can be used by families to attend private/charter schools. It creates a bigger socioeconomic rift than what's already present in the United States. Predominantly poorer areas would likely see increases in crime because of unequal funding and protection because they don't have the same tax base to support basic law enforcement.

This is just one issue in a reckoning that the United States currently experiences regarding the need for reform/rehabilitation of police departments nationwide. We've got a policing problem (in the way that cops are trained and how they conduct themselves and treat others the in public) and are in desperate need of serious overhaul. The police are just one part of the larger problem of criminal justice reform that also needs to address criminal law as it's currently written, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and corrections. Where/when would the privatization of such facets end, and who benefits the most?

Ideologically, I have a hard time taking anything in "The Federalist" seriously because it reads like a right wing/libertarian/Rand-ian fever dream. I don't want a John Galt-esque archetype deciding what's best for police reform (and criminal justice reform as a whole) in this country because that ideology is fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of how a public good/service should operate. Long story short, there's a place for business, and a place for government and the two shouldn't be nearly as intertwined as they are currently.

I know there's something I'm missing that completely invalidates my argument, and I know that I should probably stay out of this because of my employer and I don't really know what I'm talking about, so someone please break this down and tell me how I'm wrong?

[Encolpius]

But depriving poor communities of policemen isn't the same as depriving them of teachers. The problem with policing in poor communities isn't a lack of basic law enforcement, it's overpolicing and harassment and incarceration rates that dwarf those of any other country on the planet. Aren't many of these communities now calling to Defund the Police?

As for the fear of a slippery slope, it's clear to me that rent-a-cops should not be able to just make up their own laws, but should only be allowed to enforce laws passed citywide and by means of a democratic process. But it seems, if anything, easier to impose restraint on rent-a-cops than regular cops because they're given a more specific task and held more accountable.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Help me out, guys. I'm not sure I quite understand what's problematic about this.

If this is the 'inevitable outcome of progressives' goal of defunding police' (to paraphrase that Federalist piece), then fine. And? Nobody likes rent-a-cops (or I certainly don't), but that's all the more reason to privatize this sort of overpolicing -- each neighborhood's residents thereby have the opportunity to reject the aggressive policing of minor infractions like loitering and panhandling -- or choose to pay higher taxes to support it. Cities can cut their police budgets that way, and maybe buy buses instead. Anyway it sounds like private officers would be far more accountable to their communities... and far more easily fired for misconduct by their private employer.

Also remember that city councillors are always free to repeal the ordinances against panhandling and loitering, which would leave these rent-a-cops with practically nothing to do.

Spell it out for me. Why exactly is this a problem?

various armed patrols only accountable to capital seem incoherent and destabilizing to me in a supposed democracy but a lot is not coherent at this point. however you think this might play out you might want to consider that it will end up more violent, corrupt and insane in the united states than you might expect.

[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by Encolpius

Help me out, guys. I'm not sure I quite understand what's problematic about this.

If this is the 'inevitable outcome of progressives' goal of defunding police' (to paraphrase that Federalist piece), then fine. And? Nobody likes rent-a-cops (or I certainly don't), but that's all the more reason to privatize this sort of overpolicing -- each neighborhood's residents thereby have the opportunity to reject the aggressive policing of minor infractions like loitering and panhandling -- or choose to pay higher taxes to support it. Cities can cut their police budgets that way, and maybe buy buses instead. Anyway it sounds like private officers would be far more accountable to their communities... and far more easily fired for misconduct by their private employer.

Also remember that city councillors are always free to repeal the ordinances against panhandling and loitering, which would leave these rent-a-cops with practically nothing to do.

Spell it out for me. Why exactly is this a problem?

Seems like a temporary solution or a supplemental solution at best. I agree with Centropolis that it doesn't seem to fit with a supposed democracy.

[Encolpius]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

various armed patrols only accountable to capital seem incoherent and destabilizing to me in a supposed democracy but a lot is not coherent at this point. however you think this might play out you might want to consider that it will end up more violent, corrupt and insane in the united states than you might expect.

No doubt the last part is true, but remember that private policing has a far longer history than public policing (going back to early medieval town watches): it's not likely to become more violent, corrupt or insane than public policing already is in America.

Anyway, it seems your whole concern is about the slippery slope. But doesn't its bias lie in the opposite direction to what you fear? As I understand it, these armed rent-a-cops are accountable to the laws of the democracy, to the (unfortunately) meaningless oversight of their PD's internal review and (more importantly) answerable to their employer, a company that serves the community which votes a special levy to fund its operations. Surely, if the rot became too deep, firing the bad apples or cancelling the company's contract would be far easier than, say, 'abolishing the police'?

[llamaorama]

I think we want police who act in the public good. I think it’s simplistic to think what reformists want is no police, or a flat reduction in police with no change in priorities. Some radicals literally want to defund the police, but they don’t represent the silent majority. That’s going to be apparent soon in some cities, Seattle is the minority here. In Houston HPD got a budget increase recently. Over policing might be better characterized as pulling people over and interrogating them for petty reasons, but I don’t think calls for service from civilians counts and that is desired by most.

I doubt private cops will respond to calls from ordinary citizens about things like property crime, and they don’t contribute to investigative capacities either I’m guessing. They are just more sophisticated mall cops. That’s not good enough.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by TexasPlaya

The way we kicked the can down the road for our pension system is a big part of the issue that touches more than just cops and the law enforcement system. Our country has aged and how do we keep our previous promises and run our cities today?

How, you ask? Immigration Ponzi scheme. That's the only possible answer that'll actually work for at least a while.

[TexasPlaya]

Originally Posted by lio45

How, you ask? Immigration Ponzi scheme. That's the only possible answer that'll actually work for at least a while.

Well sure but that kinda goes against the populist zeitgeist in America. Ponzi schemes imply fraudulence no? Capitalism is a ponzi scheme then, requiring new consumers. I suppose I just don't view it that way.

Also, municipalities are hurting for funds for today. We really didn't plan well for old age.