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Police often don't want to live in the community they patrol because they don't want to be recognized with their family while off duty by gang members they inte

Police often don't want to live in the community they patrol because they don't want to be recognized with their family while off duty by gang members they interact with, making their families targets. I have close family who had to move to a different city because of direct specific threats to their family made by gangsters. Organized crime changes the dynamics completely.

curryst 6y ago
I would be shocked if that is effective (although I'm not an expert, so I'm open to being shocked). Tracking someone who relocates without creating a new identity seems trivially easy even for unorganized crime. Facebook or Instagram alone makes a social engineering attempt easy. Then there are the sites that aggregate public record, which I would think could pick up on the move relatively quickly. Lexus Nexus has terrifying amounts of information on everyone. This is without even moving into the realm of things that require organized crime. I would assume organized crime groups would have someone in the government paid off that could run a query through driver's license databases. That seems more like security theater than actual security. It's also of note that organized crime exists outside the US, and other countries that do community policing don't seem to have the same level of concern.
- allannienhuis 6y ago
  I agree with you that organized crime is not a US-only problem. The example I shared is not in the US - so you have at least one counter example to your statement about other countries. Concerns and awareness about issues with policing in the community where they live isn't isolated to just a few individuals. You seem to easily dismiss someone else's experience - why would you think that you have enough information from a short anecdote to judge their difficult decision to uproot their entire family, as useless security theatre? How effective something like that is depends completely on the specific circumstances, people involved, and the nature of the threat. I assure you that the decisions they made for themselves were done with appropriate advice. My point was that organized crime changes the nature of policing and the relationship with police and their community. Organized criminals have a much greater sense of power and immunity, so they are more likely to be involved in confrontation with police and to take things further past the line (threatening family is just one example) than an 'average' crook who commits crimes out of desperation (for example).

curryst 6y ago

I would be shocked if that is effective (although I'm not an expert, so I'm open to being shocked). Tracking someone who relocates without creating a new identity seems trivially easy even for unorganized crime. Facebook or Instagram alone makes a social engineering attempt easy. Then there are the sites that aggregate public record, which I would think could pick up on the move relatively quickly. Lexus Nexus has terrifying amounts of information on everyone. This is without even moving into the realm of things that require organized crime. I would assume organized crime groups would have someone in the government paid off that could run a query through driver's license databases. That seems more like security theater than actual security. It's also of note that organized crime exists outside the US, and other countries that do community policing don't seem to have the same level of concern.

allannienhuis 6y ago
I agree with you that organized crime is not a US-only problem. The example I shared is not in the US - so you have at least one counter example to your statement about other countries. Concerns and awareness about issues with policing in the community where they live isn't isolated to just a few individuals. You seem to easily dismiss someone else's experience - why would you think that you have enough information from a short anecdote to judge their difficult decision to uproot their entire family, as useless security theatre? How effective something like that is depends completely on the specific circumstances, people involved, and the nature of the threat. I assure you that the decisions they made for themselves were done with appropriate advice. My point was that organized crime changes the nature of policing and the relationship with police and their community. Organized criminals have a much greater sense of power and immunity, so they are more likely to be involved in confrontation with police and to take things further past the line (threatening family is just one example) than an 'average' crook who commits crimes out of desperation (for example).