7 ms·

I can’t believe you are writing this not in jest. Just a week or two ago we saw a video of an officer planting evidence in broad daylight. He was caught because

I can’t believe you are writing this not in jest. Just a week or two ago we saw a video of an officer planting evidence in broad daylight. He was caught because of the video, how many officers have not been caught? What about yesterday when the police office ran up and kicked a handcuffed man in the head? Was that the rule of law or the rule of force?

Angostura 5y ago
How much better do you think vigilante forces would be?
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  I dont think it matters. 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-employees-offered-subway-buddies-as-mayor-tries-to-calm-safety-concerns/3044688/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-city-hall-employee...
  - gowld 5y ago
    That's not what happening here. The money is for the "true crime" entertainment and the fun of being part of a mob, not crime reduction. That's obvious from the substance and tone of the content published in the app.
  - kibwen 5y ago
    Law enforcement does not solve the sort of low-level citizen-brigade crime that this app would address, it only treats the symptoms. The cause is people driven to desperation; put money into social programs to address the root of their desperation.
    - courtf 5y ago
      Prevention is cheaper and results in a friendlier environment for everyone. The proliferation of expensive, reactive solutions that tend to aggravate the very problem they're ostensibly working on is great for shareholders though. Public health is boring by comparison, and no one gets rich when it works.
    - 323454 5y ago
      This is a false dichotomy, but what's worse is that social programs are already heavily funded in all the major West coast cities. For example, LA spends over half a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) on services for the homeless every year, to very little effect. It's not irrational for someone (even someone who advocates for those very programs and services) to look at the full situation and conclude that the best available option is to just throw in the towel and hire private security.
      - kibwen 5y ago
        > look at the full situation and conclude that the best available option is to just throw in the towel and hire private security Someone who is looking at the full situation would realize that hiring private security does not cause the homeless population to suddenly evaporate. An outsider might start to get the impression that the fundamental right of the upper-middle class is the right not to be reminded that people in poverty exist.
        323454 5y ago
        No one cares what outsiders think when they are being assaulted on their walk home from work. If you want justice you must first create order. In addition, it's not like these people don't have sympathy for the plight of the poor: they voted to spend vast sums on tax money trying to fix the root cause of the problem. It's not their fault that these efforts are failing.
      - anthony_romeo 5y ago
        Why is ~$500,000,000 a lot of money for the homeless? The CA budget is hundreds of billions of dollars, and there’s a lot of people who live in that state.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    > People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread. Has that solved crime in SA?
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread. I don't think we want to use as a model a place where police services are only available to the wealthy.
    - ebuchanan 5y ago
      Every new product starts out that way.
joemi 5y ago
What makes you think a private force will be under more scrutiny?
- Cyberdog 5y ago
  Because they will be more directly accountable to their "clients," for one. I cannot fire a "real" cop whose behavior I do not approve of.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    You seem to be presuming that you will be the one these mercenaries are working for. When mercenaries I hired beat the crap out of you, how will you fire them?
    - ebuchanan 5y ago
      If you hire mercenaries to beat the crap out of someone, both you and the mercenaries will go to jail. There are already more private security officers than government police officers in the US today. This isn't new. They have co-existed for many decades.
      - wearywanderer 5y ago
        What are you going to do, hire your own mercenaries to arrest me and mine? Or do you now recognize the value in real police?
        sershe 5y ago
        I don't think the author ever claimed there's no value in real police. It actually, ironically, matches the recent left-wing demands to defund. Let the police with their armored cars and helicopters handle real crime, like when your mercenaries beat up my mercenaries. Let the mercenaries handle the small stuff :)
avs733 5y ago
the problem is that it is not in jest. It is accurate and reviews both how weak societal oversight of police is and how important it is. 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.
ben_w 5y ago
Rule of force. 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.
creatorbytes 5y ago
This is partly confirmation bias. Millions of officers, we’re gonna have bad ones. Obviously we need to improve, but to think that officers who have at least some amount of vetting are going to do worse than a security force is utter denial of the human condition. 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.
- MengerSponge 5y ago
  Yes, we're gonna have bad officers. What happens next? Are they shunned? Forced out of the profession? 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-white-supremacy-american-policing-1167304/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/racism...
  - croutonwagon 5y ago
    It is.. But at the same time, its a completely decentralized system and there are MANY that do a very good job at washing out the bad ones. There are plenty that deserve criticism, and even federal investigation/intervention. But by and large the system works. There are millions of police, and hundreds of millions of encounters daily across a huge range of investigations and issues. boiling it down to twitter levels of context is bad and applying such broad strokes is also equally bad. Its certainly not going to encourage good ones to sign up. I know with the way this type of stuff is being portrayed, its a no win for most police, they could quadruple the salaries overnight and some would still balk, because no matter what it a loss.
  - wearywanderer 5y ago
    Shunning is crap. Instead of resorting to such dark-age extralegal tactics, how about we get some prosecutors who do their damn jobs and prosecute criminal police? Unfortunately prosecutors are generally elected and many people don't want to admit the root of the problem is with the electorate who choose to elect and re-elect prosecutors who don't want to do their jobs.
jl2718 5y ago
I don’t follow these things at all, but it seems we may be in a bit of a bad romance with authority figures. These total strangers act in perfectly predictable ways given the positions we’ve handed them, and we call it betrayal.
kelnos 5y ago
Yes, and just imagine how bad the situation will be when the police is privatized and accountable only to their shareholders. 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.
- Cyberdog 5y ago
  Private security forces are accountable to their customers before their shareholders. If I don't like how my private security company is behaving, I can cancel my contract and switch to another company. When enough contracts are cancelled, then these hypothetical shareholders get involved. If I could cancel the "contract" with my local law enforcement agencies, I would have done that a long, long time ago.
- rapjr9 5y ago
  I see this news as a loss of faith in the police. If the police are not trusted or not helping or making things worse then of course people will form their own gangs for protection. Citizen is trying to profit off that. Businesses and rich people do this all the time, this sounds like a service for less wealthy people of the same nature. It could help tame the police if independent observers with the power to intervene and wearing body cameras streaming to a remote server show up at incidents. In fact some people may specifically want protection from the police in situations where they think the police may react badly (e.g., trying to get help for someone with mental health problems). Goons for rent would be a bad way to implement this service. Observers and defenders and negotiators and de-escalators for hire would make more sense and have less liability for the company offering the service. This is the basic idea behind lawyers, you can not trust government to watch out for your interests so you hire an advocate to represent you and protect you. In fact, temporary legal representation during a sudden crisis is another service Citizen could offer. Calling a lawyer to be present during a crisis is something anyone can already do if they can afford it. Privatized police already exist (campus police, corporate police, security guards, even military mercenaries who do policing work). Hiring an observer/witness for cheap seems like a great new business model!
deugo 5y ago
I agree about these violent lawless police forces, but those crime victims are not exactly innocent either. Most (violent) crime is done out of sheer desperation, and the root cause of this desperation can often be traced back to the (predominantly white) upper-middle class, flaunting their riches, and becoming increasingly hard targets, isolating themselves from the "unwashed masses" in their ivory towers.
- ummonk 5y ago
  Everyone is a victim of crimes, not just upper-middle-class white folks. In fact, the UMC folks are the ones who can afford to just write off the losses caused by property crimes, and are less susceptible to fall victim to the worst crimes, like murder.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  Is there some background information you're referring to? Assault makes up the vast majority of violent crimes, so it's hard to see what it could mean for them to be done "out of sheer desperation". I can see how a desperate person might feel shoplifting or burglary are their only choice to survive, but how could they expect to benefit from punching random people?
azernik 5y ago
When private citizens are allowed to do it (see e.g. Stand Your Ground states, Trayvon Martin, &c) it's also bad. Only without body cams, without even the possibility of institutional reform.
- eikenberry 5y ago
  Cops are private citizens.
  - azernik 5y ago
    Not when they're on the clock. Not for the purposes of the law, nor their employment. The state has much more power in how to bring them into line than it does for private citizens (it just chooses not to use that power in the US).
    - madhadron 5y ago
      Not when they're off the clock either, interestingly. An off duty officer still obeys the reasonable officer standard for use of force rather than the reasonable person standard.

Angostura 5y ago

How much better do you think vigilante forces would be?

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
I dont think it matters. 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-employees-offered-subway-buddies-as-mayor-tries-to-calm-safety-concerns/3044688/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-city-hall-employee...
- gowld 5y ago
  That's not what happening here. The money is for the "true crime" entertainment and the fun of being part of a mob, not crime reduction. That's obvious from the substance and tone of the content published in the app.
- kibwen 5y ago
  Law enforcement does not solve the sort of low-level citizen-brigade crime that this app would address, it only treats the symptoms. The cause is people driven to desperation; put money into social programs to address the root of their desperation.
  - courtf 5y ago
    Prevention is cheaper and results in a friendlier environment for everyone. The proliferation of expensive, reactive solutions that tend to aggravate the very problem they're ostensibly working on is great for shareholders though. Public health is boring by comparison, and no one gets rich when it works.
  - 323454 5y ago
    This is a false dichotomy, but what's worse is that social programs are already heavily funded in all the major West coast cities. For example, LA spends over half a billion dollars (yes, billion with a B) on services for the homeless every year, to very little effect. It's not irrational for someone (even someone who advocates for those very programs and services) to look at the full situation and conclude that the best available option is to just throw in the towel and hire private security.
    - kibwen 5y ago
      > look at the full situation and conclude that the best available option is to just throw in the towel and hire private security Someone who is looking at the full situation would realize that hiring private security does not cause the homeless population to suddenly evaporate. An outsider might start to get the impression that the fundamental right of the upper-middle class is the right not to be reminded that people in poverty exist.
      - 323454 5y ago
        No one cares what outsiders think when they are being assaulted on their walk home from work. If you want justice you must first create order. In addition, it's not like these people don't have sympathy for the plight of the poor: they voted to spend vast sums on tax money trying to fix the root cause of the problem. It's not their fault that these efforts are failing.
    - anthony_romeo 5y ago
      Why is ~$500,000,000 a lot of money for the homeless? The CA budget is hundreds of billions of dollars, and there’s a lot of people who live in that state.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  > People need a solution to rampant crime. Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread. Has that solved crime in SA?
- kelnos 5y ago
  > Take for example SA, where private security forces are widespread. I don't think we want to use as a model a place where police services are only available to the wealthy.
  - ebuchanan 5y ago
    Every new product starts out that way.

joemi 5y ago

What makes you think a private force will be under more scrutiny?

Cyberdog 5y ago
Because they will be more directly accountable to their "clients," for one. I cannot fire a "real" cop whose behavior I do not approve of.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  You seem to be presuming that you will be the one these mercenaries are working for. When mercenaries I hired beat the crap out of you, how will you fire them?
  - ebuchanan 5y ago
    If you hire mercenaries to beat the crap out of someone, both you and the mercenaries will go to jail. There are already more private security officers than government police officers in the US today. This isn't new. They have co-existed for many decades.
    - wearywanderer 5y ago
      What are you going to do, hire your own mercenaries to arrest me and mine? Or do you now recognize the value in real police?
      - sershe 5y ago
        I don't think the author ever claimed there's no value in real police. It actually, ironically, matches the recent left-wing demands to defund. Let the police with their armored cars and helicopters handle real crime, like when your mercenaries beat up my mercenaries. Let the mercenaries handle the small stuff :)

avs733 5y ago

the problem is that it is not in jest. It is accurate and reviews both how weak societal oversight of police is and how important it is. 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.

ben_w 5y ago

Rule of force. 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.

creatorbytes 5y ago

This is partly confirmation bias. Millions of officers, we’re gonna have bad ones. Obviously we need to improve, but to think that officers who have at least some amount of vetting are going to do worse than a security force is utter denial of the human condition. 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.

MengerSponge 5y ago
Yes, we're gonna have bad officers. What happens next? Are they shunned? Forced out of the profession? 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-white-supremacy-american-policing-1167304/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/racism...
- croutonwagon 5y ago
  It is.. But at the same time, its a completely decentralized system and there are MANY that do a very good job at washing out the bad ones. There are plenty that deserve criticism, and even federal investigation/intervention. But by and large the system works. There are millions of police, and hundreds of millions of encounters daily across a huge range of investigations and issues. boiling it down to twitter levels of context is bad and applying such broad strokes is also equally bad. Its certainly not going to encourage good ones to sign up. I know with the way this type of stuff is being portrayed, its a no win for most police, they could quadruple the salaries overnight and some would still balk, because no matter what it a loss.
- wearywanderer 5y ago
  Shunning is crap. Instead of resorting to such dark-age extralegal tactics, how about we get some prosecutors who do their damn jobs and prosecute criminal police? Unfortunately prosecutors are generally elected and many people don't want to admit the root of the problem is with the electorate who choose to elect and re-elect prosecutors who don't want to do their jobs.

jl2718 5y ago

I don’t follow these things at all, but it seems we may be in a bit of a bad romance with authority figures. These total strangers act in perfectly predictable ways given the positions we’ve handed them, and we call it betrayal.

kelnos 5y ago

Yes, and just imagine how bad the situation will be when the police is privatized and accountable only to their shareholders. 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.

Cyberdog 5y ago
Private security forces are accountable to their customers before their shareholders. If I don't like how my private security company is behaving, I can cancel my contract and switch to another company. When enough contracts are cancelled, then these hypothetical shareholders get involved. If I could cancel the "contract" with my local law enforcement agencies, I would have done that a long, long time ago.
rapjr9 5y ago
I see this news as a loss of faith in the police. If the police are not trusted or not helping or making things worse then of course people will form their own gangs for protection. Citizen is trying to profit off that. Businesses and rich people do this all the time, this sounds like a service for less wealthy people of the same nature. It could help tame the police if independent observers with the power to intervene and wearing body cameras streaming to a remote server show up at incidents. In fact some people may specifically want protection from the police in situations where they think the police may react badly (e.g., trying to get help for someone with mental health problems). Goons for rent would be a bad way to implement this service. Observers and defenders and negotiators and de-escalators for hire would make more sense and have less liability for the company offering the service. This is the basic idea behind lawyers, you can not trust government to watch out for your interests so you hire an advocate to represent you and protect you. In fact, temporary legal representation during a sudden crisis is another service Citizen could offer. Calling a lawyer to be present during a crisis is something anyone can already do if they can afford it. Privatized police already exist (campus police, corporate police, security guards, even military mercenaries who do policing work). Hiring an observer/witness for cheap seems like a great new business model!

deugo 5y ago

I agree about these violent lawless police forces, but those crime victims are not exactly innocent either. Most (violent) crime is done out of sheer desperation, and the root cause of this desperation can often be traced back to the (predominantly white) upper-middle class, flaunting their riches, and becoming increasingly hard targets, isolating themselves from the "unwashed masses" in their ivory towers.

ummonk 5y ago
Everyone is a victim of crimes, not just upper-middle-class white folks. In fact, the UMC folks are the ones who can afford to just write off the losses caused by property crimes, and are less susceptible to fall victim to the worst crimes, like murder.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
Is there some background information you're referring to? Assault makes up the vast majority of violent crimes, so it's hard to see what it could mean for them to be done "out of sheer desperation". I can see how a desperate person might feel shoplifting or burglary are their only choice to survive, but how could they expect to benefit from punching random people?

azernik 5y ago

When private citizens are allowed to do it (see e.g. Stand Your Ground states, Trayvon Martin, &c) it's also bad. Only without body cams, without even the possibility of institutional reform.

eikenberry 5y ago
Cops are private citizens.
- azernik 5y ago
  Not when they're on the clock. Not for the purposes of the law, nor their employment. The state has much more power in how to bring them into line than it does for private citizens (it just chooses not to use that power in the US).
  - madhadron 5y ago
    Not when they're off the clock either, interestingly. An off duty officer still obeys the reasonable officer standard for use of force rather than the reasonable person standard.