5 ms·

The Thin Purple Line

74 points by walterbell 2y ago

Animats 2y ago
"Allied Universal"[1] I had no idea they were that big. 800,000 employees. They're the parent company of G4S now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Universal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Universal
avidiax 2y ago
A high or increasing fraction of guard labor [1] doesn't bode well for an economy or a society. It's a sign that there may be an increasing amount of defection vs cooperation in a society, either more people where the marginal calculus has tipped, or the existing defectors are working harder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor
- PhilipRoman 2y ago
  Unrelated but that Wikipedia page seems to be a bit biased. What has capitalism specifically got to do with guard labor? Do communist and socialist societies not need guards, prisons and militaries?
  - razakel 2y ago
    Because guarding something does not generate new capital.
  - Hikikomori 2y ago
    Does police in USA have any duties other than protecting capital?
    - mcmcmc 2y ago
      Giving out speeding tickets
      - Tade0 2y ago
        So raising capital then.
        mcmcmc 2y ago
        Or reducing traffic deaths from dangerous driving with a financial deterrent Did you know that during GWOT, US military personnel deployed to combat zones were more likely to be killed in a car accident after returning home than they were to be actually killed in combat? Cops being abusive pigs doesn’t invalidate the logic behind the law, but then again it always has been the uneven enforcement that’s the problem
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        IMO traffic enforcement is convenient busywork to keep cops occupied until capital needs them for something specific. As a bonus, it generates lots of interactions with the public that they can choose to turn violent if they want to let off some steam, and so keeps a persistent note of terror playing.
        User23 2y ago
        Traffic deaths have surged with the post 2020 decrease in enforcement. Cars are dangerous and bad drivers kill people.
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        Oh, definitely. That's why its a convenient thing to use surplus-at-the-moment cops for.
        fasa99 2y ago
        I figure it's both. There are 10 gorillion cops and municipalities. Some likely have policies and staff that get along well with the public and just try to administrate traffic in a safe and fair way. Some treat it as a cash cow and care more about the revenue stream than increase or decrease in harm. It's one of those things where both sides of the argument can be true in specific cases, making it perfect "internet debate" fodder.
    - TacticalCoder 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - Hikikomori 2y ago
        I meant capital as US police has no duty to protect lives of citizens. https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/how-many-people-realize-police-have https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/how-many-people-realize-police...
        someguydave 2y ago
        No, the police cannot be held liable for failing to protect you which is slightly different
        theoreticalmal 2y ago
        “Nothing in the language of the due process clause itself requires the state to protect the life, liberty and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.” From the article, quoting the Supreme Court. I’ll admit that the police may still have a “duty” (whatever that is defined as), but it is certainly true that they aren’t required to protect the public
    - yimmothathird 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - Tade0 2y ago
    The phrasing is odd indeed. In any case in communism majority of theft was committed by the workers themselves, so any guards would likely be in on it anyway. The real economic system and its currency at the same time was the massive web of connections and favours. How does one guard that? My grandfather, who was a surgeon, was reportedly particularly good at obtaining scarce goods like toilet paper - most likely as a token of gratitude for the procedures he performed.
    - nradov 2y ago
      In the USSR, stealing from work was so normalized that it wasn't even called stealing. It was just "carrying out". Jobs in restaurants and meat packing plants were highly desirable not for the wages but for how much food you could steal.
      - zappb 2y ago
        That sounds like what prison life must be like. Get a job cooking for the staff and live the high life in club fed!
  - olddustytrail 2y ago
    "Guard labor" is a specific economic term that applies to Capitalist economies. It's a subset of wage labor which means the wage is set by the market. Communist societies would be more likely to set wages by government.
  - elawler24 2y ago
    Capitalism is a system that tries to enforce collaboration between anonymous people and entities, without central planning. But what happens when that doesn’t work? Is it the government or private industry that fills the gaps? Friedrich Hayek wrote on the topic of defending private property as a right to assert control [1]. To me, this feels particularly prevalent in high capitalist societies like the US, where the bond between people is not shared tradition, culture, and values - but rather personal freedom. [1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/friedrich-hayek-dictatorship/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/friedrich-hayek-dictatorshi...
    - from-nibly 2y ago
      In capitalism if there are gaps everyone just gives up and dies. /s
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  I grew up in Africa. It was routine for homeowners to hire armed nightwatchmen. In Nigeria, we had a Touareg guy, with a scimitar. In Morocco, our neighbor had guys with machine guns (which meant we didn’t need much more than a wall), but we lived in a nice area. Our neighbor had some relation to the King. In Uganda, our watchman had a staff (and a holstered pistol). South Africa has so much crime, that even the poorest neighborhoods have broken-glass walls.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Similar story when I visited Nairobi with my then-partner: stayed in a fenced compound with guards; and when we visited my partner's friend, on the bus to her place we passed a supermarket which was guarded by someone holding a light machine gun.
    - jdeibele 2y ago
      We visited somebody in Nairobi. She picked us up at the airport. On the way into her apartment complex, she had to stop her car while the guards ran mirrors under the car to check for bombs. This was shortly after the Westgate Shopping Mall attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - abenga 2y ago
      > someone holding a light machine gun That was probably a cop in plainclothes. Private citizens don't open-carry as a matter of course in Kenya.
  - churchill 2y ago
    The average African country is severely underpoliced. Like, severely, in a way most Westerners can't wrap their heads around. Even though Nigeria claims to have 400k cops, I'm willing to bet at least 100k to 200k are ghost officers. Just like when ISIS started their 2014 offensive and the Iraqi gov. admitted half of their army existed on paper. And, I'm not the one saying it. Nigeria routinely purges thousands of ghost officers from salary rosters and recently claimed it had 80k ghost cops. In a country of 200 million. So, it's a no-brainer why private security is a better deal once you have the means. They're available 24/7 and often have guns, and backup, and other tech.
- hollerith 2y ago
  The central organizing principle of US society is individual freedom, which causes the crime rate to be high, so you need a high proportion of guards (sensu lato) to combat that. In countries where the clan is the organizing principle, in contrast, your family members act as a check on your behavior, but those family members do not count as guards. (If you live in the US, your family has less influence on you because you need them less.)
  - TacticalCoder 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dang 2y ago
      Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you more than once to stop. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - empath75 2y ago
    There is a low level of guard labor that needs to happen in a free society, that's true, but it shouldn't be _increasing_ as a percentage, and it's not a good sign for the health of society at large if it is. Cooperation _isn't_ the natural state of people, and we need to make sure we're increasing the benefits of working together and not just the punishments for crime. Right now, the benefits of the economy are accruing disproportionately to the wealthiest and we need to do something about that, because we're destroying the motivation for people at the bottom rungs to "play nice".
  - throw10920 2y ago
    > The central organizing principle of US society is individual freedom, which causes the crime rate to be high, [citation needed]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- enragedcacti 2y ago
  Police clearance rates of reported crimes have tanked in almost every category of crime. [1] Property crime saw a 30% reduction in clearance rates (17%->12%) from 2019-2022 despite funding/staffing staying flat or going up and crime rates/reporting rates going down.* The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security. Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4] > “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call. > “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing. > However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018. > The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say. [1] https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-solve-rate-eddie-garcia-today-explained https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-so... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting-retail/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli... [4] https://popular.info/p/off-target https://popular.info/p/off-target *caveat that crime data is really complicated, don't take the numbers too literally
  - complaintdept 2y ago
    Econ or Bloomberg had an article about a month or two ago about stores locking up their merch and the motivations for it, and why it's such a stupid idea (sales plummet when you need an employee to unlock deoderant). One of the reasons for locking everything up is that they don't have good inventory management systems and when a manager or higher level person sees empty shelves they assume theft...but often times it either hasn't been ordered or simply hasn't been put on the shelves. Most real theft happens from the trucks delivering the goods. edit: found it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/why-cvs-and-target-locking-up-products-is-backfiring https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/why-cvs-a...
- snakeyjake 2y ago
  Isn't guard labor in the US either decreasing or staying flat? I mean, the entire reason Allied Universal exists is because security (and therefore "guard labor") IS NOT a growth industry. A stable or declining industry inevitably leads to consolidation of the type that formed Allied Universal. US active-duty military personnel: 2023: 1,268,027 (378 per 100k) 2003: 1,434,377 (492 per 100k) 1983: 2,123,349 (921 per 100k) https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014 https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1... https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/defense/ https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/defense/ Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Bailiffs, correctional officers, and jailers occupations: 16 years and over: 2023: 365,000 (109 per 100k) 2000: 395,000 (139 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491500A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491500A Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Police and sheriff's patrol officers occupations: 16 years and over 2023: 686,000 (205 per 100k) 2000: 567,000 (201 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491900A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491900A Population 2023: 339,996,563 2003: 291,109,820 2000: 282,398,554 1983: 230,389,964 https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... edit: Found it! Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Security guards and gaming surveillance officers occupations: 16 years and over 2023: 730,000 (218 per 100k) 2000: 621,000 (219 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254492300A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254492300A
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
So many thin colored lines we can make a new rainbow flag
aspenmayer 2y ago
I worked as an event security guard at the Moscone Center in SF ~10 years ago. If you’re not familiar with the location, it was (at the time, may still be) the main convention center in San Francisco, a few blocks from Market Street downtown. It’s not a particularly rough area, but it’s close to some hot spots like the Tenderloin and Fulsom Street. The center is actually a complex of three buildings, the larger of the two connected via an underground pedestrian walkway, with adjoining staff-only underground tunnels and loading docks. The third building stands alone and isn’t connected to the others, but is on the same intersection across the street from one building and kitty-corner from the other one. Wondercon was held there, and Apple used to hold WWDC at the standalone building (though they brought their own event security, opting not to use the company I worked with). The job was mostly consistent with this article, which was well-written and humanizing for the workers, if not necessarily endearing them to us. I’m glad I had the experience. I got to see a lot of niche trade shows and conventions from setup to tear down which I never would have thought to attend otherwise, as well as see how lading workers made it all happen behind the scenes. One time I arrived at what I thought was to be a normal shift at a women’s leadership conference to be pulled aside by my boss, who told me in unambiguous terms that the First Lady would be dropping by for a speech, and I would be working a door opposite an eminently large and in charge Secret Service agent, who I’ll charitably say didn’t need me but as I was one of a only a few of my company’s event security for that particular event, we essentially acted as liaisons between the event/house security and the public. Beyond that point was authorized access only, which did not include our staff, as we were not necessary. Another notable incident involved a conference for the American Psychiatric Association, protesters from the Church of Scientology, and actual, literal, capital-A Anonymous counter-protesters in Guy Fawkes masks. It was just the CoS at first, and then someone must have said something on Twitter or something, because suddenly there was a flash mob of CoS outnumbered by Anons roughly 2:1, with around 50-75 participants if I had to guess. All while we have a strait-laced normie psych con going on. We had to lockdown the center, locking all exterior public entry doors, move badge checks outside temporarily, and threw up some barricades at the sidewalk to provide a buffer zone between the sidewalk and the center entrance. The whole thing probably lasted a couple hours or less, but it was probably the most San Francisco thing I experienced at that particular job. I even asked Aubrey Cottle about it when he did a Reddit AMA, and he seemed to be a least familiar with the occurrence: https://old.reddit.com/r/anonymous/comments/iclxtc/comment/g2b2if6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/anonymous/comments/iclxtc/comment/g... Stay safe, HN.
nullc 2y ago
> Gallup’s most recent annual crime survey found that 40 percent of Americans are afraid to walk alone at night near their homes, the figure marking a thirty-year high that runs counter to plunging violent-crime rates. ugh. spurious reasoning When areas or situations are unsafe people must make compensating behaviors to protect themselves because nothing else will protect them. They don't go out at night, they don't go out alone, they avoid looking like they have valuables, they especially don't go out at night alone with valuables while being a woman. They take longer routes to avoid worse places, they don't make eye contact. They carry weapons. They change to the other side of the street. The effect of these compensating behaviors is that the recorded rates of crime go down and can continue to drop even as the level of safety and imposition on people's lives goes up. In that case they're not more safe, they're less, but they're not relying on the people whos crime stats we look to for as much protection as they did... which brings me to: Another reason drawing this connection can be fallacious is because in areas of persistently high crime people don't report it because law enforcement will not do anything about it (or won't even take a report). Exceptional events are worth reporting but when a kind of crime is common it's not an exception, reporting is just a waste of time for everyone involved. Again, reported crime can go down while crime is going up. Yet another reason why these figures can be misleading is because the nature of the crimes can change. In one location most shootings may at one point have been drug dealers shooting each other in turf wars, but later they begin shooting uninvolved residents as part of robberies. While its terrible that anyone is getting shot, criminals shooting each other is rightfully less of a concern because it has the obvious personal mitigation of not being involved in the illicit drug trade (for this example...). So yet another reason why you can hear from people that they are less safe even when the stats say crime is decreasing-- essentially simpsons paradox: the way you aggregate or disaggreate data can swap the direction of a trend. No person experiences the population's crime rate, each person experiences their own crime rate. And sure there are also plenty of effects in the other direction too-- the 24 hour news cycle, open records laws, social media feeds, ubiqitous cameras-- all making some people feel like they're in the middle of a warzone even when they're perfectly safe. But the existence of biases in one direction doesn't make the other not exist. And for some people and places the net bias may be one way while for other people and places its another.
- 2y ago
TacticalCoder 2y ago
[flagged]
- rafram 2y ago
  What in the world are you talking about?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - multjoy 2y ago
    He's a massive racist hiding behind some sort of culture war nonsense.
  - srackey 2y ago
    [flagged]
motohagiography 2y ago
security guards deal with the worst aspects of the pubilc in a low status role, there is a lot of irony in the writer expressing sympathy for the people creating nuissances the guards are tasked with managing, but not for the people whose job is to deal with the problems that are beneath even police and vaunted "health professionals." private security is a huge growth market precisely because of the attitudes and beliefs encompassed by Harpers' writers and readership. I was glad to read that the author had to do some walking as part of the job as it sounded like he would have benefited from the exercise, yet even that didn't seem to soften his aspirational contempt for people who do physical work. The one thing I would advocate for in the private security business would be fitness standards as that sets a bar for some basic competence that would add a dynamic with more dignity and respect in the role. Even though I would agree the whole job is the living symbol of policy failures and naive sentimental politics, if there's a bet to make on growth, managing the consequences of those failures seems like an unlimited opportunity.
- stonogo 2y ago
  Getting paid minimum wage to wander around an empty building will not become a status job no matter how many sit-ups you do. Training standards would help. Paying real wages would help more.
fivre 2y ago
in 2010, i did a study abroad semester in moscow and was confused by all the armed security in grocery stores, standing around, doing nothing. i only later connected the dots from the recent breakdown of social order in the 1990s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrQe9J8Cv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrQe9J8Cv8 is a contemporary far-past artistic take on it, the chorus is roughly "in the nineties, they killed people, and ran around naked and mad") rather strange trip to see the same arrive in the us
skeeter2020 2y ago
I was a security guard for a professional hockey team facility when I first moved to the big city to meet people and have something to do. I only booked shifts for games and concerts I wanted to watch, but couldn't afford or would never buy. I was terrible at my job and put in less than minimum efforts (think: didn't check tickets and never learned the layout of the arena).Instead of quiting I just stopped going to work. Even this version of "security guard" absolutely sucked.

74 points by walterbell 2y ago

"Allied Universal"[1] I had no idea they were that big. 800,000 employees. They're the parent company of G4S now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Universal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Universal

avidiax 2y ago

A high or increasing fraction of guard labor [1] doesn't bode well for an economy or a society. It's a sign that there may be an increasing amount of defection vs cooperation in a society, either more people where the marginal calculus has tipped, or the existing defectors are working harder. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guard_labor

PhilipRoman 2y ago
Unrelated but that Wikipedia page seems to be a bit biased. What has capitalism specifically got to do with guard labor? Do communist and socialist societies not need guards, prisons and militaries?
- razakel 2y ago
  Because guarding something does not generate new capital.
- Hikikomori 2y ago
  Does police in USA have any duties other than protecting capital?
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    Giving out speeding tickets
    - Tade0 2y ago
      So raising capital then.
      - mcmcmc 2y ago
        Or reducing traffic deaths from dangerous driving with a financial deterrent Did you know that during GWOT, US military personnel deployed to combat zones were more likely to be killed in a car accident after returning home than they were to be actually killed in combat? Cops being abusive pigs doesn’t invalidate the logic behind the law, but then again it always has been the uneven enforcement that’s the problem
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        IMO traffic enforcement is convenient busywork to keep cops occupied until capital needs them for something specific. As a bonus, it generates lots of interactions with the public that they can choose to turn violent if they want to let off some steam, and so keeps a persistent note of terror playing.
        User23 2y ago
        Traffic deaths have surged with the post 2020 decrease in enforcement. Cars are dangerous and bad drivers kill people.
        ElevenLathe 2y ago
        Oh, definitely. That's why its a convenient thing to use surplus-at-the-moment cops for.
        fasa99 2y ago
        I figure it's both. There are 10 gorillion cops and municipalities. Some likely have policies and staff that get along well with the public and just try to administrate traffic in a safe and fair way. Some treat it as a cash cow and care more about the revenue stream than increase or decrease in harm. It's one of those things where both sides of the argument can be true in specific cases, making it perfect "internet debate" fodder.
  - TacticalCoder 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - Hikikomori 2y ago
      I meant capital as US police has no duty to protect lives of citizens. https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/how-many-people-realize-police-have https://www.qasimrashid.com/p/how-many-people-realize-police...
      - someguydave 2y ago
        No, the police cannot be held liable for failing to protect you which is slightly different
        theoreticalmal 2y ago
        “Nothing in the language of the due process clause itself requires the state to protect the life, liberty and property of its citizens against invasion by private actors.” From the article, quoting the Supreme Court. I’ll admit that the police may still have a “duty” (whatever that is defined as), but it is certainly true that they aren’t required to protect the public
  - yimmothathird 2y ago
    [flagged]
- Tade0 2y ago
  The phrasing is odd indeed. In any case in communism majority of theft was committed by the workers themselves, so any guards would likely be in on it anyway. The real economic system and its currency at the same time was the massive web of connections and favours. How does one guard that? My grandfather, who was a surgeon, was reportedly particularly good at obtaining scarce goods like toilet paper - most likely as a token of gratitude for the procedures he performed.
  - nradov 2y ago
    In the USSR, stealing from work was so normalized that it wasn't even called stealing. It was just "carrying out". Jobs in restaurants and meat packing plants were highly desirable not for the wages but for how much food you could steal.
    - zappb 2y ago
      That sounds like what prison life must be like. Get a job cooking for the staff and live the high life in club fed!
- olddustytrail 2y ago
  "Guard labor" is a specific economic term that applies to Capitalist economies. It's a subset of wage labor which means the wage is set by the market. Communist societies would be more likely to set wages by government.
- elawler24 2y ago
  Capitalism is a system that tries to enforce collaboration between anonymous people and entities, without central planning. But what happens when that doesn’t work? Is it the government or private industry that fills the gaps? Friedrich Hayek wrote on the topic of defending private property as a right to assert control [1]. To me, this feels particularly prevalent in high capitalist societies like the US, where the bond between people is not shared tradition, culture, and values - but rather personal freedom. [1] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/friedrich-hayek-dictatorship/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/friedrich-hayek-dictatorshi...
  - from-nibly 2y ago
    In capitalism if there are gaps everyone just gives up and dies. /s
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
I grew up in Africa. It was routine for homeowners to hire armed nightwatchmen. In Nigeria, we had a Touareg guy, with a scimitar. In Morocco, our neighbor had guys with machine guns (which meant we didn’t need much more than a wall), but we lived in a nice area. Our neighbor had some relation to the King. In Uganda, our watchman had a staff (and a holstered pistol). South Africa has so much crime, that even the poorest neighborhoods have broken-glass walls.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Similar story when I visited Nairobi with my then-partner: stayed in a fenced compound with guards; and when we visited my partner's friend, on the bus to her place we passed a supermarket which was guarded by someone holding a light machine gun.
  - jdeibele 2y ago
    We visited somebody in Nairobi. She picked us up at the airport. On the way into her apartment complex, she had to stop her car while the guards ran mirrors under the car to check for bombs. This was shortly after the Westgate Shopping Mall attack. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westgate_shopping_mall_attack
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - abenga 2y ago
    > someone holding a light machine gun That was probably a cop in plainclothes. Private citizens don't open-carry as a matter of course in Kenya.
- churchill 2y ago
  The average African country is severely underpoliced. Like, severely, in a way most Westerners can't wrap their heads around. Even though Nigeria claims to have 400k cops, I'm willing to bet at least 100k to 200k are ghost officers. Just like when ISIS started their 2014 offensive and the Iraqi gov. admitted half of their army existed on paper. And, I'm not the one saying it. Nigeria routinely purges thousands of ghost officers from salary rosters and recently claimed it had 80k ghost cops. In a country of 200 million. So, it's a no-brainer why private security is a better deal once you have the means. They're available 24/7 and often have guns, and backup, and other tech.
hollerith 2y ago
The central organizing principle of US society is individual freedom, which causes the crime rate to be high, so you need a high proportion of guards (sensu lato) to combat that. In countries where the clan is the organizing principle, in contrast, your family members act as a check on your behavior, but those family members do not count as guards. (If you live in the US, your family has less influence on you because you need them less.)
- TacticalCoder 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dang 2y ago
    Could you please stop posting in the flamewar style? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we've had to ask you more than once to stop. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- empath75 2y ago
  There is a low level of guard labor that needs to happen in a free society, that's true, but it shouldn't be _increasing_ as a percentage, and it's not a good sign for the health of society at large if it is. Cooperation _isn't_ the natural state of people, and we need to make sure we're increasing the benefits of working together and not just the punishments for crime. Right now, the benefits of the economy are accruing disproportionately to the wealthiest and we need to do something about that, because we're destroying the motivation for people at the bottom rungs to "play nice".
- throw10920 2y ago
  > The central organizing principle of US society is individual freedom, which causes the crime rate to be high, [citation needed]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
enragedcacti 2y ago
Police clearance rates of reported crimes have tanked in almost every category of crime. [1] Property crime saw a 30% reduction in clearance rates (17%->12%) from 2019-2022 despite funding/staffing staying flat or going up and crime rates/reporting rates going down.* The marginal calculus could be tipping, but imo less from issues of social cohesion and more from an abdication of enforcement that necessitates more guard labor in the form of private security. Another partial explanation is just that retail orgs are overreacting and/or cynically crafting a narrative to explain poor business decisions or changing economic conditions.[2][3][4] > “Maybe we cried too much last year” about merchandise losses, Walgreens finance chief James Kehoe acknowledged Thursday on an earnings call. > “Probably we put in too much, and we might step back a little bit from that,” he said of security staffing. > However, it’s not clear the numbers add up. For example, data released by the San Francisco Police Department does not support the explanation Walgreens gave that it was closing five stores because of organized retail theft, the San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2021. One of the shuttered stores that closed had only seven reported shoplifting incidents in 2021 and a total of 23 since 2018, according to the newspaper. Overall, the five stores that closed had fewer than two recorded shoplifting incidents a month on average since 2018. > The National Retail Federation had said that nearly half of the industry’s $94.5 billion in missing merchandise in 2021 was the result of organized theft. It was likely closer to 5 percent, experts say. [1] https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-solve-rate-eddie-garcia-today-explained https://www.vox.com/2023/12/23/24012514/police-crime-data-so... [2] https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shoplifting-retail/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/business/walgreens-shopliftin... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shoplifting-retail-crime-theft-retraction.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/business/organized-shopli... [4] https://popular.info/p/off-target https://popular.info/p/off-target *caveat that crime data is really complicated, don't take the numbers too literally
- complaintdept 2y ago
  Econ or Bloomberg had an article about a month or two ago about stores locking up their merch and the motivations for it, and why it's such a stupid idea (sales plummet when you need an employee to unlock deoderant). One of the reasons for locking everything up is that they don't have good inventory management systems and when a manager or higher level person sees empty shelves they assume theft...but often times it either hasn't been ordered or simply hasn't been put on the shelves. Most real theft happens from the trucks delivering the goods. edit: found it https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/why-cvs-and-target-locking-up-products-is-backfiring https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-08-01/why-cvs-a...
snakeyjake 2y ago
Isn't guard labor in the US either decreasing or staying flat? I mean, the entire reason Allied Universal exists is because security (and therefore "guard labor") IS NOT a growth industry. A stable or declining industry inevitably leads to consolidation of the type that formed Allied Universal. US active-duty military personnel: 2023: 1,268,027 (378 per 100k) 2003: 1,434,377 (492 per 100k) 1983: 2,123,349 (921 per 100k) https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1954-2014 https://historyinpieces.com/research/us-military-personnel-1... https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/defense/ https://usafacts.org/state-of-the-union/defense/ Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Bailiffs, correctional officers, and jailers occupations: 16 years and over: 2023: 365,000 (109 per 100k) 2000: 395,000 (139 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491500A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491500A Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Police and sheriff's patrol officers occupations: 16 years and over 2023: 686,000 (205 per 100k) 2000: 567,000 (201 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491900A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254491900A Population 2023: 339,996,563 2003: 291,109,820 2000: 282,398,554 1983: 230,389,964 https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/population https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni... edit: Found it! Employed full time: Wage and salary workers: Security guards and gaming surveillance officers occupations: 16 years and over 2023: 730,000 (218 per 100k) 2000: 621,000 (219 per 100k) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254492300A https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LEU0254492300A

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

So many thin colored lines we can make a new rainbow flag

aspenmayer 2y ago

I worked as an event security guard at the Moscone Center in SF ~10 years ago. If you’re not familiar with the location, it was (at the time, may still be) the main convention center in San Francisco, a few blocks from Market Street downtown. It’s not a particularly rough area, but it’s close to some hot spots like the Tenderloin and Fulsom Street. The center is actually a complex of three buildings, the larger of the two connected via an underground pedestrian walkway, with adjoining staff-only underground tunnels and loading docks. The third building stands alone and isn’t connected to the others, but is on the same intersection across the street from one building and kitty-corner from the other one. Wondercon was held there, and Apple used to hold WWDC at the standalone building (though they brought their own event security, opting not to use the company I worked with). The job was mostly consistent with this article, which was well-written and humanizing for the workers, if not necessarily endearing them to us. I’m glad I had the experience. I got to see a lot of niche trade shows and conventions from setup to tear down which I never would have thought to attend otherwise, as well as see how lading workers made it all happen behind the scenes. One time I arrived at what I thought was to be a normal shift at a women’s leadership conference to be pulled aside by my boss, who told me in unambiguous terms that the First Lady would be dropping by for a speech, and I would be working a door opposite an eminently large and in charge Secret Service agent, who I’ll charitably say didn’t need me but as I was one of a only a few of my company’s event security for that particular event, we essentially acted as liaisons between the event/house security and the public. Beyond that point was authorized access only, which did not include our staff, as we were not necessary. Another notable incident involved a conference for the American Psychiatric Association, protesters from the Church of Scientology, and actual, literal, capital-A Anonymous counter-protesters in Guy Fawkes masks. It was just the CoS at first, and then someone must have said something on Twitter or something, because suddenly there was a flash mob of CoS outnumbered by Anons roughly 2:1, with around 50-75 participants if I had to guess. All while we have a strait-laced normie psych con going on. We had to lockdown the center, locking all exterior public entry doors, move badge checks outside temporarily, and threw up some barricades at the sidewalk to provide a buffer zone between the sidewalk and the center entrance. The whole thing probably lasted a couple hours or less, but it was probably the most San Francisco thing I experienced at that particular job. I even asked Aubrey Cottle about it when he did a Reddit AMA, and he seemed to be a least familiar with the occurrence: https://old.reddit.com/r/anonymous/comments/iclxtc/comment/g2b2if6/ https://old.reddit.com/r/anonymous/comments/iclxtc/comment/g... Stay safe, HN.

nullc 2y ago

> Gallup’s most recent annual crime survey found that 40 percent of Americans are afraid to walk alone at night near their homes, the figure marking a thirty-year high that runs counter to plunging violent-crime rates. ugh. spurious reasoning When areas or situations are unsafe people must make compensating behaviors to protect themselves because nothing else will protect them. They don't go out at night, they don't go out alone, they avoid looking like they have valuables, they especially don't go out at night alone with valuables while being a woman. They take longer routes to avoid worse places, they don't make eye contact. They carry weapons. They change to the other side of the street. The effect of these compensating behaviors is that the recorded rates of crime go down and can continue to drop even as the level of safety and imposition on people's lives goes up. In that case they're not more safe, they're less, but they're not relying on the people whos crime stats we look to for as much protection as they did... which brings me to: Another reason drawing this connection can be fallacious is because in areas of persistently high crime people don't report it because law enforcement will not do anything about it (or won't even take a report). Exceptional events are worth reporting but when a kind of crime is common it's not an exception, reporting is just a waste of time for everyone involved. Again, reported crime can go down while crime is going up. Yet another reason why these figures can be misleading is because the nature of the crimes can change. In one location most shootings may at one point have been drug dealers shooting each other in turf wars, but later they begin shooting uninvolved residents as part of robberies. While its terrible that anyone is getting shot, criminals shooting each other is rightfully less of a concern because it has the obvious personal mitigation of not being involved in the illicit drug trade (for this example...). So yet another reason why you can hear from people that they are less safe even when the stats say crime is decreasing-- essentially simpsons paradox: the way you aggregate or disaggreate data can swap the direction of a trend. No person experiences the population's crime rate, each person experiences their own crime rate. And sure there are also plenty of effects in the other direction too-- the 24 hour news cycle, open records laws, social media feeds, ubiqitous cameras-- all making some people feel like they're in the middle of a warzone even when they're perfectly safe. But the existence of biases in one direction doesn't make the other not exist. And for some people and places the net bias may be one way while for other people and places its another.

2y ago

TacticalCoder 2y ago

[flagged]

rafram 2y ago
What in the world are you talking about?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- multjoy 2y ago
  He's a massive racist hiding behind some sort of culture war nonsense.
- srackey 2y ago
  [flagged]

motohagiography 2y ago

security guards deal with the worst aspects of the pubilc in a low status role, there is a lot of irony in the writer expressing sympathy for the people creating nuissances the guards are tasked with managing, but not for the people whose job is to deal with the problems that are beneath even police and vaunted "health professionals." private security is a huge growth market precisely because of the attitudes and beliefs encompassed by Harpers' writers and readership. I was glad to read that the author had to do some walking as part of the job as it sounded like he would have benefited from the exercise, yet even that didn't seem to soften his aspirational contempt for people who do physical work. The one thing I would advocate for in the private security business would be fitness standards as that sets a bar for some basic competence that would add a dynamic with more dignity and respect in the role. Even though I would agree the whole job is the living symbol of policy failures and naive sentimental politics, if there's a bet to make on growth, managing the consequences of those failures seems like an unlimited opportunity.

stonogo 2y ago
Getting paid minimum wage to wander around an empty building will not become a status job no matter how many sit-ups you do. Training standards would help. Paying real wages would help more.

fivre 2y ago

in 2010, i did a study abroad semester in moscow and was confused by all the armed security in grocery stores, standing around, doing nothing. i only later connected the dots from the recent breakdown of social order in the 1990s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrQe9J8Cv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrQe9J8Cv8 is a contemporary far-past artistic take on it, the chorus is roughly "in the nineties, they killed people, and ran around naked and mad") rather strange trip to see the same arrive in the us

skeeter2020 2y ago

I was a security guard for a professional hockey team facility when I first moved to the big city to meet people and have something to do. I only booked shifts for games and concerts I wanted to watch, but couldn't afford or would never buy. I was terrible at my job and put in less than minimum efforts (think: didn't check tickets and never learned the layout of the arena).Instead of quiting I just stopped going to work. Even this version of "security guard" absolutely sucked.