9 ms·

Facebook offers to pay Menlo Park $600k to hire a cop

74 points by bdehaaff 13y ago

Shenglong 13y ago
Interesting. Increased security, faster response times, and public image at such a cheap rate is probably a no-brainer for large tech companies like Facebook. I feel like we're going to see more private funding for public positions in the (perhaps distant) future, but I suppose the obvious question is: at what point does private funding of public officials become theoretically troublesome? Some would call this the start to an unsettling change.
- bane 13y ago
  There's a movie about this exact subject called Robocop.
  - Argorak 13y ago
    Privatized police forces are also one of the standard topics of cyberpunk.
    - nieve 13y ago
      It's been obvious for a while now that we're living in a dystopian cyberpunk future, it just snuck up on us: * Killer drones. Ubiquitous surveillance by both government & business. * Bad data that destroys one's ability to travel, get credit, find work, or avoid being thrown into jail out of nowhere. * More and more armed citizens shooting each other over minor things. * Flash mobs for every purpose under the sun. * Samizdata. * Manipulating the cops into raiding innocent targets while using software to conceal your identity. Absolute and complete lack of airships. * Corporate domination of the political process with unlimited donations. * Massive and growing wealth inequality. * Political campaigns severally wounded by software failures. * "You're not the customer, you're the product." * DDOS for commercial advantage. * Arresting people as "terrorists" to seize embarrassing stolen information. * International treaties negotiated at the behest of corporations as backdoors to subverting the legislative process. * No-recruit agreements for the rank & file combined with vicious competition for the top talent. People carrying half their life in portable computer devices. * Ransomware in a myriad of forms. * Vast government computer intrusion programs. * Criminalization of access and dissemination of public information. Criminalization of downloading too much from something you've got access rights to. Criminalization of downloading from open directories with no warnings on them. * New diseases, rising seas, freakish weather. * A resurgent, militaristic Russia invading various countries. * A resurgent, militaristic USA invading various countries. Admittedly the cyberware is a bit slow in coming, AI is still the same 10 years off as always, self-driving cars are barely at the testing stage, sub-orbital planes are a pipe dream, and nobod thinks the Net looks like brightly colored blocks, but it's still unsettlingly close.
      - spacehome 13y ago
        We have more guns, but fewer armed citizens, and violence has been steadily declining for a couple decades now.
        nieve 13y ago
        I should have phrased that more clearly. The cyberpunk thing is that we've got more aggressively open carrying and more dramaticly stupid shooting incidents like the string in Florida, very much the way a lot of cyberpunk has the trope of heavily armed idiots opening fire at the slightest excuse. We have nothing like cyberpunk levels of violence and as you point out it's mostly getting better, but we do have more incidents that'd fit nicely in a book than we used to and we have more people displaying weapons. I'm thinking about the little color bits thrown into cyberpunk to clue the audience in and things like the Zimmerman, Dunn, and Reeves cases fit in perfectly with that (modulo actual human tragedy).
    - inanov 13y ago
      I have been thinking so, but i learned that you can hire a cop in US! I mean not a "freelance cop", this one's legal, wow.
  - enraged_camel 13y ago
    Why do you think Google is investing so much into robotics? ;)
    - erichurkman 13y ago
      To ensure technology and robotics advance quickly enough such that Robocop 3 is eventually undone from all timelines past, present, and future. Obviously.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- legacy2013 13y ago
  If they want to make a donation to the city with a stipulation that it goes towards a new officer being hired that's fine. It becomes unsettling if they begin being able to dictate what that public official is supposed to do
  - GuiA 13y ago
    It's a very fuzzy line though. One moment they can be making regular donations to the city, and at another moment they can say "oh you know those donations we've been making, we'd probably have to stop because we can't afford them anymore... Unless of course law X gets passed, wink wink"
    - sliverstorm 13y ago
      Or even more subtly, "You know that cop whose salary we are basically paying? We were just thinking, it would be really nice if he did X more often and Y less often. Don't you agree?"
- jonnathanson 13y ago
  Some lines are being blurred here, and perhaps it's troubling in the abstract, but it's too early to tell. For now, it seems more like a donation and less like a buyout. If we want to call attention to something very troubling in the here and now, we should look at the for-profit prison industry. That's a whole different ball of wax.
- a3n 13y ago
  We name stadiums after corporations (by selling the naming rights). I'm sure we'll soon be naming mayorships, as occupants of governments from the smallest city to the federal government continue to be elected by cutting budgets and then cry because there's no money to provide basic services. They'll be called smart public-private partnerships.
yeukhon 13y ago
Facebook has committed to provide up to $600,000 over three years, enough in the city's estimate to cover the salary and benefits of a full-time officer. According to this http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-figures-salary-after-5-5-years-plus-huge-perks/#.UxLMIqj2J7M http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-f..., NYPD can make 91K after 6 years in the service. Is Facebook paying less? I don't know the cost of benefit and insurance. I really doubt a single police officer will receive more than $100K benefit in three years. I would be very surprise if they do! I am not against Facebook pays the city to hire additional security personnel. I am all for companies and community putting a fund together to hire additional police officers or firefighters or EMT, but this worries me: "Let's say Facebook has a need of assistance, or some other large company, and says, 'We want to have drills for an active shooter or a bomb threat. We need you to help us put that together.' They'd have an actual person (to assist)," Bertini said. I am not saying we don't want to have more police officers, but right now, rich companies can directly fund government outside of taxation. They are directly paying to hire government employee. Why can't Facebook have their own outreach team to work with local police public relation to carry out such plan (to reduce student truancy). Also, consider security guards are paid at a lower rate, why can't we help boost their salary (see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541541/Google-hiring-security-guards-protect-work-buses-San-Francisco-following-protests-tech-workers-driving-city-rents.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541541/Google-hirin...)? In the case of bomb threat or shooting, I am damn sure a 911 call is enough to get 100 county officers from MP and nearby county. A single officer will not help much. It seems like they are just concerned with unauthorized access rather than defeating crime rate.
- trhway 13y ago
  >Also, consider security guards are paid at a lower rate, why can't we help boost their salary sworn officer vs. security guard is like a queen vs. pawn. >It seems like they are just concerned with unauthorized access rather than defeating crime rate. something like 10 years ago (when i was commuting to that Sun's (back then) campus) there were police presence at that station. Not that it was affecting much, at least at the outsider look it is the same now as it has been through all these years. Given the generational shift - FB employees are supposedly like to walk and ride bikes and live nearby with the campus - the police presence seems like another perk FB is trying to buy for their employees as this place - East Palo Alto - is supposedly looking scary to young people coming from good families in good neighborhoods :)
ars 13y ago
This sets a bad precedent IMO. Are the only people going to get security those that will pay [extra] for it? It just feels wrong to be able to pay government for this kind of thing - kinda like paying the military to do something for you under the color of law.
- mongol 13y ago
  Agree. Tax money should fund the police and democratic means determine what to use them for.
zaroth 13y ago
I find the negative responses quite interesting. From watching The Wire, I assume there typical way of getting this done would be simply Facebook contributing to members of the City Council. Of the two, I might like the open proposal for direct funding of the position more than an envelop of cash passed under the table at Alexander's. While Facebook is free to donate funds for this to the city, or not, I doubt that accepting the contribution creates any kind of enforceable contract, rather a mutual expectation which if the city renegs they simply won't be seeing any more deals like this in the future. I think from the city's perspective it's free money for a cop who is going to be at the new substation anyway.
zaroth 13y ago
This was in one of the comments; > Get the gang activity under control, and it actually would be > quite nice. The irony is, if it became safe, it probably would > gentrify rapidly, housing prices would go up, and the poor people > who rent would have to find somewhere else to live. Is it just me who thinks it's terribly sad there are people apologizing for decreasing crime and therefore increasing property value? The real answer is that housing should NOT be so scarce that the only thing hat makes the price affordable is weekly gang shootings. Supply should be fostered until housing can be both 'safe & affordable' using the myriad tools cities have to foster new construction. An increase to property value is a great service to every property owner (53% owner occupied) in the city, but it's an attack on renters (41%). Another way to put it, cities should be doing great things like this to increase property value, while simultaneously fostering new construction, as a balanced approach to serve their constituency.
- harlanlewis 13y ago
  I absolutely agree with the sentiment, but density housing on high value property tends to result in high rise luxury units rather than affordable apartments. There are worse things, but it doesn't really address the problem.
  - cynicalkane 13y ago
    Yes it does. Housing is a broad market. Scarcity of housing is why a home in a faraway, dangerous neighborhood in the Bay Area could still cost $600k.
  - cbr 13y ago
    When you can only build a small number of apartments you make the most money building luxury ones. But: (1) If we allow more building we end up with as many luxury apartments as there's demand for and developers switch to building more affordable ones. (2) When a rich person moves from wherever they're living now into a luxury apartment that opens up their previous apartment somewhere else.
cookingrobot 13y ago
Here's an alternate proposal: don't let companies donate to government, but do raise their taxes and provide adequate policing.
- pdkl95 13y ago
  If Facebook wants to spend money for the city that badly, they could always volunteer to pay that $600k in extra state and local taxes.
- jessriedel 13y ago
  Voluntary cash tranfers between corporations and local municipalities have existed since time immemorial. Look at almost any town with a college. Local government are prohibited from taking as much money as they want from local companies by statute, e.g. they can only use property taxes by fair market value. Think of how bad greater discretion would be. Local governments are quirky and idiosyncratic, and are elected by a tiny number of citizens. They are strongly constarined in their powers by the state for a reason.
jcc80 13y ago
"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security" This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police. It sounds like they want their own private security but one that has police powers. What comes to mind is cities that try and fix issues related to the homeless with police because it's a complex human problem that some people & businesses try to solve with punishment/enforcement. At the least, I'll venture to say there's more effective ways to combat truancy than unleashing police on them.
- lutusp 13y ago
  > This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. It's also probably unconstitutional, on the ground that it produces at least the appearance of selective enforcement. This kind of goal is usually achieved by hiring a private security guard, rather than paying a (normally) taxpayer-funded police department to focus its attention on a specific zone.
  - jmccree 13y ago
    I'm not really not sure about the unconstitutional argument, but it's extremely common. Normally it's done more explicitly by hiring off duty officers. NYPD has the paid detail unit to organize private details for businesses. Where I live in Atlanta, every neighborhood you'd want to live in has their own privately paid force of off-duty officers patrolling. I'm more surprised that facebook is basically offering a grant/donation than outright hiring their own off-duty officers.
    - e12e 13y ago
      But off-duty officers are just civilians? They have no added powers to use force against citizens?
verelo 13y ago
Private police forces, or bribes. You be the judge...
neilk 13y ago
A friend of mine owns a house a few blocks from Facebook. She has had to stay in her house due to shootings and police manhunts several times over the past few years. The problem is real and I don't blame Facebook for being concerned. Although, it's sadly typical of them to propose their own privately-paid-for police force.
- bertil 13y ago
  I’m not sure what are the other (short-term) options: Facebook encourages employees to participate in education efforts (STEMs, mostly, for obvious recruiting reasons) and Zuckerberg himself spends a lot there too — but that takes time. De-criminalising drug trade is far more controversial than what Facebook can do. I'm sure they offer well paid jobs to local people as non-technical subsidiaries but… Short of sponsoring a cash-for-gun program, what can they do? That’s a serious question: I’m sure any idea will be explored by Facebook decision-makers who read this.
  - e12e 13y ago
    Paying taxes would be a start?
    - bertil 13y ago
      They don’t escape tax at a local level.
      - e12e 13y ago
        Are you aware of any documentation on this? I'm not sure how state tax works for businesses -- surely they're not paying percentages of revenue? If that revenue is already exported through tax loop-holes out of the country, how can they pay taxes on it in-state? I'm not disputing the claim, I've just never seen any discussion on state tax (except for Amazon trying(?) to dodge it).
pdkl95 13y ago
Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town. Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the company town being one of those "problems from last century we don't see anymore", and dismissing the problem like that is dangerous. The coal companies (and similar) never really lost their towns, regardless of specifics of who's name is on the land deeds. It works out the same when there's only the one employer in the area. Facebook is not alone as a newcomer, either; Google has had some questionable press recently with their buses that seen to go wherever they want like they own the place, and they've been playing land games as well. There was even a story here recently about their price-fixing scam to slow wage growth and prevent competition ("bidding wars"). While current issues like the NSA has us distracted at the moment, I strongly believe this problem - where we forget about the labor issues of the past and allow the industrial-revolution-era problems and abuses slowly creep back in - is the longer-term fight, with stuff like the NSA's spying being more of a symptom of the problem. Many people have observed that some of the NSA's statements and "interpretations" no longer seem to be tethered to any rational "legal basis" or "social contract", as they spin yet another justification for their behavior. Similarly, if Facebook and Google, etc, are allowed to continue buying up bits and pieces of our country, I hope you like that kind of "making up the law as we go" way of doing things. Once they gain that kind of de facto control over a piece of the country, they become effectively sovereign. Any power that might stop them is too far away and dealing with their own mess. What do you call a form of government with a weak, basically non-existent amount of central control, thereby letting a handful of very powerful, very rich players to rule over their little corner of the world as they see fit? You call it Feudalism, of course. [1] http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/facebook-housing-complex/ http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/facebook-housing-complex/ [2] http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/feminisms-tipping-point-who-wins-from-leaning-in http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/feminisms-tip... [3] http://thebaffler.com/past/facebook_feminism_like_it_or_not http://thebaffler.com/past/facebook_feminism_like_it_or_not
- skore 13y ago
surstroemming 13y ago
They could just start paying their taxes. Like normal people. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/08/facebook-uk-corporation-tax-zero-income http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/08/facebook-uk-...
- dopamean 13y ago
  It seems they want to pay their taxes a la carte.
ck2 13y ago
It's funny how "active shooter" (aka too-common armed mass murderer) is buried in there, when it is really their primary reason since the USA will never have gun sanity. They don't want the cop to do any kind of citations, so they just want the armed presence that is licensed to kill (which I believe statistics say is more likely to shoot a bystander).
sushirain 13y ago
Can firms also fund a judge position in the US? An entire police station? A prison?
puppetmaster3 13y ago
prevent truancy. lol.

74 points by bdehaaff 13y ago

Interesting. Increased security, faster response times, and public image at such a cheap rate is probably a no-brainer for large tech companies like Facebook. I feel like we're going to see more private funding for public positions in the (perhaps distant) future, but I suppose the obvious question is: at what point does private funding of public officials become theoretically troublesome? Some would call this the start to an unsettling change.

bane 13y ago
There's a movie about this exact subject called Robocop.
- Argorak 13y ago
  Privatized police forces are also one of the standard topics of cyberpunk.
  - nieve 13y ago
    It's been obvious for a while now that we're living in a dystopian cyberpunk future, it just snuck up on us: * Killer drones. Ubiquitous surveillance by both government & business. * Bad data that destroys one's ability to travel, get credit, find work, or avoid being thrown into jail out of nowhere. * More and more armed citizens shooting each other over minor things. * Flash mobs for every purpose under the sun. * Samizdata. * Manipulating the cops into raiding innocent targets while using software to conceal your identity. Absolute and complete lack of airships. * Corporate domination of the political process with unlimited donations. * Massive and growing wealth inequality. * Political campaigns severally wounded by software failures. * "You're not the customer, you're the product." * DDOS for commercial advantage. * Arresting people as "terrorists" to seize embarrassing stolen information. * International treaties negotiated at the behest of corporations as backdoors to subverting the legislative process. * No-recruit agreements for the rank & file combined with vicious competition for the top talent. People carrying half their life in portable computer devices. * Ransomware in a myriad of forms. * Vast government computer intrusion programs. * Criminalization of access and dissemination of public information. Criminalization of downloading too much from something you've got access rights to. Criminalization of downloading from open directories with no warnings on them. * New diseases, rising seas, freakish weather. * A resurgent, militaristic Russia invading various countries. * A resurgent, militaristic USA invading various countries. Admittedly the cyberware is a bit slow in coming, AI is still the same 10 years off as always, self-driving cars are barely at the testing stage, sub-orbital planes are a pipe dream, and nobod thinks the Net looks like brightly colored blocks, but it's still unsettlingly close.
    - spacehome 13y ago
      We have more guns, but fewer armed citizens, and violence has been steadily declining for a couple decades now.
      - nieve 13y ago
        I should have phrased that more clearly. The cyberpunk thing is that we've got more aggressively open carrying and more dramaticly stupid shooting incidents like the string in Florida, very much the way a lot of cyberpunk has the trope of heavily armed idiots opening fire at the slightest excuse. We have nothing like cyberpunk levels of violence and as you point out it's mostly getting better, but we do have more incidents that'd fit nicely in a book than we used to and we have more people displaying weapons. I'm thinking about the little color bits thrown into cyberpunk to clue the audience in and things like the Zimmerman, Dunn, and Reeves cases fit in perfectly with that (modulo actual human tragedy).
  - inanov 13y ago
    I have been thinking so, but i learned that you can hire a cop in US! I mean not a "freelance cop", this one's legal, wow.
- enraged_camel 13y ago
  Why do you think Google is investing so much into robotics? ;)
  - erichurkman 13y ago
    To ensure technology and robotics advance quickly enough such that Robocop 3 is eventually undone from all timelines past, present, and future. Obviously.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
legacy2013 13y ago
If they want to make a donation to the city with a stipulation that it goes towards a new officer being hired that's fine. It becomes unsettling if they begin being able to dictate what that public official is supposed to do
- GuiA 13y ago
  It's a very fuzzy line though. One moment they can be making regular donations to the city, and at another moment they can say "oh you know those donations we've been making, we'd probably have to stop because we can't afford them anymore... Unless of course law X gets passed, wink wink"
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Or even more subtly, "You know that cop whose salary we are basically paying? We were just thinking, it would be really nice if he did X more often and Y less often. Don't you agree?"
jonnathanson 13y ago
Some lines are being blurred here, and perhaps it's troubling in the abstract, but it's too early to tell. For now, it seems more like a donation and less like a buyout. If we want to call attention to something very troubling in the here and now, we should look at the for-profit prison industry. That's a whole different ball of wax.
a3n 13y ago
We name stadiums after corporations (by selling the naming rights). I'm sure we'll soon be naming mayorships, as occupants of governments from the smallest city to the federal government continue to be elected by cutting budgets and then cry because there's no money to provide basic services. They'll be called smart public-private partnerships.

yeukhon 13y ago

Facebook has committed to provide up to $600,000 over three years, enough in the city's estimate to cover the salary and benefits of a full-time officer. According to this http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-figures-salary-after-5-5-years-plus-huge-perks/#.UxLMIqj2J7M http://jeffwongdesign.com/2010/03/nypd-officers-can-make-6-f..., NYPD can make 91K after 6 years in the service. Is Facebook paying less? I don't know the cost of benefit and insurance. I really doubt a single police officer will receive more than $100K benefit in three years. I would be very surprise if they do! I am not against Facebook pays the city to hire additional security personnel. I am all for companies and community putting a fund together to hire additional police officers or firefighters or EMT, but this worries me: "Let's say Facebook has a need of assistance, or some other large company, and says, 'We want to have drills for an active shooter or a bomb threat. We need you to help us put that together.' They'd have an actual person (to assist)," Bertini said. I am not saying we don't want to have more police officers, but right now, rich companies can directly fund government outside of taxation. They are directly paying to hire government employee. Why can't Facebook have their own outreach team to work with local police public relation to carry out such plan (to reduce student truancy). Also, consider security guards are paid at a lower rate, why can't we help boost their salary (see http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541541/Google-hiring-security-guards-protect-work-buses-San-Francisco-following-protests-tech-workers-driving-city-rents.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2541541/Google-hirin...)? In the case of bomb threat or shooting, I am damn sure a 911 call is enough to get 100 county officers from MP and nearby county. A single officer will not help much. It seems like they are just concerned with unauthorized access rather than defeating crime rate.

trhway 13y ago
>Also, consider security guards are paid at a lower rate, why can't we help boost their salary sworn officer vs. security guard is like a queen vs. pawn. >It seems like they are just concerned with unauthorized access rather than defeating crime rate. something like 10 years ago (when i was commuting to that Sun's (back then) campus) there were police presence at that station. Not that it was affecting much, at least at the outsider look it is the same now as it has been through all these years. Given the generational shift - FB employees are supposedly like to walk and ride bikes and live nearby with the campus - the police presence seems like another perk FB is trying to buy for their employees as this place - East Palo Alto - is supposedly looking scary to young people coming from good families in good neighborhoods :)

ars 13y ago

This sets a bad precedent IMO. Are the only people going to get security those that will pay [extra] for it? It just feels wrong to be able to pay government for this kind of thing - kinda like paying the military to do something for you under the color of law.

mongol 13y ago
Agree. Tax money should fund the police and democratic means determine what to use them for.

zaroth 13y ago

I find the negative responses quite interesting. From watching The Wire, I assume there typical way of getting this done would be simply Facebook contributing to members of the City Council. Of the two, I might like the open proposal for direct funding of the position more than an envelop of cash passed under the table at Alexander's. While Facebook is free to donate funds for this to the city, or not, I doubt that accepting the contribution creates any kind of enforceable contract, rather a mutual expectation which if the city renegs they simply won't be seeing any more deals like this in the future. I think from the city's perspective it's free money for a cop who is going to be at the new substation anyway.

zaroth 13y ago

This was in one of the comments; > Get the gang activity under control, and it actually would be > quite nice. The irony is, if it became safe, it probably would > gentrify rapidly, housing prices would go up, and the poor people > who rent would have to find somewhere else to live. Is it just me who thinks it's terribly sad there are people apologizing for decreasing crime and therefore increasing property value? The real answer is that housing should NOT be so scarce that the only thing hat makes the price affordable is weekly gang shootings. Supply should be fostered until housing can be both 'safe & affordable' using the myriad tools cities have to foster new construction. An increase to property value is a great service to every property owner (53% owner occupied) in the city, but it's an attack on renters (41%). Another way to put it, cities should be doing great things like this to increase property value, while simultaneously fostering new construction, as a balanced approach to serve their constituency.

harlanlewis 13y ago
I absolutely agree with the sentiment, but density housing on high value property tends to result in high rise luxury units rather than affordable apartments. There are worse things, but it doesn't really address the problem.
- cynicalkane 13y ago
  Yes it does. Housing is a broad market. Scarcity of housing is why a home in a faraway, dangerous neighborhood in the Bay Area could still cost $600k.
- cbr 13y ago
  When you can only build a small number of apartments you make the most money building luxury ones. But: (1) If we allow more building we end up with as many luxury apartments as there's demand for and developers switch to building more affordable ones. (2) When a rich person moves from wherever they're living now into a luxury apartment that opens up their previous apartment somewhere else.

cookingrobot 13y ago

Here's an alternate proposal: don't let companies donate to government, but do raise their taxes and provide adequate policing.

pdkl95 13y ago
If Facebook wants to spend money for the city that badly, they could always volunteer to pay that $600k in extra state and local taxes.
jessriedel 13y ago
Voluntary cash tranfers between corporations and local municipalities have existed since time immemorial. Look at almost any town with a college. Local government are prohibited from taking as much money as they want from local companies by statute, e.g. they can only use property taxes by fair market value. Think of how bad greater discretion would be. Local governments are quirky and idiosyncratic, and are elected by a tiny number of citizens. They are strongly constarined in their powers by the state for a reason.

jcc80 13y ago

"The sworn officer would focus on helping local schools increase their safety and prevent student truancy and on working with the area's large businesses to improve their security" This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. I say that because if you want to address the underlying issues and really "solve" the problem, you wouldn't do it with police. It sounds like they want their own private security but one that has police powers. What comes to mind is cities that try and fix issues related to the homeless with police because it's a complex human problem that some people & businesses try to solve with punishment/enforcement. At the least, I'll venture to say there's more effective ways to combat truancy than unleashing police on them.

lutusp 13y ago
> This really means harassing and arresting problem students and undesirables who are loitering near businesses. It's also probably unconstitutional, on the ground that it produces at least the appearance of selective enforcement. This kind of goal is usually achieved by hiring a private security guard, rather than paying a (normally) taxpayer-funded police department to focus its attention on a specific zone.
- jmccree 13y ago
  I'm not really not sure about the unconstitutional argument, but it's extremely common. Normally it's done more explicitly by hiring off duty officers. NYPD has the paid detail unit to organize private details for businesses. Where I live in Atlanta, every neighborhood you'd want to live in has their own privately paid force of off-duty officers patrolling. I'm more surprised that facebook is basically offering a grant/donation than outright hiring their own off-duty officers.
  - e12e 13y ago
    But off-duty officers are just civilians? They have no added powers to use force against citizens?

verelo 13y ago

Private police forces, or bribes. You be the judge...

neilk 13y ago

A friend of mine owns a house a few blocks from Facebook. She has had to stay in her house due to shootings and police manhunts several times over the past few years. The problem is real and I don't blame Facebook for being concerned. Although, it's sadly typical of them to propose their own privately-paid-for police force.

bertil 13y ago
I’m not sure what are the other (short-term) options: Facebook encourages employees to participate in education efforts (STEMs, mostly, for obvious recruiting reasons) and Zuckerberg himself spends a lot there too — but that takes time. De-criminalising drug trade is far more controversial than what Facebook can do. I'm sure they offer well paid jobs to local people as non-technical subsidiaries but… Short of sponsoring a cash-for-gun program, what can they do? That’s a serious question: I’m sure any idea will be explored by Facebook decision-makers who read this.
- e12e 13y ago
  Paying taxes would be a start?
  - bertil 13y ago
    They don’t escape tax at a local level.
    - e12e 13y ago
      Are you aware of any documentation on this? I'm not sure how state tax works for businesses -- surely they're not paying percentages of revenue? If that revenue is already exported through tax loop-holes out of the country, how can they pay taxes on it in-state? I'm not disputing the claim, I've just never seen any discussion on state tax (except for Amazon trying(?) to dodge it).

pdkl95 13y ago

Add this data point to Facebook setting up their own dorm/apartment project[1] and their efforts prevent employees from having any free time outside of work[2] so they can undo the last century or so of social progress that gave us stuff like "(classic) feminism" and "unions"[3]. Facebook is trying to set up their own Company Town. Usually, the response to this interpretation is to dismiss the possibility, with the company town being one of those "problems from last century we don't see anymore", and dismissing the problem like that is dangerous. The coal companies (and similar) never really lost their towns, regardless of specifics of who's name is on the land deeds. It works out the same when there's only the one employer in the area. Facebook is not alone as a newcomer, either; Google has had some questionable press recently with their buses that seen to go wherever they want like they own the place, and they've been playing land games as well. There was even a story here recently about their price-fixing scam to slow wage growth and prevent competition ("bidding wars"). While current issues like the NSA has us distracted at the moment, I strongly believe this problem - where we forget about the labor issues of the past and allow the industrial-revolution-era problems and abuses slowly creep back in - is the longer-term fight, with stuff like the NSA's spying being more of a symptom of the problem. Many people have observed that some of the NSA's statements and "interpretations" no longer seem to be tethered to any rational "legal basis" or "social contract", as they spin yet another justification for their behavior. Similarly, if Facebook and Google, etc, are allowed to continue buying up bits and pieces of our country, I hope you like that kind of "making up the law as we go" way of doing things. Once they gain that kind of de facto control over a piece of the country, they become effectively sovereign. Any power that might stop them is too far away and dealing with their own mess. What do you call a form of government with a weak, basically non-existent amount of central control, thereby letting a handful of very powerful, very rich players to rule over their little corner of the world as they see fit? You call it Feudalism, of course. [1] http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/facebook-housing-complex/ http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/facebook-housing-complex/ [2] http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/feminisms-tipping-point-who-wins-from-leaning-in http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/feminisms-tip... [3] http://thebaffler.com/past/facebook_feminism_like_it_or_not http://thebaffler.com/past/facebook_feminism_like_it_or_not

skore 13y ago

surstroemming 13y ago

They could just start paying their taxes. Like normal people. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/08/facebook-uk-corporation-tax-zero-income http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/08/facebook-uk-...

dopamean 13y ago
It seems they want to pay their taxes a la carte.

ck2 13y ago

It's funny how "active shooter" (aka too-common armed mass murderer) is buried in there, when it is really their primary reason since the USA will never have gun sanity. They don't want the cop to do any kind of citations, so they just want the armed presence that is licensed to kill (which I believe statistics say is more likely to shoot a bystander).

sushirain 13y ago

Can firms also fund a judge position in the US? An entire police station? A prison?

puppetmaster3 13y ago

prevent truancy. lol.