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An entrepreneur persuaded New Orleans to let him create a high-tech police force
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- rayiner 11y agoI think it's less alarming than the prospect of expanding public police forces to fill those needs. I'm not looking forward to going back to companies deploying Pinkertons on striking workers, but having private companies in the loop might help stem the abuses of the police unions and administrations. I feel safer with an officer whose pay checks are signed by Facebook than one working for SFPD.
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- rayiner 11y agoTry walking around Hyde Park without either CPD or U of C PD police around. Won't feel safe that way either.
- _0ffh 11y agoLike that'd magically make them less corrupt?
- chipgap98 11y agoI mean on one hand Facebook is a public company and if their private police force is doing fucked up things that is going to impact them negatively. So in reality their officers are probably held to a higher standard and legitimate oversight. On the other hand I don't really like the idea of every company having its own private police force, so I don't want this to become a big thing.
- rayiner 11y agoNothing magic about it. Public police have unions and due process rights to protect them from accountability. Private police generally have neither.
- patientfrog 11y agoThere is a historical precedent for corporation-backed security forces in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_union_busting_in_th...
- flihp 11y agoPinkertons. Anyone taking bets on how long it takes for this guy to get into a dispute with a neighbor and he starts exerting influence through his private police force.
- wheaties 11y agoAt this point, there's probably so many disaffected people that they no longer care about this. What they care about is what is currently affecting them right this second.
- erikb 11y agoOh my god. If the US will start to privatise police then we soon have that all over the planet.
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- kisna72 11y agoJust like in that movie RoboCop lol.
- chiph 11y agoSan Francisco has a private police force that predates the public one. And is less corrupt. http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/21/san-franciscos-private-police http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/21/san-franciscos-private...
- ceejayoz 11y agoThe San Francisco police have 2,000+ officers. The San Francisco Patrol Special Police you refer to have 40. I'd both be interested in the metric you're using to determine "less corrupt" and in how that metric would look if they had 2,000 officers like the SFPD.
- chiph 11y agoThe article goes into it from a historical perspective, but one only has to search "SFPD Corruption" to find many examples. And officers who try to be ethical get punished by the others. http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/sfpd-tries-to-fire-cop-for-balking-at-conducting-illegal-searches/Content?oid=2181868 http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/sfpd-tries-to-fire-cop-...
- ceejayoz 11y agoAs I noted, the SFPD is 50+ times the size, and I'm interested in an actual metric, not anecdotes. I'm pretty suspicious of the contention that a private police force would be somehow immune to corruption - it certainly hasn't been the case with groups like Blackwater.
- millzlane 11y agoOmniCorp - "We've Got the Future Under Control"
- roymurdock 11y ago"...Torres’s squad, the French Quarter Task Force, which at all hours had three armed officers zigzagging the neighborhood in matte black Polaris Rangers that resemble militarized golf carts." "Torres also became involved in setting policy. Earlier that week, his force had coordinated with the N.O.P.D. in two huge arrest sweeps of so-called transients, whose familiar panhandling presence in the neighborhood (ragged clothes, mangy dogs, rusted harmonicas) had not been the subject of recent outrage. But Torres believed them to be a nuisance...The targets of the arrests had not been connected to any serious crimes, and some of the city’s residents saw the move as questionable." "'Crazy, right?' Torres later said. 'I kind of felt like Bruce Wayne.'" So basically this rich businessman has a small force of armed private police legally roaming his neighborhood because a) he had his home burglarized and was pissed off b) he wanted to get rid of some homeless people to raise property values in the rich quarter, where he and his family/friends own a lot of property c) it makes him feel like Batman. It's sad that the current state of public policing has not only allowed, but necessitated this type of questionable vigilante justice.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoTwo words: New Orleans
- flihp 11y agoI was expecting them to be Bobby Jindal
- tomohawk 11y agoThis is not vigilante justice. These are off duty police officers working as an officially sanctioned part of the local government, which is obviously failing to get the job done. A vigilante would shoot the malefactors on the spot, but these officers are arresting the individuals in cooperation with the nopd and their cases are adjudicated like any others. I don't see any problem with someone who has skin in the game and who is passionate getting involved in local governance and trying to find a better way forward. The fact that he is rich and politically connected makes him that much more able to tackle the problem. I suppose the optics would be better if he just packed up and left town and left New Orleans to stew in its own juice. Then he couldn't be accused of a rich guy bossing little guys around. However, this guy has a wealth, talent, and influence, and he's choosing to apply them responsibly. He should be applauded.
- sremani 11y agoThe raise of "private cops" should not surprise anyone. In US where income inequality has risen to greater proportions and the city budgets stagnated. Gated communities, private security and private cops are the next steps of it. They are not as much accountable to public at large. It is tempting to paint all the private cops in a bad picture, but there is some good coming out of it. Where the City Police has become moribund, these guys are the only hope between getting robbed and not getting robbed.
- s_baby 11y agoRise? The original police forces were created and controlled by company towns.
- anentropic 11y agoUSA is a failed state
- pakled_engineer 11y agoThis works as a chase away strategy but East NO is a different matter, nowhere to chase the gangs to.
- baseballmerpeak 11y agoI worked in the Quarter for the better part of two years. The criminals are criminals; the transients are part of the character of the area. Where else in the world do you have a mix of movie stars and millionaires living alongside musicians and artists working hard to survive? As hard as he tries, the Quarter is still in New Orleans. White washing it may make it more appealing to moneyed types and tourists, but it comes at the cost of turning the Quarter into a shell of what it once was.
- bhuga 11y agoI still live here, and I'm sick of the "Crime is part of the character" narrative. The Quarter, Marigny, Bywater, and Treme can have plenty of character without the risk of getting mugged biking home from work.
- sixothree 11y agoStill here as well and I really have some awful sounding opinions on this subject. It's hard to ignore that in the deep south white people are afforded enormous privilege in many ways. And these gutter punks (transients) are overwhelmingly white, young, able bodied. I wish they all go home to their white privileged families.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoThis sounds amazingly close to the start of the CPS in the show Continuum.
- adaml_623 11y agoThere are obvious ethical problems with a private security service supplanting the police. However this is an interesting example of how it might be advantageous to have multiple service providers competing in a market that try to be more efficient and provide more for less money. Maybe there should always be multiple police forces that compete in the same market. It might help get rid of violent cops who driving down the services reviews :-)
- flihp 11y agoAnyone else wondering why a city with a crime problem has had their police force reduced by 500 officers in the last 3 years?
- serve_yay 11y agoWe are insane.