I'm not sure if this is OP's meaning, but, in that book, the moderately-wealthy live in gated communities ("burbclaves") with private security forces, who have nonlethal weapons that trap people in some kind of sticky expanding foam. It's just a minor world-building detail. It shows up when the initial protagonist ("Y.T.") gets involved in a scuffle while delivering pizza to one of these burbclaves. Relatedly, the pizza franchise is owned by "Uncle Enzo", a likeable Italian-American mobster. So everything is in some sense a private protection racket run by one mob or another.
1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone.
2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
1. They may only be the 1% of portlanders who own businesses, but they own 100% of the businesses. The other 99% have to buy bread from somewhere, so it totally affects them. Further, it's happening because of how they voted.
2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
It’s interesting that Portland is seeing record homicides because it’s far more gentrified than ever. Portland had only 54 homicides in 1993, when crime was much higher nationally, and Portland specifically was much seedier. Last couple of years are close to double the 1993 peak, but population growth since then is only 50%.
No this is incorrect, I know people that left from Portland and Seattle following the "firey but mostly peaceful protests" the fact of the matter is they gutted the police, the police that remain know that if they actually do their job they're likely to be the next national outrage, and they are being told by their bosses and the politicians to do nothing. As such the criminals now know they can run wild with no prevention it isn't gentrification it is what happens when an entire city turns their back on any semblance of law and order. Portland will not recover for a long time if ever.
> Further, it's happening because of how they voted.
[citation needed]
Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
> In response to calls to “defund the police,” the city government cut $15 million from the department’s budget. [...] Portland’s homicide rate rose 207 percent from January 2019 through June 2021
> those who are unable to afford private security enjoy little protection from rising crime. Security—once a public good—is being privatized.
Every institution makes mistakes and has malicious actors. But you have to ask yourself how things would be without that institution. You can't just go "The system has problems, down with the system!".
As far as I can tell, that $15 million number represents a 3% cut made as part of a larger effort to balance the city's budget, not any kind of radical defund/abolish initiative.
edit: It might be closer to 6%; different articles seem to have different numbers, and it's not always clear whether the cuts are being described relative to the previous year's budget vs. the proposed budget (often a "cut" is just a smaller-than-expected increase). Either way, it's not very helpful to just cite the raw size of the cut without contextualizing it.
The majority of cities actually saw an increase in their police budget. LA, which had a large defund the police movement, increased their police budget by $150 million a few months after the protests.
The "defund the police" movement was a doomed endeavor with an awful name like that. I sometimes wonder if Leftists movements are purposely giving their movements god awful names like "anti-work", "quiet quitting", and even "black lives matters".
If your movement's name has to be explained, it's purpose has already failed. You shouldn't need to explain a political movements name.
And, unsurprisingly, people calling to defund the police thought about how things would be if we stopped sending thugs with military-grade arms into our communities and calling them police. Also, unsurprisingly, no one who claimed those folks were wrong bothered listening to them.
First, I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing.
Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results.
Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
> I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing.
I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
Fourth, if private security violates your rights you can sue. When government violates your rights they typically get the case dismissed due to 'qualified immunity' which USSC made up in 1970s.
Until the lines get blurred and an off-duty police officer starts moonlighting for private security who violates your rights while you're in commission of a crime and now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. It doesn't seem too unlikely where in the not-so-distant future these private security companies would be made up of accredited police officers.
> now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question.
I am curious if there is case law to support your theory. It would be hilarious to read about a city or county attorney trying to file a motion to dismiss, when the city or county would not be a party to the case.
> It doesn't seem too unlikely where in the not-so-distant future these private security companies would be made up of accredited police officers.
No need to look to the future: this has been going on for a long time and is pretty common. Even though case law has built up, to my understanding it still gets pretty messy.
If you remember your police history, the title of this story is wrong. It’s re-privatization of the police force.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to your comments, there is one “private police force” that is doing well (and good) enough that people have started copying it, and that’s the Cahoots program from White Bird Clinic in Eugene Oregon. They are somewhat of a third party intervention system.
And as a nonprofit they are probably more accurately a public than private sector organization, which might be the key here to avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to the common good. I don’t want bands of hired thugs or the return of the Pinkertons. That’s basically step 2 on the route to a Stephensonian dystopia.
Well, the Pinkertons were only semi-private. They got a federal contract from the Department of Justice in 1871, and it’s after that point that they hit the largest and most powerful state. That’s also when they began getting involved in violently suppressing strikes. This is the opposite of the actions mentioned in the article here. Additionally, the government moved against the Pinkertons as a result of their bad behavior.
I'm shocked (but not totally surprised) at the response to the concept on HN. I cannot even imagine how one could think this is a good thing - necessary, I can understand, but not a good thing.
I don't even know how to argue that this is bad. I'll just lose all my faith in society if this ever happens where I live.
I support private police because they insulate my family from others horrible policy choices. Life isn’t something you can retry.
If there aren’t private police options, I’ll just produce and distribute illegal arms, like many already do. Johnny Methhead gets 0 control over my life, regardless of how his apologists vote.
I’m curious as to your thoughts if you care to share. I’m not really a partisan on anything, but I am strongly distrustful of both megacorps and government.
Equality before the law is a basic principle of Democracy. A privatized police will not, by design, apply the law equally to all people. That's unacceptable.
The current system does not apply the law equally. While I agree in principle, reality doesn’t match the reported ideal. This isn’t due just to police forces, but also to judges, juries, and the quality of lawyers. The rich, the good looking, and the well spoken have a distinct advantage in the court system. Additionally, most people never have their day in court, they’re instead pressured and intimidated into plea bargaining.
Well, personally, I don’t think that police are largely held accountable for the bad actions they sometimes take. Also, the article doesn’t mention anything approximating a cyberpunk hell.
As a country we have played around with private policing (the Pinkerton detective agency) after the civil war. We decided we didn't like it.
Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go.
The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
Well, if the problem they’re addressing is largely petty crimes against businesses like shoplifting, you really only need private security in the business districts. Preventing crime in private homes seems like it’s a much harder task for either private or public security, given the coverage area required.
Law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime (and there is no legal expectation for them to do so). They disincentives crime by seeking to punish those who previously committed a crimes, and they disincentivize vigilante justice by offering a (ideally) non-emotional legal system alternative to retribution.
Technically this is talking about “private security” rather than “law enforcement. The primary goal of private security is typically the security of their clients, not enforcing the law. The article in particular talks about private security preventing crime by addressing root cause (e.g. helping those in need).
Thank you for this reply. It’s scary to see how many are so ready to “defund police” by “funding corporate ability to murder” (my quotes re sentiment) - which is what happened with Pinkertons, etc.
If those homeless camps have drug problems - the lowest hanging fruit may seem like enabling a private police force, but the hanging fruit will be in actually helping the drug problem…
> by “funding corporate ability to murder” (my quotes re sentiment)
I don't know about the discussion, but what I'm taking away from the article is actually what policing could be if the shield of immunity that fuels the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude is taken away.
For sure - but any cohort that’s capable of escalation will escalate on a long enough timeline. Police are more and more “mini militaries” (I am sure there are cities with more $ in police than some nations have in military $)
I think social services, crisis intervention, and mental health/drug help will benefit more and for longer.
That, though, goes against another deep seeded inherent “bonus” to keeping homeless homeless, addicts addicted, and police forces of all styles (pub/priv) in action:
Those “homeless” types scare an entire low/middle class of labor into accepting any wage no matter how exploitative, out of a fear if becoming one of “them.”
while this should be obvious to anyone who has seen the camps, we still get articles that claim "the obvious answer to homelessness" is just more housing. Of course we need more housing but how do cheaper rents convince addicts to change their lifestyle?
it's the conventional argument that's being brought up all the time while claiming "everyone's ignoring it".
doing some novel reporting on homelessness without leaving their homes:
From what I’ve read, the homeless people who sleep on the street and generally create trouble (due to severe addiction and other mental issues) are only about 1/3 of the homeless. A lot of the other homeless you would never recognize as homeless, don’t sleep rough, and are not necessarily “chronically homeless” - those are the ones that would benefit from cheaper housing
Sorry I don’t mean that 1/3 sleep rough, more that 1/3 have big mental issues (and tend to be the ones that sleep rough and the ones you envision when you hear the word “homeless”). For that cohort housing first makes them not-homeless but is insufficient to address their problems. They’re not able to take care of themselves and would need a lot of labor to keep their place habitable and safe.
You would probably spend much more money on maintenance and cleaning than you would on the structure
The evidence disagrees. Housing-first policies in multiple countries have been a smashing successes in reducing addiction, so clearly there are some factors you're missing. For instance, theft and violence is a huge reason homeless people avoid shelters. Having a sanctuary that's somewhat secure from thieves and muggers means they actually add some stability. Stability makes their lives less shitty which reduces the urges to use to escape their shitty situation. That's just one example I've read about.
A combination of "supported" and "independent living" housing options is optimal, using shelters as a short term onboarding and sorting facility.
This also requires a solid policy around social and affordable housing as part of mixed use developments (as opposed to creating social housing "ghettos").
Needle exchanges and safe consumption facilities can be used for initial contact and outreach.
Basically you need to get people into a position where you can help them, then help them to the point where they can help themselves, and provide realistic pathways for this to happen - along with avoiding unrealistic expectations and avoiding pointless gate keeping such as demanding service users remaining clean/sober, etc.
Think of it as solving for Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can fix their drug and mental issues later, right now you need them off the street where they get food/heat/water/shelter, health support, etc.
There's an alternative to that as well. When the poor couldn't pay for the private police they didn't just give up on security they just created their own police force, the Italian Mafia the Irish mob, etc. Almost all of these started to provide security to communities that were otherwise not being provided for.
> People who voted to defund the police are now paying for private security. Multnomah County, where downtown Portland is located, is bluer than blue. Joe Biden won there by more than 79 percent of the votes in 2020. And these people want their private security to come with guns.
Leaving aside the quibble about whether anyone literally voted to “defund the police,” I do find this phenomenon interesting. Our “progressive” private school recently hired a former Detroit cop to patrol the campus with a gun. Super nice guy. But gun control is for the proletariat apparently.
Isn't it a fairly reasonable and consistent position to be in favor of armed professionals with a specific need to carry a weapon but opposed to everyone being able to carry a weapon around whenever they feel like it? The situation you mention is only a gotcha or a contradiction if you assume "gun control" means "nobody should ever have a gun for any reason", which I don't think is an actual view held by many people.
It’s both consistent and reasonable. We had the same policy back in old country: the common people were disarmed, while wealthy people (like my family) had armed guards.
What if the average Joe is the one who has some specific need to carry a weapon? Who will hire the armed professional to protect him after they defund the police?
This line of reasoning is a contradiction because it leads to the conclusion "The average Joe should carry a gun."
"Emma Freire is a senior writer for World magazine" which promises - on its masthead image - the following: "Sound journalism, grounded in facts and Biblical truth"
The Federalist, American Conservative, Former Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.
it's interesting, when you start getting into debating politics in your teens it's easy to fall into the trap of attacking authors instead of arguments, then as you get older you try to be better about this and then it turns around again as you age because giving the people the benefit of the doubt again and again and spending time dismantling their arguments only for them to turn around and publish the next article repeating the same things is a waste of time
People's associations are part of their actions and a relevant part of the context of their writing. The commenter didn't necessarily entirely dismiss the article or the argument because of it, but it is potentially valuable information to have.
It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly. Articles are written by people, with motivations for writing them, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
> It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly
It is a blatant ad hominem comment that adds nothing to the discussion of whether or not the arguments in the article are valid, but rather is an attempt to prejudice your opinion.
Merely mentioning the publication a writer voluntarily contributes to is not ad hominem are you serious lol. That is a simple fact about their body of work.
It is also not prejudiced to evaluate a single work of a writer in its context within their oeuvre, and to consider your own knowledge of their previous works when evaluating a new one. That is merely judgement, friend.
You might would have us so carefully prune away context that judgement becomes impossible, but it's not a moral failure of others that they approach this differently.
The first two lines are statements of fact. The third line:
> Alrighty then.
is a blatant dog whistle.
Even without the last line, it's not enough to simply say "just providing context!" It's a bit like jumping into a conversation about the affordable care act by saying "President Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. He was mentored by Bill Ayers, a man the FBI described as the leader of a terrorist group."
It is all factual context, utterly irrelevant to the merits of the ACA and adds nothing to the conversation other than the prejudicial implication.
Do people choose their middle names, generally? Cassius Clay did, and it most certainly informed on the things he said later, after making that decision. If he was born Muhammad Ali, then it would be a shitty thing to do to judge his words on his birth name.
Did associating with Ayers preclude Obama from getting a TSC? Nope. Ayers wasn't active when he was Obama's BFF. He wasn't even a felon. Maybe Ayers was Wundergrounding it up in 2008, but he wasn't, unless I guess he was?
There was a political price paid there[1] - in Obama's choice of mentors - and if that's not perceptible I don't know what to say. Among people who cared, Ayers. was a millstone. Among other people, it was a selling point. Which hits to the point of why everyone's getting so incensed right here and now: Bill Ayers was a hero to a part of America, and to another part of America he was the devil himself.
We're in the same land, but we've come to have completely opposite values, fundamentally different, so that everything becomes an existential threat. The idea that this crisis has been artificially generated is of course scurrilous and would never occur to someone with a generous view of human behavior.
[1] Conveniently steering eyeballs away from Goldman's PAC effectively putting Obama on the DNC board.
Either or both if we feel like it. This isn't debate club we're not obligated to pretend that arguments drop from the sky separate from the people who make them.
It's the "grounded in Biblical truth" bit that got me, to be honest. What the hell kind of paper puts that on their masthead?
I get just as jiggly when Sagan preaches about nukes, given the . . ahem . . standing of the World Peace Council (WPC)
I walked away from a paycheck with a similar deal[1], because I didn't want that money to be attached to my name. Context, context, context, context.
You think that the money's not going to get inside your judgement? All that Robert Novak? You're a better man than me. I'd be tootin whatever horn the security services brings me in a bloodstained briefcase, just like my hero Bob.
[1] Although it was an aerospace systems integrator that, for whatever reason, boasted about its CEO-led prayer lunches. On its public website. Whew. Sorry folks, Jesus is for after hours.
Somewhat surprisingly, this seems to be basically a pro 'defund the police' argument in the end.
> “If you have an effective criminal-justice system, and you have effective community partners that are assisting towards long-term community transformation, then, yes, traditional security models—the security model of observe and report—works,” he says. “But when you have a breakdown in societal connectivity, you lose the ability to operate out of that business model. So we had to come up with something unique and different.”
And what they came up with is something with probably better outcomes (in terms of reducing violence) than law enforcement.
Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y".
>Hiring private security on a large scale is novel in America.
No, it is not. Colleges and universities have been doing it for many decades.
"Seventy-five percent of campus law-enforcement agencies have armed officers, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Nine in 10 public campuses had “sworn” officers, meaning those who can carry a gun, have arrest power, and wear a badge; four in 10 private campuses did."[0]
TFA is focused primarily on policing related to homeless persons, while I'm pretty sure with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime (murder, rape, armed robbery, gang-related activity).
The local state university has a real police department created by state law, it’s not private security but as legitimate as any other police department. When you call 911 within certain areas, they’re who are dispatched.
This is pretty common around the country for larger universities.
I live next to a Big Ten university, and the campus police are essentially a branch of the city police department, with some special capabilities such as crowd control at the revenue sports games.
> with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime
What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing?
Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any higher than that.
>What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing?
I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
College students are essentially transients - those who live on urban campuses are typically not homeowners, not car-owners, and not in married/domestic partner/young children living situations, since they are usually going to be age 25 or younger. What other types of crimes are they going to be subject to that require police intervention, other than the ones I mentioned?
Granted, there are also faculty/staff who receive police service, but probably many fewer than there are students, and not all of them live on campus.
This is just restating the assumption: that police mostly solve or prevent violent crime, and violent crime is the reason communities have police.
I don't think this is overall true. Again, only ~5% of policing time is spent on violent crime. Again, is there that much more violent crime on college campuses? That would be widely known if it were true, I think, but maybe it is and I'm just ignorant.
> I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
IDK what you're trying to say here. I spent my teen years in a group home in woodlawn on the border with hyde park. My associations are certainly out of date but I am also familiar with the dynamics of this specific area in a sense. Do you want to clarify?
Private policing predates public policing,[0] and so asserting that this is is a new development is not really correct. The same is true, incidentally, of firefighting: private insurance companies formed their own private brigades to protect their policyholders' property.[1] Lots of things that we tend to think of as "naturally" public services have only very recently taken that form.
The first link appears to have died, at least from my point of view, so I’ll just ask — what era was this early private police force from? In Rome for example it seems like a lot of state-like functions were performed by wealthy/prestigious patrons, right? So the line seems a little blurry there.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
I just moved to Portland and I live in SouthEast (where this article is talking about). It was a shock seeing guards dressed in the same kit I wore in Afghanistan. They're not exaggerating the homeless situation here either. There's tons, and many of them are addicted to fentanyl or meth.
The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.
I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.
It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
Maybe I'm a bit of a small-town boy, but I find it hard to understand that a lot of people choose to live in these conditions and don't move away to somewhere quieter/safer.
It's always a balancing act, I suppose. Portland, like many other West Coast cities, is set in a truly beautiful location, with a marvelous blend of mountain and water; and with all the big city amenities on top of it, it does make for a strong proposition.
I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.
In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.
And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).
In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.
I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.
This is a big one. I don't live in the Portland area, but anytime I've considered moving any large distance away from where I am I've always rejected it because my family/friends are all in this area. As much as I might like it a lot somewhere else, I'm not willing to uproot my social ties for it.
As I see it the alternative is to stay and advocate to make things better, and while that's grueling I think it's worth it.
Not attacking you, but I’m not sure if this is privilege or not.
I’ve uprooted for greener pastures twice in my life, and it has paid off both times. If I didn’t, I’d be impoverished and possibly hooked on (the scary) drugs.
If fluffy social aspects outweigh your immediate economic concerns, it stands that you are privileged enough to make the choice to stay still.
On the other hand, uprooting requires a certain resilience and fortitude that not everyone has. People who can torch their old life to chase something better are privileged in a way too, are they not?
It seems that the word “privilege” is doing all the heavy lifting here, but it sounds to me like it is a stand in for “having the ability to make anything but the default choice” (to remain in one’s location, in this case).
This is kind of an odd take. I'm from a small town, leaving is looked at as the privilege because opportunity is short. Additionally, people who come from families where wealth or security is not common often need to support their families directly or indirectly. That kept me in my home state for a couple years. I likely won't be around to see some of my immediate family pass away, which is an aspect that sucks about geo-centralization of industries like tech that don't need geo-centralization.
All that to say I think you have the privilege statement backwards.
SF is similar and the excuse almost always is: job opportunities. We can actually move out now that we work remotely but my SO’s salary would be decreased by her company based on change of location and she doesn’t want that.
Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.
SF is not that similar to Portland. While we have homeless people in SF their behavior is much more under control (and concentrated) than it is in Portland.
I think a lot of it is actually more “the pendulum” of attitudes towards things like homelessness and other “nuisances”. When we’re overly strict, the pendulum starts swinging back towards acceptance and laisezz faire because inevitably injustices occur and people decide to become more compassionate. When we’re overly permissive (like many west coast cities right now, though I think the opioid crisis has a big role too) the pendulum starts swinging towards cracking down.
New York has basically gone through this entire process already
I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:
1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)
2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.
I originally replied to OP, but honestly, I like your take more. It more accurately reflects how I see Portland. I'll add my mess:
Glad you asked! I grew up in a small town in Texas that is now a big town. Portland has some urban growth boundaries that contain its growth, so I was attracted to the idea that a big city is literally up against farm land and wild life. It makes it feel like a little, big town. Portland is also densely packed with trees in my part of town. There's lots of greenery and wildlife for a city this size. It's also set next to rivers with a lot of programs for water and wildlife sustainability. The people are really nice, even the neighbors I mentioned. It's a very working-class community for the most part and that makes me feel like I'm back in Texas. It's an amazing place to live and also, maybe most importantly, one of the areas predicted to deal with climate change better.
Lastly, can't really stress how nice #2 is. The cops don't bug you for simple stuff and it makes life a lot less stressful on the daily. Being in a big city is like camouflage.
I hope they stay. The last thing anyone wants is for them to leave the hellholes they voted for and turn nice places into new versions of them. I know many people in places like Austin and Boise are very nervous about the types of people moving in and not picking up on local values.
>I know many people in places like Austin and Boise are very nervous about the types of people moving in and not picking up on local values.
This sounds like knee jerk nativism. How many people would it take to move and overwhelm an entire city’s culture? Let’s assume a plurality of 30% could do it. I think a wave of people of that size is going to cause problems whatever their political beliefs are.
Austin saw a 33% increase in the decade ending in 2020 (after 38% the previous decade) and it hasn’t let up. Around 8% of Austin’s residents lived somewhere else the previous year.
it would take a lot of people to change the "culture" overnight. likely a prohibitively large number, as you said.
but it doesn't take so many newcomers to significantly change political outcomes. even in red states, republican mayors are pretty rare. in practice, this means that the mayoral race is almost always determined by an n-way democratic primary. it's hard to overstate how chaotic this can be. for example, the current mayor of baltimore won the 2020 primary (effectively the general election) with <30% of the vote, with the runner up trailing by only 2%. this was an election where ~25% of the population cast a vote. it would have taken <4000 votes to completely change that outcome.
It's simple. People live there for the economic opportunity, which is also why the housing is expensive, which is also why the homeless have no homes. Under the supply-constrained NIMBY regime in which housing is never produced, inequality and the effects thereof rise to an equilibrium point where the benefits and the drawbacks are of equal value.
This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.
Many people might not have a choice. Cities are where a lot of the work is. It's where services are, rental housing, etc. I see it as a privilege to be living in a small city.
The Portland area has lost population in the past year, so many who are able to move are taking advantage of it. I am from Portland and will be moving in a few months mainly due to the lack of safety described in the article.
Completely agree. I don't understand why anyone would move anywhere near places like this. These are places to run away from as fast as you can get away. Even the rare crazy person that's walking down the street screaming random nonsense around where I am (a richer part of north San Jose) unnerves me and I think they should be locked up somewhere out of sight and out of mind. I plan to move away from here at some point.
It's bizarre. I live in Chicago and don't have to deal with anything like this. The West coast has a really strange set of blinkers on about these problems.
I spend a lot of time in Chicago and always find it safe and pleasant. Yet when I talk to some people, typically of a conservative persuasion, they describe it as an urban hellscape in the same way some posters here describe SF or Portland.
A failed city that people are fleeing, with impossibly high taxes, no remaining police, rife with crime, and with corrupt bureaucrats suckling on the government teat at every turn.
I can't square the circle. I know so many people in Chicago and it doesn't seem like they're even describing the same city.
So when I see these hit pieces against the governments on the west coast, and hear anecdotes from west coast Republicans fleeing to the south to escape their purported failures, I take them with a massive gain of salt.
I have no doubt that Portland has its issues, but I can't take these pieces very seriously. As with the mythical failed version of Chicago I keep hearing about, I suspect there is a group of people pushing an extreme version of a narrative that is only loosely based in reality.
As you can see, Portland proper is nearly entirely Democrat. I'm a registered Democrat as well (I'm OP). Prior to this I lived in San Jose. Portland is a lovely city, but talking about what's going on here doesn't make folks Republican.
I have the same reaction to stories about Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco policing. The impression I get is that these cities have deeply mismanaged police departments.
Gun laws, you mean? Not technically, because the courts have temporarily halted measure 114, but if allowed to go into effect? Yes, absolutely.
114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.
There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).
And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.
I moved here in early 2021 for work and my girlfriend moved up with me as well. Her car was stolen twice and broken into once, twice from controlled access parking. Her bike was stolen as well.
My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.
The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy.
Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.
The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history.
I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene.
This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.
The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.
An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.
Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.
The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.
It that a PPB issue or a policy of local prosecutors?
I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)
So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?
But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.
But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.
You say SE, but by your description it almost sounds like you moved to Felony Flats. That's a rough area indeed, even by Portland standards.
I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.
It sounds like one of the big problems with police are the incentives, and private security is doing a "better" job because their incentive is to reduce the actual effects of crime and not the metrics used to measure its rate/reduction (like arrests, indictments, convictions, reports, etc).
There was a notable absence of opposing views in the article so I looked up "echelon security portland" and found a lot of objectionable actions they've taken. According to this article https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose... they've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them. This is all just from the first quarter of the second part of a report so there is a lot more.
The author works at The Federalist Society. A conservative online magazine.
Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force.
The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
You’re right - whether being oppressed by people with the veneer of accountability or by a private military force without any, we should just shut up and accept it all as-is because there can’t possibly be any other way to have security.
I'm not sure what you mean. This suggests that the per capita rate of police killing people is much higher than in the rest of the developed democratic world.
You're putting in a lot of words in my mouth and it's a bit weird how aggressive you're coming off here.
There's nothing I'm proposing here at all. I'm only critical of the obvious pro-private militarized police force, which every American should be. And this article is blatant propaganda for that agenda. The author herself works at The Federalist Society, a far-right conservative magazine.
I didn't see much particularly pro- about it, other than the fact that they seem more focused on treating people like people and not like case numbers. Was that part not true?
I think they were referring to how the article seemed to be one-sided. It didn't mention any of the controversy around their activities, like the article link [0] provided by the (currently) top rated comment in this discussion, which talked about how poorly trained these security people are, how they have broken the law, beat up and shot people, how the local prosecutors are not happy with some of this stuff, etc.
It would have been a more fair article if they mentioned this other stuff, but they didn't, it only painted these private security people in the best light possible. Call that a lie of omission. Some people feel this is manipulative.
I dislike the binary of "completely pristine" and the current state of police. One of the professions more likely to be a victim of violent criminals are delivery drivers. Still, if heavily armed delivery drivers started killing innocent people one would be allowed to critique that without being labeled "anti-pizza". That statistic is one of a number of things that are disallowed in conversations before being offered my "effing pick" between accepting no accountability for the actions of the state or no laws ever.
Maybe because some moron on Twitter can have people calling for the head of cops who shoot people trying to stab other people. And maybe they need to pay police more because no cop wants to make life and death decisions and have uninformed people asking why they couldn't shoot the knife out of their hands. Couple this with DAs unwilling to prosecute crimes and reclassifing crimes to hide how bad things are, also having no cash bail, why would a cop stick around for what used to be a decent salary?
The average cop in the San Jose PD makes $131k and has great benefits compared to other jobs you can get without a degree
IMO less cops is a good thing. We put too much on them. They shouldn't be the ones responding to mental health crises, cats stuck in trees, and suicide attempts, muggings, car accidents, etc all at once.
Many cities are already experimenting with mental health first responders and similar things. This definitely seems like the right direction and will also alleviate concerns about less people wanting to become cops. It'll also mean people with more expertise can focus on specific needs of a specific situation.
Police already have some of the most powerful unions and are able to use taxpayer money to fund their own lobbying (to be funneled more taxpayer money, sigh). Many departments already have tanks, drones, and other military equipment that they only got because some "defense" contractor managed to convince a politician to subsidize them. Departments like NYPD also include fines and ticket fees into their budget expectations creating a strong incentive to be overly punitive. All of these are signs of an institution that's grown far too strong and desperately needs to be broken apart
>>hey've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them.
So a normal police force then?
This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
>What this report finds: This report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay.
I personally know a lot of houseless folks who've just had their wallets and personal belongings taken from them making it nearly impossible to get other forms of help.
Unfortunately, this primarily affects houseless folks. And like most houseless people issues there's very little attention and resources aimed at this. I've put up houseless folks in Motel 6's before only to have the manager lock them out and keep their stuff, knowing full-well the police wouldn't help. I'd definitely encourage people to get involved locally in local mutual aid groups focused on houselessness. If for no other reason than to see it with their own ideas. Even people that grew up in poverty or lower class are often shocked to see the extent of human rights abuses happening under their own noses. After seeing it first-hand the will to tell all your friends and neighbors about it will find you
Legislatively, the usual suspects do have related campaigns (i.e. ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project) but even those only work on this issue as a related tangent. Local prison abolition groups often have more local campaigns but the effectiveness of that strategy is really up in the air.
Some states have passed legislation against some of the worst abuses,[0] but I can tell you first hand that legislative victories rarely translate to on the ground changes in police behavior when it comes to houseless folks
GP was pointing out that things like wage theft is a much bigger priority over petty shoplifting.
The combined value of all robberies (shoplifting, mugging, etc) in 2012 was $341 million while wage theft alone accounts for $933 million yet we spend far more trying to prevent the former and hardly do anything to prevent the latter which primarily affects minimum wage workers
First off it appears that wage theft is being enforced, as the $933 million is the amount RECOVERED for victims of wage theft, I would like the highlight that victims of property theft are almost never made completely whole, even with insurance.
Wage theft, when reported and backed up with evidence is often aggressively pursued and most states have Treble damages statues for damages which is often why it is easy to get cogency litigation started for wage theft. Based on that is likely the amount of wages stolen by employers is on par with the total value of property stolen since the recovered amount would be 3x what amount stolen in the case of wages
Futher their slight of hand in only adding the market value of the property taken instead of the economic loss suffered by the victim gives me red flags they are attempting to be dishonest in their evaluation. For example if a person has their work truck stolen they are out far more than just the value of the truck but are also out wages, income, time, etc. All of which have a value outside that of the market value for the actual property taken
Wage theft is a serious matter and should be taken seriously. Luckily in most states the Dept of Labor does take is VERY seriously and most states have enacted laws to enable victims of wage theft to not only recover their wages but 3x their wages making it very enticing for lawyers to help victims without alot of upfront costs
The whataboutism trying to derail the top of property crime enforcement has not teeth if you really look into.
Wage theft is a serious problem but it's an 'orderly' theft- it targets people at the bottom and the people at the top are either uneffected or benefit and life goes on as usual. Property crime is a crime against the order of things. The powerful are impacted as well as the powerless. Crime isn't the problem to be solved,necessarily, it's just a wrench in the social order where the few dominate the many. That order is what must be preserved at all costs, which explains why we prosecute some crimes but not others.
Very few of the things we do as a society are about what we say they are about.
If any of this were relevant then we would expect that employers (the powerful) could steal physical items from the person/vehicle/abode of employees (the people at the bottom) and get away with it.
At least here in NC, I can say that every clear case I've heard of an employer trying to steal the property of an employee (directly off their person, out of their vehicle, out of their abode, or even attempting to steal their vehicle) ended either with the police escorting the employee to retrieve their property, or with the police escorting away the employer[1].
Besides, just take that recent oddball case of that Dept. of Energy person who was apparently stealing luggage from randos at the airport. Do a search and tell me how that has affected Sam's power over the people at the bottom.
Edit:
1: Just to keep things apples to apples, I'm talking about situations that are equivalent to shoplifting: a) person enters a space that belongs to the victim without permission, b) person takes property of that victim, and c) person leaves that property with the stolen goods in hand.
Wage theft doesn't typically involved a gun or a knife. Property crimes, when interrupted intentionally or accidentally by the victim can easily become violent crime.
Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft.
The average police department does not get involved in wage theft, which would be something more involving lawyers, maybe ultimately leading to an arrest warrant carried out by a police force.
And of course this is another example of an "AND" decision, not an "OR" one. We can enforce and prosecute property theft crimes, which absolutely needs to happen, while simultaneously pursuing wage theft prosecution.
> Property theft and wage theft are two very different categories of theft.
This kind of reinforces the parent's point. They are both theft (shoplifting and wage theft), and yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft).
The fact that the police don't get involved and lawyers are required to rectify wage theft just shows how far we as a society don't care to defend those people. Meanwhile private security can get away with abusing shoplifters and homeless.
Like you said, they are both theft, but for some reason we as a society go after one much more aggressively than the other. Something about that doesn't seem fair.
Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check? It's my understanding that people get arrested for that, it's not left just to lawyers and civil contract courts (which not everyone can afford).
Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc.
I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.
>>Maybe the same as when someone writes a bad check?
That does not happen, not at the level of say shoplifting or something
At most you can make a complaint, which will go to a prosecutor which will then decide if they want to file criminal charges, at which point the police would arrest someone. Which rarely happens for a single bad check. It is almost always CIVIL unless there is some other crime involved like identity theft, even then it would have to be wide scale
You know what, that is the same process for Wage Theft. You file a complaint with the dept of labor, the dept of labor will investigate and if the problem is wide scale they will issue fines or even criminal indictment if they view it as malicious
>Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc.
The problem here is wage theft is not often as cut and dry as you make it out to be, most often is not an employer refusing to pay wages or writting a bad check for wages. It manifests as forcing an employee to work during their lunch or break, refusing to pay earned vacation time/PTO when someone quits, paying strait time instead of OT rates for Overtime, misidentifying an employee as exempt denying them OT, etc.
These are all things that are harder to prove and in some cases can be honest mistakes.
I don't flat out argue with anything you are saying. It would be difficult to do a better job of catching wage theft.
But if we're not going to put more effort into catching those criminals, why are we ok with putting more effort into catching shoplifters? Why are we allowing poorly trained armed security to roam public streets and sometimes harass, beat up, or shoot law abiding citizens, to the point that local prosecutors are frustrated with what is going on?
How come we allow stuff like this, pulling out the stops for shoplifters, but not wage-theives? How come people argue in favor of the one but not the other?
You have created a Strawman in your head and now debating agaist that strawman and not anything anyone has said here or anywhere that I am aware of
This whataboutism around wage theft has no bearing on this converation nor is anyone in either government, or here in this discussion ever talked about not taking wage theft seriously
When wage theft is reported it gets investigated, and as the studies people have posted here show often gets recovered.
The problem here and why you are seeing private security is because unlike with wage theft when someone reports shoplifting or other property crime it is often completely ignored, with out even a response at all from the government.
You have this world view that is the exact opposite of reality, where by you believe wage theft is completely ignored by everyone but entire armies are fighting shoplifting
how about instead of engaging with whataboutism, strawmans and redherrings we talk about the actual issues of criminality
I don't think that the parent understood where I was coming from when he called my position a what-about strawman. I'm sure that was in good part because I didn't do a good job of communicating what I was thinking. I attempted to fix that with additional information. Understanding what others are thinking and why is often helpful, especially in a democracy.
I agree that wage-theft specifically is a tangent here. But I do believe there is more to talk about, this isn't something to dismiss so easily.
Why are we allowing the victims of shoplifting to hire armed guards with not enough training or accountability to selectively enforce laws in public spaces as they see fit, sometimes abusing law abiding citizens, as mentioned [0] earlier in this thread? Is that ok? Isn't the state supposed to have a monopoly on violence?
Even though it is easier to go after shoplifters than some other criminals, does that make these private police forces in public spaces ok? Wouldn't it be better if the store owners lobbied for more police and/or reforms (to make additional police more palatable to the public), or maybe move their businesses or close? That's what other crime victims have to do. Lots of crime victims are ignored by the government. There's nothing special about the victims of shoplifting, there are many other crimes that impact more people, as the parent poster mentioned with wage theft.
Or do we want a society where those with the resources can hire their own enforcers, armed guards for hire with 40 hours of training roaming the streets, and let everyone else fend for themselves? That might be a bad feedback loop, where those with money have their own police, and those without live more in danger. There are a number of other countries that have devolved to this.
Hopefully I did a better job describing what I was thinking, above. I don't see the justification for this one set of victims to be able to hire armed guards roaming the streets and harassing law abiding citizens, opting out of normal police protection, leaving other more numerous victims to fend for themselves. I trust abuses such as described in the original parent comment's linked article are the exception, but there is a history of problems (like Pinkerton) related to such things.
I game for feedback or your thoughts on the above, if you have any.
>>Why are we allowing the victims of shoplifting to hire armed guards
you have flipped the proposition from where it should be ethically. Everyone has the clear and natural right to defend themselves and their property from aggression including theft, We create governments in order to protect our rights, persons and property when government fails in its only job it reverts back to the individual to secure themselves and their property.
We do not "allow" people to defend themselves, it is inherent in their existence as humans we sometimes contract that protection out to government but never for a second believe we give up or surrender the right to do it ourselves.
>>sometimes abusing law abiding citizens?
I have no proof of this, and if they do they are no longer defending property and have become criminals themselves whom should be prosecuted as such
>>Isn't the state supposed to have a monopoly on violence?
The state has the self declared monopoly on the INITIATION of violence. Meaning the state has declared that is has the authority to attack you in any circumstance with or with out needing to justify their actions under the umbrella of self defense.
>>does that make these private police forces in public spaces ok
This is a problem with wording here, are they in "public" spaces or are they on private property that is open to the public? Do you think there is a difference between the 2? Based on the story linked to it appears these companies are paid to patrol shopping centers, malls etc. not "the streets" though they to talk about community outreach they do which seems to be different from their security patrols
Security services have been a business for all of time, do you also object to private armored car services banks use? or Security Guards at event venues?
I find nothing objectionable with their harsh enforcement of property crimes but I have a feeling our worldview on this topic will greatly differ as I am very very very much for very very harsh punishment for property theft. I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
>>Or do we want a society where those with the resources can hire their own enforcers
I think a mix of both is the correct model. I certainly do not want my tax dollars to go to paying some cop to stand around the local walmart waiting for someone to steal something, Walmart should pay someone to protect their property. However private enforcement should be limited to stopping an act in progress and notifying law enforcement who then come in a reasonable time and actually investigate, and prosecute the crime.
>>opting out of normal police protection, leaving other more numerous victims to fend for themselves
This is a mischaracterization of what they are doing, the government is refusing to provide police protection, if the government refuses to provide it what should they do? just be victimized? Just take it? If the politicians say they will not punish people for theft, you believe people should just accept the theft? No that will never happen.
>>but there is a history of problems (like Pinkerton) related to such things.
yes there was, why? Because government did not have or refused to provide the resources to protect people and property, so like with anything the market found a solution. If you want to curb the possibility for abuses like this we need to support aggressive enforcement and protection of property. Failure to do so will ensure people and companies take the protection into their own hands which may not be good for anyone.
If you have a local DA that wants to stop prosecuting "misdemeanor" property crimes out of some altruistic or other reason I strongly encourage you to vote them out.
Thanks for your lengthy reply! I assume we had different initial reactions to these articles, and are coming at this from different directions, but don't necessarily disagree on everything. The fact that these guards were operating in public, on the streets, and there had already been abuses, bothered me the most. I thought it went too far.
I also thought that the comparison to other crimes had some merit, but understand that's not the most productive way to approach this.
> Everyone has the clear and natural right to defend themselves and their property from aggression including theft
I agree, for the most part, outside of edge cases I guess. Some states let you kill someone trespassing in your house (I'm thinking castle doctrine), others only if you are threatened. I'm fine living in a world that goes either way. I'd hate to see the right to defend oneself abused, like when a cop told me "shoot (the garage thief) next time, be sure to kill him, just put a knife in their hand". That could be a neighbor's 14 year old kid playing chase in the dark with their friends. Not ideal...
I wonder if a shopkeeper in Texas can legally shoot a shoplifter? I'm curious how you would feel about a victim of wage theft shooting their employer? Monetary loss is a monetary loss, right?
> This is a problem with wording here, are they in "public" spaces or are they on private property that is open to the public? Do you think there is a difference between the 2?
The article I linked to talked about the actions these guards were taking out on the streets. Portland allows tents on sidewalks, and these guards broke laws by physically removing people, amongst other things (including beatings, and a shooting). The prosecutors there were frustrated trying to hold them accountable. This is the kind of stuff I have a big problem with. I'm not saying that having homeless camped on the streets is a good thing, but the answer is to address the problem or change the laws, not extra-legal activities.
I've got a buddy who is an armed security guard. They send these guys out with 40 hours of training, and they don't know the law. Many better-trained police officers don't know the law. He makes a couple extra bucks an hour being armed, and it's not much. He really needs the money.
Ultimately these security companies are kind of taking advantage of the people doing these jobs. They have to get their own insurance. They don't have qualified immunity. They are really sticking their necks out. The security companies hiring these people don't care, the guards are easily replaceable.
> Security services have been a business for all of time, do you also object to private armored car services banks use? or Security Guards at event venues?
I do not object to these things.
> I find nothing objectionable with their harsh enforcement of property crimes but I have a feeling our worldview on this topic will greatly differ as I am very very very much for very very harsh punishment for property theft. I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood and got used to being careful. I don't know that we greatly differ, but yeah I assume we do to some extant. The world needs all kinds, right? My thinking on things like this has changed over the years, as I've moved in various circles of haves and have-nots, as I've gotten more perspective travelling and reading about other cultures and how they organize their societies, what they value, etc. I've ended up wondering more about root causes, social and community dynamics, the difference between low-trust and high-trust societies, etc.
But to be honest I've paid more attention lately to how the rich/system take advantage of the poor, then the reverse. Just questioning assumptions, mostly. A lot around politics, how the rules are rigged sometimes...
> The state has the self declared monopoly on the INITIATION of violence. Meaning the state has declared that is has the authority to attack you in any circumstance with or with out needing to justify their actions under the umbrella of self defense.
I wasn't sure what distinction you are making with word "initiation", above. I'm reading that the idea is the state has a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force [0]. They have the final say, for instance on how you allowed to defend yourself, ordinarily allowing the use proportional force to protect yourself from bodily harm.
Also mentioned was idea of a natural right to defend oneself, like you talked about, which is an idea that goes back to the enlightenment, but that this is in conflict with the idea of a state monopoly on violence. Seems like in practicality if the state wants to lock you up in a cage for shooting someone, your natural rights weren't really a thing.
I brought up the state monopoly on violence because people and the government will need to decide if they want to allow private armed security guards to operate on the streets [1].
> I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
Texas seems to be an outlier in this regard, "Texas being the only state to allow the use of deadly force to regain possession of land or property" [2]. Other U.S. states and other Western countries do not allow the use of lethal force to defend property like Texas does. I don't think modern societies and governments are going to embrace your position above any time soon.
In the context of the article we are talking about, I assume that the people of Portland will not want to allow these armed security guards to roam the streets breaking laws and hurting people [1].
I do agree with your position that people are going to want to defend themselves if the government won't do so, or does so inconsistently. That's probably why we have gangs in the inner cities, places where the government doesn't enforce laws for one reason or another. The government looses legitimacy in the eyes of the affected when this happens. Allowing shopkeepers to put armed security guards in the streets is not going to help this bigger problem, and comes with a set of new problems.
Just like any other theft. If an employer is shown to commit wage theft, then they are arrested. I can pull up my GPS on my phone and show them exactly where I was during the prior week, how many hours, and if the hours don't match the paycheck, the owner gets arrested, brought to jail, booked for theft, has to hire an attorney, may get convicted and if it is a regular habitual offender type of thing, maybe get life in prison.
A 33-year-old black man named Curtis Wilkerson was waiting for his girlfriend at a mall. He went into a department store and put a pair of socks in his shopping bag, and walked out. A $2.50 pair of ordinary tube socks. He was put in jail for 25 to life because he had 2 prior convictions - being a "lookout" in a robbery. But parole is denied 80% of the time, and governors override the parole boards decision to parole them at 50% of the time, he wouldn't get out in 25 years most likely. He also got fined $2,500 for the pair of $2.50 pair of socks. Should a wage theft of $2,000 fine the manager or company $2,000,000 which is the same ratio? Sounds good to me, it would put a stop to wage theft fast. In prison, he earns $20/month, and the state takes $11 every month to pay that $2,500 fine. They take over half his earnings - do that to a business. He won't be able to pay the $2,500 fine off until he is 90 years old.
Another guy got life for stealing a slice of pizza. A guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes. One got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart. One guy got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth?
Why not life in prison for wage theft? How is it any different than anything else? Saying they "didn't know" or "was a mistake" is like a shoplifter saying the exact same thing, but the shoplifter is prosecuted anyways if they say that.
> yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft).
I think this is a false argument as I don’t think people are ok ignoring wage theft. Others have pointed out as these aren’t exclusive options but, specifically, I’ve never heard anyone espouse that wage theft is ok.
It seems to me that in a conversation concerning sexual harassment, someone points out that everyone is ok with human trafficking because it is worse, yet HR departments aren’t working to stop human trafficking.
I guess the comparison was made, and caught my attention, because we are allowing business owners to hire undertrained armed private security guards to roam the public streets and sometimes harass law abiding citizens, to the point that local prosecutors complained about a lack of accountability, to stop shoplifting, but we're not doing anything more to stop wage theft, and it appeared that some people didn't see any problem with that.
Where does this lead? Isn't the government supposed to have a monopoly on violence in a modern state? Or are we allowing anyone with money to hire armed enforcers in public places? Would victims of wage theft be justified taking the law into their own hands also, since they are dealing with a bigger problem than shoplifiting?
I'm exploring this issue, more than opinionated, but think it's worth talking about.
I'm not saying we should ignore wage theft. I am saying it is a scenario where a police force cannot really do much.
You can call your local PD and report shoplifting, or most other kinds of physical theft. It would be a pretty clear accusation, and these days odds are you'd be able to produce some simple evidence in the form of video footage (CCTV, cellphone, etc.).
But how do you report wage theft in a way that the average police force can act on? Are you going to call and say "I'm being forced to work unpaid hours"? If you did I can almost guarantee you they would refer you to some other department or organization. I would not envision the police showing up to arrest your employer, take them in for questioning, etc.
Wage theft is also slightly more complex in that the victims are often complicit in the sense that they continue to work for the employer. To be clear, I am not saying this makes it right, but it makes it hard for the police to do much from an enforcement perspective. You're saying your employer is underpaying you, but you're also continuing to work for them. The employer would tell the police that showed up that you were free to leave, or were agreeing to the term by virtue of showing up. It would take legal action, e.g. a lawyer not a cop, to actually create a claim that was actionable and enforceable by the law enforcement organization.
> But how do you report wage theft in a way that the average police force can act on?
I follow what you are saying, and admit there's not an obvious easy answer. I'd also say that private security guards who roam the public streets (sometimes harassing law abiding people) are not the best answer to shoplifting.
Hmmm, thinking about this it doesn't seem right to leave wage theft as a civil matter - a lot of victims don't have the resources to engage a lawyer. Maybe we could do things so the deck is not so much stacked against them. More of a paper trail, like an employment contract specifying hours and wages and a paper trail of time sheets. Also making it much easier to report, and treating it as a criminal matter. We could if we wanted to, nothing is set in stone. Maybe also more investigators. Perhaps victims could submit audio and/or video evidence to government authorities. Why should law-abiding employers object to being taped, when they are happy to tape the public to catch shoplifters? It would be nice to figure out how to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people. It's a lot of money to them.
I kind of threw my comment out there because I know that it burns when someone is victimized by theft, whether by a shoplifter or an employer, but there seems to be a lot more people are quick to be offended by shoplifters then when employers are doing the stealing. I didn't mean to mischaracterize your views on this.
I think in practice it would show up as an enforcement organization of the government labor department that would have a set of prosecutors on staff to enforce wage theft laws, much like how most cities have a DA and other government prosecutors to go through with criminal court cases. The work load of the PD would be minimal other than to maybe enforce jail transport orders after a court case finishes, it would mostly be about funding a lawyer group in the government.
It can be a clear accusation. There can be a form of video footage - I can take a screenshot of the amount that is being stolen from my bank account - I'm supposed to get $1000 but only paid $800.
>Are you going to call and say "I'm being forced to work unpaid hours"?
Sure. Makes 100% sense to me. You can look at your phone GPS, see how much time you spent in the job, then match that up against your pay stub. Exact same thing - you can show them both at the same time.
>I would not envision the police showing up to arrest your employer, take them in for questioning, etc.
That's the issue. They should. It would put an nationwide end to wage theft real fast if they brought in the CEO of Apple into jail for theft.
>Wage theft is also slightly more complex in that the victims are often complicit in the sense that they continue to work for the employer.
If you go into a hotel and stay there for a week, and only pay for 2 days, then you will be charged with theft, even though the hotel knew you were there. Randy Quaid is an example of this - arrested for a $10K hotel bill in Santa Barbara. It's "theft of services" and it is no joke. If he can be arrested, why not someone who skips out of paying you wages? Same exact situation.
>you're also continuing to work for them.
The one has nothing to do with the other. The crime is the crime. But then, by your logic, if one quits and doesn't continue to work, then the employer can be arrested?
>The employer would tell the police that showed up that you were free to leave, or were agreeing to the term by virtue of showing up.
This would be like saying that if I shoplifted at a store, then came in again and purchased something from the store later, that the store owner agreed to the terms of you taking stuff without paying before, because they just sold you some more stuff. That is not how it works.
>It would take legal action, e.g. a lawyer not a cop, to actually create a claim that was actionable and enforceable by the law enforcement organization.
Stealing is stealing. The fact that a lawyer has to get involved, does not mean a cop shouldn't arrest those accused of wage theft.
But, it did give me some good ideas. I'm going to start a bunch of companies up, get people to work for me for two weeks, then never pay them and tell them to sue me. And since it is a corportation, they can sue the company but then I can just shut down the corporation. There won't be able to pierce the corporate veil, because I'm not treating it as an alter ego. Of course, I write this just to prove how ridiculous the claim is, when clearly I am stealing from employees, and gain all the benefits for myself.
Well, wage theft is technically a crime in some jurisdictions, but almost never prosecuted even where it is, leaving only civil compensatory remedies. Treating far more minor (both in absolute value and relative to the wealth of the victim) cases of tangible personal property theft in the form of shoplifting, which has basically mirror-image class dynamics, the same way way doesn’t seem unfair.
> I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
> There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you."
I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1"
action taken by them.
I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
By "reformers" I am mainly referring to activist elected DA's that go in publicly declaring entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore, along with other non-violent theft (like breaking into cars)
"entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore"
Are you exagerating? I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting. Or if they have somewhere, please cite specifically, either with numbers, or with enough context so we can try to find some.
There are some places where shoplifting prosecutions declined due to decisions by prosecutors, for sure. That is not at all the same thing as "declaring entire segments of the criminal code void".
When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating it into the most absolute versions we can imagine while speaking in vague generalities that can't be researched... we can't easily get at what's actually going on instead of our imaginations.
>>I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting.
San Francisco where functionally anything under $900 is not prosecuted. That is the big one
NYC has also had its fair share of this.
>>When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating
It is not really exaggerating, I am not talking about individual cases where an Assistant DA looks at a case in their professional review of choose not to prosecute because of some actual legal reason, or because of some deal or something else
I am talking about wide scale refusal at an entire district level to refuse entire classes of cases
San Francisco under Chesa Boudin (who is now gone) presumably?
My first google suggests that shoplifting prosecutions in San Francisco were reduced but not eliminated, and that "organized retail theft" prosecutions (which I see people complaining about on HN a lot) were actually not diminished at all.
I don't understand how you can claim it was not an exageration to say:
"[declare] entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore"
Was I wrong to read that thinking it meant you were claiming there were zero prosecutions of shoplifting? That's not what those words mean? What "segment of the criminal code" did you mean specifically had been "void", what am I misunderstanding?
No criminal acts have ever been universally prosecuted and punished, ever.
But ok, correcting my reading of your statement, I now understand that your argumentis in fact that the "#1 action" of "reformers" (by which you mean elected district attorney's only, not other kinds of reformers), has been to reduce prosecutions for shoplifting (I'm not sure what a DA can "reform" except what gets prosecuted how!), and that you think that reducing prosecutions for shoplifting will necessarily lead to unaccountable private security.
That's really what you think we should have understood your original statement as? It sounds a lot less apocalyptic or sweeping of a theory this way. But ok, that's what you're saying. OK, cool, interesting theory...
A few bad police apples create a mass left-wing media outrage which results in the withdrawing of a public good (police protection), which results in people needing to hire private security, which results in even more objectionable actions taken by this less-accountable private security, than there were previously by the taxpaid police force?
You don't say.
I guess the only relative improvement here is that some of these security firms aren't armed with anything more than billy clubs.
The Portland city government cut the PPB budget by less than 10%. Yes that's a relatively large cut, but it is not the main driver of officers leaving the bureau. The underlying reason is politics.
Saying that people pushing for police reform results in withdrawing police protection appears to be an unexamined logical jump in your reasoning. That's only the case because the police often choose to withhold police protection in response to police reform.
> the police often choose to withhold police protection in response to police reform
I am not sure this is accurate, and it’s similarly unclear to me what exactly you are referring to.
I don’t know what, specifically, you mean by “withhold police protection.” Would you provide some examples? And what evidence do you have that such action happen “often” as a response to police reform?
I wish the focus would have been on improving the situation with internal affairs, where the police are investigating themselves if an officer does something illegal. This doesn't seem right - the rest of our government is built on checks and balances.
To me it is bizarre that this hasn't been a bigger part of the narrative around these issues.
Shopkeepers have the legal power to detain shoplifters in most US jurisdictions. They've just historically (in the modern era) been too afraid to use it.
Is Portland a good example of a common problem, though? It has a weirdly shitty style of government (though in the most recent election the citizens voted to completely upend that, so there is hope), and the police have largely abdicated their responsibility to the community because their political ideology is at odds with most of the citizens.
I'm totally unsurprised that organizations with the means to do so would hire their own private security to try and fill in the gap.
The article clearly has an ideological bent, but as someone living in the area, they're more right than wrong with the observations. Even if you might disagree with the reasoning, the end result is accurately portrayed.
Maybe I was not savvy enough to detect that “defund the police” was actually a call for privatization. What many people rightly identified at the time was a need for reallocation of police funds to things like social workers.
All of the increases in social problems we’ve seen in the last 40 years are the tax that we pay for increasing wealth inequality.
Imagine calling for “defund the NHS” and not expecting private alternatives to spring up. This is a completely predictable outcome and reveals a lack of systems/second order thinking on the part of activists.
The defund crowd imagined that if you just got rid of police, you’d get rid of all of the deep-rooted social issues that policing brings to light. If only it were so.
This all sounds good, but to me it highlights the downside of not enforcing laws. If you force people to hire private security, it's going to be hard to ensure that they are all nice and reasonable. Also, it's just a bad way to live with all of these private security forces everywhere.
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1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone.
2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
But ignoring homicides traffic violence is at a 70 year high after the traffic policing team was cut to support homicide investigation and patrol. https://www.koin.com/news/portland/portland-sees-rise-in-ped...
By which measure Portland is safer than both of your examples, even after this supposed apocalyptic crime wave caused by defunding the Police
> those who are unable to afford private security enjoy little protection from rising crime. Security—once a public good—is being privatized.
Every institution makes mistakes and has malicious actors. But you have to ask yourself how things would be without that institution. You can't just go "The system has problems, down with the system!".
edit: It might be closer to 6%; different articles seem to have different numbers, and it's not always clear whether the cuts are being described relative to the previous year's budget vs. the proposed budget (often a "cut" is just a smaller-than-expected increase). Either way, it's not very helpful to just cite the raw size of the cut without contextualizing it.
The "defund the police" movement was a doomed endeavor with an awful name like that. I sometimes wonder if Leftists movements are purposely giving their movements god awful names like "anti-work", "quiet quitting", and even "black lives matters".
If your movement's name has to be explained, it's purpose has already failed. You shouldn't need to explain a political movements name.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/06/us/what-is-defund-police-trnd...
Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results.
Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
I am curious if there is case law to support your theory. It would be hilarious to read about a city or county attorney trying to file a motion to dismiss, when the city or county would not be a party to the case.
No need to look to the future: this has been going on for a long time and is pretty common. Even though case law has built up, to my understanding it still gets pretty messy.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to your comments, there is one “private police force” that is doing well (and good) enough that people have started copying it, and that’s the Cahoots program from White Bird Clinic in Eugene Oregon. They are somewhat of a third party intervention system.
And as a nonprofit they are probably more accurately a public than private sector organization, which might be the key here to avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to the common good. I don’t want bands of hired thugs or the return of the Pinkertons. That’s basically step 2 on the route to a Stephensonian dystopia.
I don't even know how to argue that this is bad. I'll just lose all my faith in society if this ever happens where I live.
If there aren’t private police options, I’ll just produce and distribute illegal arms, like many already do. Johnny Methhead gets 0 control over my life, regardless of how his apologists vote.
Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go.
The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
If those homeless camps have drug problems - the lowest hanging fruit may seem like enabling a private police force, but the hanging fruit will be in actually helping the drug problem…
I don't know about the discussion, but what I'm taking away from the article is actually what policing could be if the shield of immunity that fuels the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude is taken away.
I think social services, crisis intervention, and mental health/drug help will benefit more and for longer.
That, though, goes against another deep seeded inherent “bonus” to keeping homeless homeless, addicts addicted, and police forces of all styles (pub/priv) in action:
Those “homeless” types scare an entire low/middle class of labor into accepting any wage no matter how exploitative, out of a fear if becoming one of “them.”
while this should be obvious to anyone who has seen the camps, we still get articles that claim "the obvious answer to homelessness" is just more housing. Of course we need more housing but how do cheaper rents convince addicts to change their lifestyle?
it's the conventional argument that's being brought up all the time while claiming "everyone's ignoring it".
doing some novel reporting on homelessness without leaving their homes:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
You would probably spend much more money on maintenance and cleaning than you would on the structure
This also requires a solid policy around social and affordable housing as part of mixed use developments (as opposed to creating social housing "ghettos").
Needle exchanges and safe consumption facilities can be used for initial contact and outreach.
Basically you need to get people into a position where you can help them, then help them to the point where they can help themselves, and provide realistic pathways for this to happen - along with avoiding unrealistic expectations and avoiding pointless gate keeping such as demanding service users remaining clean/sober, etc.
Think of it as solving for Maslow's hierarchy of needs. You can fix their drug and mental issues later, right now you need them off the street where they get food/heat/water/shelter, health support, etc.
This is what happens when luxury beliefs are realized.
That’s a really weird thing to believe.
Leaving aside the quibble about whether anyone literally voted to “defund the police,” I do find this phenomenon interesting. Our “progressive” private school recently hired a former Detroit cop to patrol the campus with a gun. Super nice guy. But gun control is for the proletariat apparently.
This line of reasoning is a contradiction because it leads to the conclusion "The average Joe should carry a gun."
The Federalist, American Conservative, Former Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.
Alrighty then.
It's not necessary to evaluate every work completely stripped of context to engage with it honestly. Articles are written by people, with motivations for writing them, and nothing is gained by pretending otherwise.
It is a blatant ad hominem comment that adds nothing to the discussion of whether or not the arguments in the article are valid, but rather is an attempt to prejudice your opinion.
It is also not prejudiced to evaluate a single work of a writer in its context within their oeuvre, and to consider your own knowledge of their previous works when evaluating a new one. That is merely judgement, friend.
You might would have us so carefully prune away context that judgement becomes impossible, but it's not a moral failure of others that they approach this differently.
> Alrighty then.
is a blatant dog whistle.
Even without the last line, it's not enough to simply say "just providing context!" It's a bit like jumping into a conversation about the affordable care act by saying "President Barack Obama's middle name is Hussein. He was mentored by Bill Ayers, a man the FBI described as the leader of a terrorist group."
It is all factual context, utterly irrelevant to the merits of the ACA and adds nothing to the conversation other than the prejudicial implication.
Did associating with Ayers preclude Obama from getting a TSC? Nope. Ayers wasn't active when he was Obama's BFF. He wasn't even a felon. Maybe Ayers was Wundergrounding it up in 2008, but he wasn't, unless I guess he was?
There was a political price paid there[1] - in Obama's choice of mentors - and if that's not perceptible I don't know what to say. Among people who cared, Ayers. was a millstone. Among other people, it was a selling point. Which hits to the point of why everyone's getting so incensed right here and now: Bill Ayers was a hero to a part of America, and to another part of America he was the devil himself.
We're in the same land, but we've come to have completely opposite values, fundamentally different, so that everything becomes an existential threat. The idea that this crisis has been artificially generated is of course scurrilous and would never occur to someone with a generous view of human behavior.
[1] Conveniently steering eyeballs away from Goldman's PAC effectively putting Obama on the DNC board.
Yes, but it's not relevant to the correctness of their argument. Are we here to talk about the argument or the author?
I get just as jiggly when Sagan preaches about nukes, given the . . ahem . . standing of the World Peace Council (WPC)
I walked away from a paycheck with a similar deal[1], because I didn't want that money to be attached to my name. Context, context, context, context.
You think that the money's not going to get inside your judgement? All that Robert Novak? You're a better man than me. I'd be tootin whatever horn the security services brings me in a bloodstained briefcase, just like my hero Bob.
[1] Although it was an aerospace systems integrator that, for whatever reason, boasted about its CEO-led prayer lunches. On its public website. Whew. Sorry folks, Jesus is for after hours.
> “If you have an effective criminal-justice system, and you have effective community partners that are assisting towards long-term community transformation, then, yes, traditional security models—the security model of observe and report—works,” he says. “But when you have a breakdown in societal connectivity, you lose the ability to operate out of that business model. So we had to come up with something unique and different.”
And what they came up with is something with probably better outcomes (in terms of reducing violence) than law enforcement.
Of course, there is no guarantee that private security will remain "social service-y".
I think it's bound to happen. Money creeps in, the police officers are too expensive to maintain. They get replaced by blender drones.
Luckily, all media will be privatized and anyone reporting might end up in a blender drone accident.
No, it is not. Colleges and universities have been doing it for many decades.
"Seventy-five percent of campus law-enforcement agencies have armed officers, according to a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey. Nine in 10 public campuses had “sworn” officers, meaning those who can carry a gun, have arrest power, and wear a badge; four in 10 private campuses did."[0]
TFA is focused primarily on policing related to homeless persons, while I'm pretty sure with most campuses in urban settings, they are focused more broadly on hard-core crime (murder, rape, armed robbery, gang-related activity).
[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/univer...
This is pretty common around the country for larger universities.
What makes you sure of that other than the base assumption that that's what police should do so that's what they are doing?
Consistently across several major urban area metro police forces the police self-reportedly spend about %5 of their time on that sort of serious violent crime. I don't see why campus police would be any higher than that.
I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
College students are essentially transients - those who live on urban campuses are typically not homeowners, not car-owners, and not in married/domestic partner/young children living situations, since they are usually going to be age 25 or younger. What other types of crimes are they going to be subject to that require police intervention, other than the ones I mentioned?
Granted, there are also faculty/staff who receive police service, but probably many fewer than there are students, and not all of them live on campus.
I don't think this is overall true. Again, only ~5% of policing time is spent on violent crime. Again, is there that much more violent crime on college campuses? That would be widely known if it were true, I think, but maybe it is and I'm just ignorant.
> I know something of Chicago neighborhoods where University of Chicago and University of Illinois-Chicago have private police.
IDK what you're trying to say here. I spent my teen years in a group home in woodlawn on the border with hyde park. My associations are certainly out of date but I am also familiar with the dynamics of this specific area in a sense. Do you want to clarify?
[0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.
I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.
It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.
In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.
And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).
In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.
I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.
As they say: better the devil you know.
This is a big one. I don't live in the Portland area, but anytime I've considered moving any large distance away from where I am I've always rejected it because my family/friends are all in this area. As much as I might like it a lot somewhere else, I'm not willing to uproot my social ties for it.
As I see it the alternative is to stay and advocate to make things better, and while that's grueling I think it's worth it.
I’ve uprooted for greener pastures twice in my life, and it has paid off both times. If I didn’t, I’d be impoverished and possibly hooked on (the scary) drugs.
If fluffy social aspects outweigh your immediate economic concerns, it stands that you are privileged enough to make the choice to stay still.
On the other hand, uprooting requires a certain resilience and fortitude that not everyone has. People who can torch their old life to chase something better are privileged in a way too, are they not?
All that to say I think you have the privilege statement backwards.
Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.
I think a lot of it is actually more “the pendulum” of attitudes towards things like homelessness and other “nuisances”. When we’re overly strict, the pendulum starts swinging back towards acceptance and laisezz faire because inevitably injustices occur and people decide to become more compassionate. When we’re overly permissive (like many west coast cities right now, though I think the opioid crisis has a big role too) the pendulum starts swinging towards cracking down.
New York has basically gone through this entire process already
I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:
1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)
2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.
Glad you asked! I grew up in a small town in Texas that is now a big town. Portland has some urban growth boundaries that contain its growth, so I was attracted to the idea that a big city is literally up against farm land and wild life. It makes it feel like a little, big town. Portland is also densely packed with trees in my part of town. There's lots of greenery and wildlife for a city this size. It's also set next to rivers with a lot of programs for water and wildlife sustainability. The people are really nice, even the neighbors I mentioned. It's a very working-class community for the most part and that makes me feel like I'm back in Texas. It's an amazing place to live and also, maybe most importantly, one of the areas predicted to deal with climate change better.
Lastly, can't really stress how nice #2 is. The cops don't bug you for simple stuff and it makes life a lot less stressful on the daily. Being in a big city is like camouflage.
This sounds like knee jerk nativism. How many people would it take to move and overwhelm an entire city’s culture? Let’s assume a plurality of 30% could do it. I think a wave of people of that size is going to cause problems whatever their political beliefs are.
but it doesn't take so many newcomers to significantly change political outcomes. even in red states, republican mayors are pretty rare. in practice, this means that the mayoral race is almost always determined by an n-way democratic primary. it's hard to overstate how chaotic this can be. for example, the current mayor of baltimore won the 2020 primary (effectively the general election) with <30% of the vote, with the runner up trailing by only 2%. this was an election where ~25% of the population cast a vote. it would have taken <4000 votes to completely change that outcome.
This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.
A failed city that people are fleeing, with impossibly high taxes, no remaining police, rife with crime, and with corrupt bureaucrats suckling on the government teat at every turn.
I can't square the circle. I know so many people in Chicago and it doesn't seem like they're even describing the same city.
So when I see these hit pieces against the governments on the west coast, and hear anecdotes from west coast Republicans fleeing to the south to escape their purported failures, I take them with a massive gain of salt.
I have no doubt that Portland has its issues, but I can't take these pieces very seriously. As with the mythical failed version of Chicago I keep hearing about, I suspect there is a group of people pushing an extreme version of a narrative that is only loosely based in reality.
As you can see, Portland proper is nearly entirely Democrat. I'm a registered Democrat as well (I'm OP). Prior to this I lived in San Jose. Portland is a lovely city, but talking about what's going on here doesn't make folks Republican.
114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.
There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).
And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.
My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.
The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy. Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.
The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history. I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene. This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.
The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.
An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.
Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.
The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.
I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)
So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?
But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.
But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/car-thefts-dismissed-...
In summary:
- police don’t have time or resources to investigate anything that isn’t a homicide (with some exceptions)
- the DA won’t prosecute, to the point that criminals actively know to commit crimes in MultCo
- if the DA does take the case, it will be dismissed because there aren’t enough public defenders
If the DA gets a $100 Million budget, then the Public Defenders office should have that as well.
Right now it is like 10:1 in alot of cases if not even more lopsided.
I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.
Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force.
The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
There's nothing I'm proposing here at all. I'm only critical of the obvious pro-private militarized police force, which every American should be. And this article is blatant propaganda for that agenda. The author herself works at The Federalist Society, a far-right conservative magazine.
It would have been a more fair article if they mentioned this other stuff, but they didn't, it only painted these private security people in the best light possible. Call that a lie of omission. Some people feel this is manipulative.
[0] https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose...
Protagonist from Snow Crash!
Police budgets are higher than they've ever been in history and they're spending millions on social media and "strategic communication"
https://therealnews.com/police-departments-are-spending-mill...
IMO less cops is a good thing. We put too much on them. They shouldn't be the ones responding to mental health crises, cats stuck in trees, and suicide attempts, muggings, car accidents, etc all at once.
Many cities are already experimenting with mental health first responders and similar things. This definitely seems like the right direction and will also alleviate concerns about less people wanting to become cops. It'll also mean people with more expertise can focus on specific needs of a specific situation.
Police already have some of the most powerful unions and are able to use taxpayer money to fund their own lobbying (to be funneled more taxpayer money, sigh). Many departments already have tanks, drones, and other military equipment that they only got because some "defense" contractor managed to convince a politician to subsidize them. Departments like NYPD also include fines and ticket fees into their budget expectations creating a strong incentive to be overly punitive. All of these are signs of an institution that's grown far too strong and desperately needs to be broken apart
So a normal police force then?
This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
in your world there are only private security firms. if you're not up to date on your dues, oh well, they'll happily watch you get robbed I guess.
EDIT: I was unaware of the "wage theft" problem and assumed this was angling at "taxation is theft," my bad
https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...
>What this report finds: This report assesses the prevalence and magnitude of one form of wage theft—minimum wage violations (workers being paid at an effective hourly rate below the binding minimum wage)—in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay.
US Police have taken $68 billion without due process from citizens in the past 20 years
https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/us-police-have-stolen-68-b...
I personally know a lot of houseless folks who've just had their wallets and personal belongings taken from them making it nearly impossible to get other forms of help.
Legislatively, the usual suspects do have related campaigns (i.e. ACLU's Criminal Law Reform Project) but even those only work on this issue as a related tangent. Local prison abolition groups often have more local campaigns but the effectiveness of that strategy is really up in the air.
Some states have passed legislation against some of the worst abuses,[0] but I can tell you first hand that legislative victories rarely translate to on the ground changes in police behavior when it comes to houseless folks
[0] https://endforfeiture.com/legislative-reforms/#ended-civil-f...
You have defended taxation, not wage theft.
The combined value of all robberies (shoplifting, mugging, etc) in 2012 was $341 million while wage theft alone accounts for $933 million yet we spend far more trying to prevent the former and hardly do anything to prevent the latter which primarily affects minimum wage workers
https://www.epi.org/publication/wage-theft-bigger-problem-fo...
https://laborstandards.sccgov.org/impact-issues/wage-theft
I think the important bit is the ratio between wage theft and other forms of theft. Whichever way you slice it you basically get the same conclusion
First off it appears that wage theft is being enforced, as the $933 million is the amount RECOVERED for victims of wage theft, I would like the highlight that victims of property theft are almost never made completely whole, even with insurance.
Wage theft, when reported and backed up with evidence is often aggressively pursued and most states have Treble damages statues for damages which is often why it is easy to get cogency litigation started for wage theft. Based on that is likely the amount of wages stolen by employers is on par with the total value of property stolen since the recovered amount would be 3x what amount stolen in the case of wages
Futher their slight of hand in only adding the market value of the property taken instead of the economic loss suffered by the victim gives me red flags they are attempting to be dishonest in their evaluation. For example if a person has their work truck stolen they are out far more than just the value of the truck but are also out wages, income, time, etc. All of which have a value outside that of the market value for the actual property taken
Wage theft is a serious matter and should be taken seriously. Luckily in most states the Dept of Labor does take is VERY seriously and most states have enacted laws to enable victims of wage theft to not only recover their wages but 3x their wages making it very enticing for lawyers to help victims without alot of upfront costs
The whataboutism trying to derail the top of property crime enforcement has not teeth if you really look into.
Very few of the things we do as a society are about what we say they are about.
At least here in NC, I can say that every clear case I've heard of an employer trying to steal the property of an employee (directly off their person, out of their vehicle, out of their abode, or even attempting to steal their vehicle) ended either with the police escorting the employee to retrieve their property, or with the police escorting away the employer[1].
Besides, just take that recent oddball case of that Dept. of Energy person who was apparently stealing luggage from randos at the airport. Do a search and tell me how that has affected Sam's power over the people at the bottom.
Edit:
1: Just to keep things apples to apples, I'm talking about situations that are equivalent to shoplifting: a) person enters a space that belongs to the victim without permission, b) person takes property of that victim, and c) person leaves that property with the stolen goods in hand.
Do you see the problems or solutions somehow in competition?
Can people not care about two things?
1) corporations are guilty of wage theft and not prosecuted
2) shoplifting harms corporations
3) harming corporations is ok because they are guilty.
Different in scale, but I think it’s similar to the “it’s ok to punch a Nazi” rationale.
And of course this is another example of an "AND" decision, not an "OR" one. We can enforce and prosecute property theft crimes, which absolutely needs to happen, while simultaneously pursuing wage theft prosecution.
This kind of reinforces the parent's point. They are both theft (shoplifting and wage theft), and yet so many people are ok ignoring the numerically worse problem (wage theft).
The fact that the police don't get involved and lawyers are required to rectify wage theft just shows how far we as a society don't care to defend those people. Meanwhile private security can get away with abusing shoplifters and homeless.
Like you said, they are both theft, but for some reason we as a society go after one much more aggressively than the other. Something about that doesn't seem fair.
Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc.
I'd be curious how other countries might handle this better, there's often places that have already done a good job of figuring stuff like this out. The cynic in me worries that dollars count more than votes, and that the system is not as interested in protecting employees as it is protecting employers.
That does not happen, not at the level of say shoplifting or something
At most you can make a complaint, which will go to a prosecutor which will then decide if they want to file criminal charges, at which point the police would arrest someone. Which rarely happens for a single bad check. It is almost always CIVIL unless there is some other crime involved like identity theft, even then it would have to be wide scale
You know what, that is the same process for Wage Theft. You file a complaint with the dept of labor, the dept of labor will investigate and if the problem is wide scale they will issue fines or even criminal indictment if they view it as malicious
>Maybe also make wage theft easier to prove, with a required paper trail like an employment contract and signed time sheets, more investigators, etc.
The problem here is wage theft is not often as cut and dry as you make it out to be, most often is not an employer refusing to pay wages or writting a bad check for wages. It manifests as forcing an employee to work during their lunch or break, refusing to pay earned vacation time/PTO when someone quits, paying strait time instead of OT rates for Overtime, misidentifying an employee as exempt denying them OT, etc.
These are all things that are harder to prove and in some cases can be honest mistakes.
But if we're not going to put more effort into catching those criminals, why are we ok with putting more effort into catching shoplifters? Why are we allowing poorly trained armed security to roam public streets and sometimes harass, beat up, or shoot law abiding citizens, to the point that local prosecutors are frustrated with what is going on?
How come we allow stuff like this, pulling out the stops for shoplifters, but not wage-theives? How come people argue in favor of the one but not the other?
This whataboutism around wage theft has no bearing on this converation nor is anyone in either government, or here in this discussion ever talked about not taking wage theft seriously
When wage theft is reported it gets investigated, and as the studies people have posted here show often gets recovered.
The problem here and why you are seeing private security is because unlike with wage theft when someone reports shoplifting or other property crime it is often completely ignored, with out even a response at all from the government.
You have this world view that is the exact opposite of reality, where by you believe wage theft is completely ignored by everyone but entire armies are fighting shoplifting
how about instead of engaging with whataboutism, strawmans and redherrings we talk about the actual issues of criminality
Why are we allowing the victims of shoplifting to hire armed guards with not enough training or accountability to selectively enforce laws in public spaces as they see fit, sometimes abusing law abiding citizens, as mentioned [0] earlier in this thread? Is that ok? Isn't the state supposed to have a monopoly on violence?
Even though it is easier to go after shoplifters than some other criminals, does that make these private police forces in public spaces ok? Wouldn't it be better if the store owners lobbied for more police and/or reforms (to make additional police more palatable to the public), or maybe move their businesses or close? That's what other crime victims have to do. Lots of crime victims are ignored by the government. There's nothing special about the victims of shoplifting, there are many other crimes that impact more people, as the parent poster mentioned with wage theft.
Or do we want a society where those with the resources can hire their own enforcers, armed guards for hire with 40 hours of training roaming the streets, and let everyone else fend for themselves? That might be a bad feedback loop, where those with money have their own police, and those without live more in danger. There are a number of other countries that have devolved to this.
Hopefully I did a better job describing what I was thinking, above. I don't see the justification for this one set of victims to be able to hire armed guards roaming the streets and harassing law abiding citizens, opting out of normal police protection, leaving other more numerous victims to fend for themselves. I trust abuses such as described in the original parent comment's linked article are the exception, but there is a history of problems (like Pinkerton) related to such things.
I game for feedback or your thoughts on the above, if you have any.
[0] https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose...
you have flipped the proposition from where it should be ethically. Everyone has the clear and natural right to defend themselves and their property from aggression including theft, We create governments in order to protect our rights, persons and property when government fails in its only job it reverts back to the individual to secure themselves and their property.
We do not "allow" people to defend themselves, it is inherent in their existence as humans we sometimes contract that protection out to government but never for a second believe we give up or surrender the right to do it ourselves.
>>sometimes abusing law abiding citizens?
I have no proof of this, and if they do they are no longer defending property and have become criminals themselves whom should be prosecuted as such
>>Isn't the state supposed to have a monopoly on violence?
The state has the self declared monopoly on the INITIATION of violence. Meaning the state has declared that is has the authority to attack you in any circumstance with or with out needing to justify their actions under the umbrella of self defense.
>>does that make these private police forces in public spaces ok
This is a problem with wording here, are they in "public" spaces or are they on private property that is open to the public? Do you think there is a difference between the 2? Based on the story linked to it appears these companies are paid to patrol shopping centers, malls etc. not "the streets" though they to talk about community outreach they do which seems to be different from their security patrols
Security services have been a business for all of time, do you also object to private armored car services banks use? or Security Guards at event venues?
I find nothing objectionable with their harsh enforcement of property crimes but I have a feeling our worldview on this topic will greatly differ as I am very very very much for very very harsh punishment for property theft. I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
>>Or do we want a society where those with the resources can hire their own enforcers
I think a mix of both is the correct model. I certainly do not want my tax dollars to go to paying some cop to stand around the local walmart waiting for someone to steal something, Walmart should pay someone to protect their property. However private enforcement should be limited to stopping an act in progress and notifying law enforcement who then come in a reasonable time and actually investigate, and prosecute the crime.
>>opting out of normal police protection, leaving other more numerous victims to fend for themselves
This is a mischaracterization of what they are doing, the government is refusing to provide police protection, if the government refuses to provide it what should they do? just be victimized? Just take it? If the politicians say they will not punish people for theft, you believe people should just accept the theft? No that will never happen.
>>but there is a history of problems (like Pinkerton) related to such things.
yes there was, why? Because government did not have or refused to provide the resources to protect people and property, so like with anything the market found a solution. If you want to curb the possibility for abuses like this we need to support aggressive enforcement and protection of property. Failure to do so will ensure people and companies take the protection into their own hands which may not be good for anyone.
If you have a local DA that wants to stop prosecuting "misdemeanor" property crimes out of some altruistic or other reason I strongly encourage you to vote them out.
I also thought that the comparison to other crimes had some merit, but understand that's not the most productive way to approach this.
> Everyone has the clear and natural right to defend themselves and their property from aggression including theft
I agree, for the most part, outside of edge cases I guess. Some states let you kill someone trespassing in your house (I'm thinking castle doctrine), others only if you are threatened. I'm fine living in a world that goes either way. I'd hate to see the right to defend oneself abused, like when a cop told me "shoot (the garage thief) next time, be sure to kill him, just put a knife in their hand". That could be a neighbor's 14 year old kid playing chase in the dark with their friends. Not ideal...
I wonder if a shopkeeper in Texas can legally shoot a shoplifter? I'm curious how you would feel about a victim of wage theft shooting their employer? Monetary loss is a monetary loss, right?
> This is a problem with wording here, are they in "public" spaces or are they on private property that is open to the public? Do you think there is a difference between the 2?
The article I linked to talked about the actions these guards were taking out on the streets. Portland allows tents on sidewalks, and these guards broke laws by physically removing people, amongst other things (including beatings, and a shooting). The prosecutors there were frustrated trying to hold them accountable. This is the kind of stuff I have a big problem with. I'm not saying that having homeless camped on the streets is a good thing, but the answer is to address the problem or change the laws, not extra-legal activities.
I've got a buddy who is an armed security guard. They send these guys out with 40 hours of training, and they don't know the law. Many better-trained police officers don't know the law. He makes a couple extra bucks an hour being armed, and it's not much. He really needs the money.
Ultimately these security companies are kind of taking advantage of the people doing these jobs. They have to get their own insurance. They don't have qualified immunity. They are really sticking their necks out. The security companies hiring these people don't care, the guards are easily replaceable.
> Security services have been a business for all of time, do you also object to private armored car services banks use? or Security Guards at event venues?
I do not object to these things.
> I find nothing objectionable with their harsh enforcement of property crimes but I have a feeling our worldview on this topic will greatly differ as I am very very very much for very very harsh punishment for property theft. I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood and got used to being careful. I don't know that we greatly differ, but yeah I assume we do to some extant. The world needs all kinds, right? My thinking on things like this has changed over the years, as I've moved in various circles of haves and have-nots, as I've gotten more perspective travelling and reading about other cultures and how they organize their societies, what they value, etc. I've ended up wondering more about root causes, social and community dynamics, the difference between low-trust and high-trust societies, etc.
But to be honest I've paid more attention lately to how the rich/system take advantage of the poor, then the reverse. Just questioning assumptions, mostly. A lot around politics, how the rules are rigged sometimes...
I wasn't sure what distinction you are making with word "initiation", above. I'm reading that the idea is the state has a monopoly on the "legitimate" use of force [0]. They have the final say, for instance on how you allowed to defend yourself, ordinarily allowing the use proportional force to protect yourself from bodily harm.
Also mentioned was idea of a natural right to defend oneself, like you talked about, which is an idea that goes back to the enlightenment, but that this is in conflict with the idea of a state monopoly on violence. Seems like in practicality if the state wants to lock you up in a cage for shooting someone, your natural rights weren't really a thing.
I brought up the state monopoly on violence because people and the government will need to decide if they want to allow private armed security guards to operate on the streets [1].
> I cant stand thieves, and fully support self defense laws like the ones in Texas which allow people to defend their property with lethal force.
Texas seems to be an outlier in this regard, "Texas being the only state to allow the use of deadly force to regain possession of land or property" [2]. Other U.S. states and other Western countries do not allow the use of lethal force to defend property like Texas does. I don't think modern societies and governments are going to embrace your position above any time soon.
In the context of the article we are talking about, I assume that the people of Portland will not want to allow these armed security guards to roam the streets breaking laws and hurting people [1].
I do agree with your position that people are going to want to defend themselves if the government won't do so, or does so inconsistently. That's probably why we have gangs in the inner cities, places where the government doesn't enforce laws for one reason or another. The government looses legitimacy in the eyes of the affected when this happens. Allowing shopkeepers to put armed security guards in the streets is not going to help this bigger problem, and comes with a set of new problems.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
[1] https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine
A 33-year-old black man named Curtis Wilkerson was waiting for his girlfriend at a mall. He went into a department store and put a pair of socks in his shopping bag, and walked out. A $2.50 pair of ordinary tube socks. He was put in jail for 25 to life because he had 2 prior convictions - being a "lookout" in a robbery. But parole is denied 80% of the time, and governors override the parole boards decision to parole them at 50% of the time, he wouldn't get out in 25 years most likely. He also got fined $2,500 for the pair of $2.50 pair of socks. Should a wage theft of $2,000 fine the manager or company $2,000,000 which is the same ratio? Sounds good to me, it would put a stop to wage theft fast. In prison, he earns $20/month, and the state takes $11 every month to pay that $2,500 fine. They take over half his earnings - do that to a business. He won't be able to pay the $2,500 fine off until he is 90 years old.
Another guy got life for stealing a slice of pizza. A guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes. One got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart. One guy got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth?
Why not life in prison for wage theft? How is it any different than anything else? Saying they "didn't know" or "was a mistake" is like a shoplifter saying the exact same thing, but the shoplifter is prosecuted anyways if they say that.
I think this is a false argument as I don’t think people are ok ignoring wage theft. Others have pointed out as these aren’t exclusive options but, specifically, I’ve never heard anyone espouse that wage theft is ok.
It seems to me that in a conversation concerning sexual harassment, someone points out that everyone is ok with human trafficking because it is worse, yet HR departments aren’t working to stop human trafficking.
Where does this lead? Isn't the government supposed to have a monopoly on violence in a modern state? Or are we allowing anyone with money to hire armed enforcers in public places? Would victims of wage theft be justified taking the law into their own hands also, since they are dealing with a bigger problem than shoplifiting?
I'm exploring this issue, more than opinionated, but think it's worth talking about.
You can call your local PD and report shoplifting, or most other kinds of physical theft. It would be a pretty clear accusation, and these days odds are you'd be able to produce some simple evidence in the form of video footage (CCTV, cellphone, etc.).
But how do you report wage theft in a way that the average police force can act on? Are you going to call and say "I'm being forced to work unpaid hours"? If you did I can almost guarantee you they would refer you to some other department or organization. I would not envision the police showing up to arrest your employer, take them in for questioning, etc.
Wage theft is also slightly more complex in that the victims are often complicit in the sense that they continue to work for the employer. To be clear, I am not saying this makes it right, but it makes it hard for the police to do much from an enforcement perspective. You're saying your employer is underpaying you, but you're also continuing to work for them. The employer would tell the police that showed up that you were free to leave, or were agreeing to the term by virtue of showing up. It would take legal action, e.g. a lawyer not a cop, to actually create a claim that was actionable and enforceable by the law enforcement organization.
I follow what you are saying, and admit there's not an obvious easy answer. I'd also say that private security guards who roam the public streets (sometimes harassing law abiding people) are not the best answer to shoplifting.
Hmmm, thinking about this it doesn't seem right to leave wage theft as a civil matter - a lot of victims don't have the resources to engage a lawyer. Maybe we could do things so the deck is not so much stacked against them. More of a paper trail, like an employment contract specifying hours and wages and a paper trail of time sheets. Also making it much easier to report, and treating it as a criminal matter. We could if we wanted to, nothing is set in stone. Maybe also more investigators. Perhaps victims could submit audio and/or video evidence to government authorities. Why should law-abiding employers object to being taped, when they are happy to tape the public to catch shoplifters? It would be nice to figure out how to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable people. It's a lot of money to them.
I kind of threw my comment out there because I know that it burns when someone is victimized by theft, whether by a shoplifter or an employer, but there seems to be a lot more people are quick to be offended by shoplifters then when employers are doing the stealing. I didn't mean to mischaracterize your views on this.
It can be a clear accusation. There can be a form of video footage - I can take a screenshot of the amount that is being stolen from my bank account - I'm supposed to get $1000 but only paid $800.
>Are you going to call and say "I'm being forced to work unpaid hours"?
Sure. Makes 100% sense to me. You can look at your phone GPS, see how much time you spent in the job, then match that up against your pay stub. Exact same thing - you can show them both at the same time.
>I would not envision the police showing up to arrest your employer, take them in for questioning, etc.
That's the issue. They should. It would put an nationwide end to wage theft real fast if they brought in the CEO of Apple into jail for theft.
>Wage theft is also slightly more complex in that the victims are often complicit in the sense that they continue to work for the employer.
If you go into a hotel and stay there for a week, and only pay for 2 days, then you will be charged with theft, even though the hotel knew you were there. Randy Quaid is an example of this - arrested for a $10K hotel bill in Santa Barbara. It's "theft of services" and it is no joke. If he can be arrested, why not someone who skips out of paying you wages? Same exact situation.
>you're also continuing to work for them.
The one has nothing to do with the other. The crime is the crime. But then, by your logic, if one quits and doesn't continue to work, then the employer can be arrested?
>The employer would tell the police that showed up that you were free to leave, or were agreeing to the term by virtue of showing up.
This would be like saying that if I shoplifted at a store, then came in again and purchased something from the store later, that the store owner agreed to the terms of you taking stuff without paying before, because they just sold you some more stuff. That is not how it works.
>It would take legal action, e.g. a lawyer not a cop, to actually create a claim that was actionable and enforceable by the law enforcement organization.
Stealing is stealing. The fact that a lawyer has to get involved, does not mean a cop shouldn't arrest those accused of wage theft.
But, it did give me some good ideas. I'm going to start a bunch of companies up, get people to work for me for two weeks, then never pay them and tell them to sue me. And since it is a corportation, they can sue the company but then I can just shut down the corporation. There won't be able to pierce the corporate veil, because I'm not treating it as an alter ego. Of course, I write this just to prove how ridiculous the claim is, when clearly I am stealing from employees, and gain all the benefits for myself.
"Some shoplifting shouldn't be a crime" != "You don't have to pay for things at a store"
I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you."
I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1" action taken by them.
I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
Are you exagerating? I don't think anyone anywhere has completely stopped prosecuting shoplifting. Or if they have somewhere, please cite specifically, either with numbers, or with enough context so we can try to find some.
There are some places where shoplifting prosecutions declined due to decisions by prosecutors, for sure. That is not at all the same thing as "declaring entire segments of the criminal code void".
When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating it into the most absolute versions we can imagine while speaking in vague generalities that can't be researched... we can't easily get at what's actually going on instead of our imaginations.
San Francisco where functionally anything under $900 is not prosecuted. That is the big one
NYC has also had its fair share of this.
>>When we can't talk about what's really going on without exagerating
It is not really exaggerating, I am not talking about individual cases where an Assistant DA looks at a case in their professional review of choose not to prosecute because of some actual legal reason, or because of some deal or something else
I am talking about wide scale refusal at an entire district level to refuse entire classes of cases
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/06/us/alvin-bragg-manhattan-dist...
https://www.theblaze.com/news/dallas-da-wont-prosecute-crime...
https://www.hoover.org/research/why-shoplifting-now-de-facto...
My first google suggests that shoplifting prosecutions in San Francisco were reduced but not eliminated, and that "organized retail theft" prosecutions (which I see people complaining about on HN a lot) were actually not diminished at all.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/data-shows-chesa-boudin-...
I don't understand how you can claim it was not an exageration to say:
"[declare] entire segments of the criminal code void by saying they will not peruse any cases for violations of those acts. Shoplifting is one such law they often ignore"
Was I wrong to read that thinking it meant you were claiming there were zero prosecutions of shoplifting? That's not what those words mean? What "segment of the criminal code" did you mean specifically had been "void", what am I misunderstanding?
No criminal acts have ever been universally prosecuted and punished, ever.
But ok, correcting my reading of your statement, I now understand that your argumentis in fact that the "#1 action" of "reformers" (by which you mean elected district attorney's only, not other kinds of reformers), has been to reduce prosecutions for shoplifting (I'm not sure what a DA can "reform" except what gets prosecuted how!), and that you think that reducing prosecutions for shoplifting will necessarily lead to unaccountable private security.
That's really what you think we should have understood your original statement as? It sounds a lot less apocalyptic or sweeping of a theory this way. But ok, that's what you're saying. OK, cool, interesting theory...
Well, not quite the same, because they can't payoff victims with other people's money.
A few bad police apples create a mass left-wing media outrage which results in the withdrawing of a public good (police protection), which results in people needing to hire private security, which results in even more objectionable actions taken by this less-accountable private security, than there were previously by the taxpaid police force?
You don't say.
I guess the only relative improvement here is that some of these security firms aren't armed with anything more than billy clubs.
I am not sure this is accurate, and it’s similarly unclear to me what exactly you are referring to.
I don’t know what, specifically, you mean by “withhold police protection.” Would you provide some examples? And what evidence do you have that such action happen “often” as a response to police reform?
To me it is bizarre that this hasn't been a bigger part of the narrative around these issues.
A few bad apples spoils the bunch.
Rotten apples produce gases that accelerates fruit ripening and turns everything else in the container rotten more quickly.
You might have one or two here or there that got in, but they wouldn't last long.
Instead you see that even when bad cops are fired from their jobs, they just get hired somewhere else.
Stop right there. Here's how it could go:
Guard: Wait right here, please.
S: Am I under arrest?
Guard: Please wait. What is your name?
S: So I'm free to go?
Guard: Please wait. What is your name?
S: Buh-bye.
A lot of legal questions come down to a game of chicken, unfortunately. Who is willing to bear the most risk?
Maybe if it really was shoplifting, it goes more like this:
Guard: Wait right here, please.
S: Am I under arrest?
Guard: You are being detained until the police arrive. What is your name?
S: Oh, I'm detained? Funny, I don't notice any cuffs. So I think I'll leave now (drops goods & hops on bike).
Guard: (ponders: If I tackle him, what happens?) Calls police.
Now what?
I'm totally unsurprised that organizations with the means to do so would hire their own private security to try and fill in the gap.
The article clearly has an ideological bent, but as someone living in the area, they're more right than wrong with the observations. Even if you might disagree with the reasoning, the end result is accurately portrayed.
I would love to read a comparison of the two approaches.
https://portlandstreetresponse.org/
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-respo...
All of the increases in social problems we’ve seen in the last 40 years are the tax that we pay for increasing wealth inequality.
The defund crowd imagined that if you just got rid of police, you’d get rid of all of the deep-rooted social issues that policing brings to light. If only it were so.