Honey, Did You Order More Law Enforcement?
There is talk lately about “reimagining” law enforcement. Have you seen it? Some are saying that police departments should be abolished. Have you seen that? Have you thought about it? What do you think? What’s the plan?
Here is what I think will happen if that does happen. First, you have to consider that there is a demand for security. There always has been, and there always will be? Do we agree there? So, given that there is a demand, how will the need be met? Well, as it happens, there are hundreds of thousands in the country with training who will be willing to sell their services. There will be a supply. Furthermore, without state certification, there will be additional millions who believe they are capable as well. Many will find their way into the supply chain. Can’t be worse than what we have now, right? You may think so. Let’s say you’re right. Six-half dozen.
Interestingly, there is an analogue for this sort of service in our history. The original fire companies were essentially subscription services. They were arranged by insurance companies. If you had a certain company’s insurance, you could place a badge from them on the outside of your building, and if it caught fire, they agreed to put your fire out. Philadelphia had a company like that in the late 18th century.
Without a police force as a public utility, it would likely be something to subscribe to. Remember your old telephone or cable bill? There used to be only so much you could do with either type of service. And prior to deregulation, the Bell Company provided a pretty solid service for their fee. I can’t even name all of the companies that the Bell Company broke into, and there are tons of things that you can do, but the phone service has never been as good. Once upon a time, the telephones belonged to the company, and they lasted a hundred years. Now, we buy them and they last about three. And that’s fine.
So, how is the subscription to law enforcement security going to look? Will it be one fee, and you get total protection? Is anything like that in this country? If someone can pay more, and get some sort of elite protection, don’t you think that is going to happen? You might say, well, that already happens. I’d agree. Some people definitely get more protection and are targeted less than others. However, that is not supposed to happen. It may take a century to convince some that that inequalities exist in treatment by the police or the courts, but if the last two weeks have taught us anything, sometimes it can be proved.
Imagine a subscription service based law enforcement. When they state up front that you’re only going to get the level of service that you pay for, George Floyd, and a whole lot of other people, myself included, are more vulnerable than we already are. How would the Amy Cooper incident play out if she has paid for a pricier subscription that the bird watcher?
This concept of abolishing police departments, in my view, is an extension of the rugged individualism fantasy that so many Americans have. We are stronger together. There are huge problems that need to be addressed, but this version of deregulation is not the answer.
06/06/2020 @ 12:26 am
Another privatization fantasy. Next we’ll privatize the armed forces.
06/06/2020 @ 7:36 am
Barr is well on his way to creating an American version of a “Secret Police Force” comprised of unattached, unidentified, and unregulated law enforcement and military units that follow his orders and answer only to him…
Trump himself doesn’t know who these people are…
Somebody or something needs to stop Barr before he is completely out of control with this authoritarian power grab….
06/06/2020 @ 7:57 am
I do not believe in coincidences. The fact that this is happening 5 months before an election is very disturbing. I also believe we will fly right into this like flies into a big zapper. Frankly, given his history, I can’t believe Barr was confirmed a second time. He’s the one who arranged for no accountability from Iran Contra.
06/06/2020 @ 1:32 pm
The question is quickly becoming:
Will we have a peaceful transition or a constitutional crisis the brings to the brink of a civil war?
06/06/2020 @ 12:27 am
Actually, they might as well privatize the Presidency. That’s how Trump functions now.
06/06/2020 @ 6:46 am
Xe Corporation. Remember, that group that used to be called Blackwater? They went to war in Iraq, I believe. And private armies were the original versions in Europe. That’s how wealthy individuals became warlords.
I am a believer in the public sector. Losing it would be a great loss of public wealth, as it has been with school systems and hospitals, etc.
06/06/2020 @ 10:34 am
I’ve seen and heard this call to “defund the police” many times this past week and wonder what on earth it is that people think would replace them.
The 57 quitters in Buffalo gave me pause. Were those who would quit over the suspension, not the termination of two officers who assaulted a white man ever there to serve and protect?
How did they decide so quickly to quit en masse?
57 people chosen randomly couldn’t agree on anything that quickly.
I suggest that a certain (but unidentified by me) psychological bent was determined to be held by them in the process of their applications for hiring that noted a blind allegiance to ideals rather people.
That would be the type of police that would emerge.
I see the mistreated calling for this in the street, but I believe it is horribly and tragically miscalculated.
The secret police emerging now under the aegis of AG Barr portends a time that has been nervously chattered about for decades.
It does not bode well to say the least.
06/10/2020 @ 8:12 pm
https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759
I’d like your comment on this. How does this match and not match your experience?
06/10/2020 @ 8:41 pm
Highly dubious for a variety of reasons. I’m not quite sure when this individual was a cop (if that is actually true). Let’s say for the sake of conversation that his account is legitimate, there are major differences from my experience and observations.
First, the photo. I don’t know if that photo is from his agency, and meant to represent him, or the time that he was an officer, but there is a ton of information in that, and especially since he generalized across all people in the profession.
On my first night on the street out of the academy, you sit in roll call in the front row. Rows go by seniority, and nubes are right up front. They start with an inspection of the entire shift, out in formation on the hallway, and you must look better than anyone since all of your equipment is new. Inspections are very familiar and make a newbie comfortable. It is similar to what you do often in an academy, and rare once out on the force. The guys already there dont like it. They become perturbed.
Then you get assigned your partner, and head to the equipment room. You stand near your partner and he ignores you while talking to his friends. Then he takes you to the equipment, room acting like he has been put upon by you personally. Then he makes you carry all of the equipment down to the parking lot and tells you that he’ll meet you down there later. He jokes around with other training officers and then eventually shows up with a different affect. he’s pissed again because he has to spend time with you.
Then, he gives you his own inspection. THE FIRST thing they did in my time was to grab your pepper spray holder on your belt and say, “turn that shit upside down in the holder, and do not bring it tomorrow. Make sure you take the holder off of your belt after tonight.”
In my time, no one liked pepper spray because it was a tactical liability to everyone. It gets on officers like it gets on the person you’re spraying, then it gets in the car. In 5 years on the department, I had that on my belt exactly one night. The first. So, if there was a time where cops went around spraying people indiscriminately, that came after my time. (There is a similar aspect to using tasers, but we did not carry them on our person. They stayed in the vehicle. The only time I ever saw them used was on PCP suspects and such. No one wanted to use those tasers because they had hook parts that went into the skin, and once shot, the suspect had to be taken to the hospital. That version of taser was much more tricky and dangerous, and no one wanted to spend 5 or 6 hours in a hospital with a suspect. Lots of calls were avoided by cops because it involved long hospital visits and tasing anyone turned any call into a hospital visit.
Just one more and I’ll stop, but there are many agencies in Southern California. Many are trained at the LAPD academy, but not all. And once out on their respective forces, the way things were done vary widely. Even within the LAPD, which at the time had 4 bureaus and 16 geographical divisions, the way the job was done varied widely. The way this person spoke of it implied that there was a uniformity in the approach to doing the job. That’s beyond ridiculous. Even within a single division, on single shifts, there are different ways of doing the job. Different people have different skills sets, experiences personally and professionally, and personalities. Those play out in a big way in the job. The piece you cited shows no awareness of any of that. Also, not everyone liked one another. People did things differently sometimes because of what they learned TO DO, and what they learned NOT to do. The piece you cited implies a uniformity that doesn’t even ring true if he were talking about the way my mother taught school. It lacks the way real humans do real things. In my view, it is an outsider’s story.
06/10/2020 @ 11:47 pm
Thank you. I figured you’d know
06/10/2020 @ 8:47 pm
Oh, let me also add, DUI on a bicycle is not a stupid law. DUI is a very serious, very important law, and it doesn’t matter if you are on a Big Wheel. Interestingly, the writer doesn’t give any details, and I can imagine that if someone were drunk on a bicycle in their back yard, and not going anywhere, that might seem picky, but he didn’t say one way or another. Even that action would be illegal, but it might just as well have been someone on the road, on a bicycle, while impaired. The potential consequences there are severe. Making a claim about the law broadly without saying anything about the use of the law seems PROFOUNDLY suspect to me. The law itself is serious and important. Some violations of it may not be, but again, the writer says the law entirely is stupid. That’s a ridiculous claim.