This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Law enforcement officers are, according to Peelian principles, agents of the state and members of the community.
If they can be rented then they are no longer police officers but mob goons. Hred guns. The same category as mercenaries (PMCs) and hit-men.
While you're not wrong, hired mob goons wearing local PD uniforms has been a common thing - in the US at least - since forever.
The police in the United States teaches the Peelian principles but it's heart is in its origins as hunters of escaped slaves. In the 20th century, there are two notable shifts in police trends:
The first was Prohibition and the rise of the booze-runner gangs. This is where Cosa Nostra got a foothold here in the states and even after Prohibition was repealed, it was already installed, and this pushed law enforcement to start identifying civilian neighbors as other. Anyone not law enforcement was on the outside. By the time of the International War On Terror (and the PATRIOT Act) then the people were not just suspect but enemy on the pretense that terrorists were among us.
(There was a similar sense of this during the cold war, in which we were encouraged to suspect our neighbors as communists or Soviet spies, but since they didn't really blow things up - ...yet... - it became a running joke among us civvies, especially after the McCarthy scare ended.)
As a note, the whole Saints Row series of video games is based off the gang myth, and that street kids in the urbs unable to afford new Nikes could rise up to become bosses of international syndicates.
The second was Nixon's war on drugs, essentially a war on blacks (which -- it can be argued -- is a war on the poor). It started with cannabis. Then the DEA was formed which had easy license to do SWAT raids on houses (rather than knocking with a very specific warrant). This is also the era when gang myths rose. Not that gangs didn't exist -- they most certainly did -- but the police gang experts claimed they were simultaneously feral teens that could not be reasoned with, and international crime syndicates that command all the drug trafficking with an iron fist and an AK47. Mostly it was teens doing mischief with little to do with the drug shipments blended in with all the other freight.
(And the gangs didn't really have guns until the police started selling confiscated firearms on the cheap in back-alley deals. I'd like to think those were an illegitimate racket, but it wouldn't surprise me when they were endorsed by department admin.)
Anyhow, the brutality of US law enforcement became evident after the Furguson unrest of 2014 (the killing of Michael Brown, where we saw officers pointing military weapons with poor trigger discipline.) At that point the public realised that BLM had been right about Trayvon Martin. Videos of officer involved killings became ubiquitous, and we were supposed to see reform after George Floyd and the 2020 unrest nationwide. (We were also supposed to abolish ICE as well, and are FOing what happens for not pushing the matter).
So yes, absolutely this is an old, old problem. Another one of dozens that our national failure to address is coming back to haunt us.
the brutality of US law enforcement became evident
Rodney King "can't we all just get along" seemed pretty evident in 1991. George Quintana handcuffed/hog tied near the exhaust of an idling police car and dying while being ignored was happening around then on the other coast too...
The pubic was plenty aware of "Pigs" and police brutality during Kent State in 1970.
Our continued failure to address the adversarial stance of police, courts and populace has been haunting us my whole life, and my father his whole life back to the Vietnam draft days.
We really wanted to believe all the copaganda.
During the Law & Order phase everyone was way into the copaganda.
Now we have Blue Bloods and I bet people still watch that.
Yeah, feature length movies will show "bad cops" on screen for a few minutes, but the ongoing series tend to shy away from anything other that wholesome upstanding proud law men and women keeping the world safe from itself.
I used to live in a neighborhood with a lot of police residents. Most of them are "good" in their own actions all of the time. All the ones I knew were "good" in their actions most of the time, but once in a while they'd go all judge-jury-and-executioner with a badge and a gun - I never knew about any coverups, but I did have a neighbor get suspended for a month with pay and a strong word from his sergeant "don't to that again..." The worst of it is that virtually ALL of them will look the other way / assist in spinning an issue to "help a brother in blue out of a jam," and they know that they have each others' backs that way, so they will do bad things because they have that confidence that they are untouchable.
Worth it to note that you don’t need an app to do this. It’s very common for cops to work off duty private security for retail stores, in uniform, with a full ability to make arrests.
Yeah they make BANK too.
If they have time to work off-duty they have time to work an extra shift.
They're supposed to serve the people, not the rich.
I hate walking into a supermarket and seeing a cop there working, in uniform. If those rich fucks want "security", hire regular security guards.
I mean, cops effectively protect wealth, not people, so being rented like that certainly aligns with their daily jobs
Do they vet the people? Could someone hypothetically sign up for the app, case the rich person's situation, and then do crimes? Sounds like a good way to find rich assholes.
Do they vet the people?
Yes
According to a press release, Patrol "officers" are "vetted professionals" from law enforcement, military, and special forces backgrounds.
Sounds like they'll rate those that killed at least one innocent person higher
Unless the business is ran by complete morons, it's pretty unlikely that there is not some form of vetting or validation.
The validation may have problems and may have holes but it probably exists.
At least to me the one of the first questionswhen building a X For Hire service, aside from where do you find X and where do you find the people to hire them, Is how do you know that these people are actually X.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
established around 1850
Oh rain on me dystopia.
You couldn't pay me to let a cop linger on my property, off duty or not, I don't want someone unbound by law hanging around.
I feel like, if the land's law doesn't bind them, the law shouldn't protect them. But that's crazy talk, that'd mean fairness for the average Joe
Sentences for anybody given such powers when they do get caught breaking the Law and are actually prosecuted and found guity, should be at least double the sentences that people who had no such powers and inside influence in the Law Enforcement process get.
If they have a priviledged position within the legal system with powers which others do not have (including, directly or indirectly the power to make it less likely that they are made accountable for their own crimes), the punishment for breaking the Law if and when they do get caught, prosecuted and found guilty (a big IF) should reflect their superior familiarity with Criminal Law, their lower probability of getting caugh, prosecuted and found guilty because they're inside the very system that does it, and the fact that they abused the authority they were entrusted with.
In the book Parable of the Sower, all the cops and firefighters work for the rich and the poor cannot afford to hire them.
So like real life then.
In my experience firefighters are alright. Cops like shooting people but firefighters just want to put fires out and otherwise be the hero, they want nothing more than to be pictured saving a cat for a house fire. If you want to be the hero you can't be the villain, cops don't care though because they get off on bullying people.
You should look up the history of firefighting in the US, because we're heading back there and it's not great.
Or firefighting back in Roman times. "Oh no, what an unexpected fire in this place I'd like to buy! Too bad my men only put out fires in places I own, which, by the way, would you like to sell your burning home to me? I'll pay half the price because I'm generous, you see"
Ferengi Firefighters, coming to a town near you!
just a reminder, mercenaries aren't to be trusted as a military force due to weak loyalties completely dependent on financial compensation.
but hey, you rich folks do whatever you want to do.
That's why they are pulling them from within the state apparatus.
But what about the code??
Sounds like an arrangement that happens in the developing world, where landowners and businessmen are down with police chiefs at weekend drinking binges and sports betting.
Streamlining the existing process by disintermediating middlemen like politicians and police chiefs.
This is taking advantage of Off-Duty officers and the way Extra Jobs work. You too can hire a police officer if you negotiate with that agency without this app. This is how some small towns are able to get police officers from other agencies to patrol their neighborhoods, and not just the rich ones, when they are short cops. This app is a shortcut to that and yes it is a problem because they are essentially offering a gig job to cops much like Uber or Doordash and seem to be bypassing a lot of the negotiating. But this is not at all a new concept. You know those cops working on the side of the road with their flashy lights on construction projects? Yeah they have been doing that for years.
You now how you fix this problem? You vote out the mayor, or whoever that agency's top boss is in favor of someone that looks out for the public interest and not their own. Or you read your local laws on how to start legislation to outlaw apps that offer gig jobs to law enforcement.
Nothing new here. Private citizens and organizations have rented real cops, both on and off duty, since forever. I can drop a dozen examples off the top of my head.
Yet none are dropped?
I’m not GP, but Stadiums, concerts, conventions, traffic control, high value stores like apple, etc.
No thanks, I prefer to order one "Armed Militia" please 😉
Rather trust the neighbors than some random conservative mostly white dudes that aren't even from the neighborhood.
You know all those Cyberpunk books and movies?
Apparently we thought those were a suggestion instead of a warning…
Cyberpunk is a critique and warning about hypercapitalism with cool aesthetics and technology. Somehow we ended up with zero aesthetics, meh technology, and we're far down the road to actual factual shit down your throat hypercapitalism.
I always try to end depressing comments with something positive, but I can't think of anything. Hug your favourites, and good luck in the Climate Wars.
Tech bros actually think it’s something to aspire to. Saw some tech moron on Xitter say that cyberpunk is a utopia we can achieve. Then he started arguing with people who told him it’s a dystopia.
Fascist tech bros think they will be the elites in Harlan’s World and not some downtrodden servant.
I once thought it's possible to build some kind of "idealized" Empire from Star Wars. Almost like the Soviet space dream.
The problem with these people is - they don't know what they want to do. They have vibes.
I can relate to that very much, I too for most part have vibes and not understanding, and also executive dysfunction, so my life is vibe-driven.
They think they erode the oppressive mechanism (sometimes) or change the world so that the better would be on top (that'd be them in their opinion). These are actually similar in the sense of trying to slowly break what they consider to be chains. Except they don't, they reinforce it.
You can't build a cyberpunk world (no matter dystopian or utopian) without the technologies used being interoperable, replaceable, durable, and available to many people. That's how those worlds exist, through a certain kind of technologies being as ingrained into the society as public domain works of literature.
While these platforms are not such. These platforms for me reminisce China before Opium Wars. A similar degeneracy, feeling of power and lack of feedbacks. (I hope the Chinese have this association too and something in their lives prevents a similar crash, but my hope isn't very strong)
Lawfare as a Service
So people can now hire a cop to actually prevent a crime, instead of waiting for it to happen so that they can report it afterwards? Crazy times.
This has been going on my entire life (since the 1960s and before) - maybe it's a new twist that a "startup" put up a website explaining the process but the process has been around forever.
Example: ever see a cop hanging out at your grocery store, in uniform? Yeah, he's not on duty, he's been rented.
Can I rent one for our next protest?
BFD
I am friends with five people who were once police, are police or are retired police and every single one them had/has a side job.
The most fascinating side job was, he did homicide investigations for the DC police department.
The mundane one was he belt decks.
So this is a niche staffing firm.
Isn't this the origin of the police?
In the Bay Area, cops in uniform and patrol vehicles are stationed outside Apple Stores. At least on weekends. I’ve seen them in Emeryville and Berkeley. Dunno about SF.
Sounds like a rather cheap and easy way to get bad cops out of the police force
