Of interest is how circular it all is. At various points in history police forces were funded in this way, affluent people paying for security in their neighborhoods. (cynically thought to be intended to "keep the riffraff out")<p>Over time we moved towards a taxpayer funded police force which theoretically applies equal protection to everyone and forced all the wealthy people to pay in. (taxes) Then we gradually expanded tax burdens downwards so people with lower incomes (at least the middle and working classes) increasingly bear the burden of funding of this police force (radical viewpoint: forcing the poor to pay the salaries of their oppressors)<p>Leading us to a profession of law enforcement whose implementation is unsatisfactory to many people for ideological reasons (being "forced" to pay for it) and pragmatically unsuitable for others. (because in many cases the practices of law enforcement do not directly reflect community values, i.e. war on drugs)<p>It is a cool thought experiment to imagine a system where it comes full circle, all local law enforcement is directly answerable to the community, as its employer, and to federal agencies, in cases of alleged civil rights violations, or to help with larger crime networks.<p>Which is IN THEORY what we currently have, but, clearly if a community feels the need to crowdfund neighborhood security, the government isn't adequately responding to the community's concerns, for structural reasons.
Hey HN, since my comment below the article was buried beneath a bunch of ads, and a discussion is developing, here is the original comment I made on salon.com after reading the article:<p>---<p>(Co-founder/CEO of Crowdtilt here) I just wanted to follow up on the article above and clarify a few things. My replies in the article seem to come across as dismissive of the potential downsides to civic crowdfunding. That couldn't be further from the truth - As team members here at Crowdtilt would tell you, I have actually been quite introspective about how our tools are being used within the realm of community fundraising in the last few days (and as this use case for private security has begun to spread to other cities).<p>Our tools and platform are built with democratization in mind, not built to further tech elitism or affluent disparity. Like any tool built to connect people (from ships, to the automobile, to the internet itself) the early adoption may be through a more affluent class, but that is not where the impact stays and remains - and its introduction is an undeniable net positive for society. Additionally, knowing that many (more affluent) neighborhoods have been doing things like this for years with homeowners associations to hire private security, we hope this tool continues to lower the barriers for such solutions to problems as dire as security or as aspirational as something like free public wifi for a city (<a href="http://tilt.tc/TP07" rel="nofollow">http://tilt.tc/TP07</a>) that we've seen on the other end of the spectrum of civic crowdfunding.<p>My view is that communities will benefit from the tools we're building, but again, I want it to be clear that we take the potential downsides of civic crowdfunding seriously and think about ways to mitigate those downsides - we/I am not dismissive of these arguments whatsoever.<p>Please feel free to reach me at jamesb@crowdtilt.com if you have any suggestions or thoughts - would be happy to have a dialogue on the topic with anyone (...I would learn more from that than a one-sided internal monologue with myself or our team). Thanks, James.
I can't see any negative here. Nobody's complaining that private security firms exist. They're already used by rich people and businesses anyway. How is a group of residents in a suburb different from a group of residents in an apartment block or workers in a company? Next, the internet commenters will be telling us we aren't allowed to buy a computer because it disenfranchises the poor who go without.<p>I used to live in a low-middle class neighborhood with a group of volunteer security guards. They'd drive around at night looking out for burglaries. Is that wrong?
So, here's an interesting quote from the article:<p><i>"An affluent neighborhood that privatizes trash pickup doesn’t marginalize the trash pickup in poorer neighborhoods — it increases the resources that are available for those neighborhoods."</i><p>The trick is this: justice is not trash. Police is not trash, security is not trash. There is a very important moral calculus and contract that goes into voluntarily submitting to society's laws.<p>We need to address the fact that we've lost faith in our governments, and that we don't depend on our .gov to provide for our needs, and that we don't believe in the contract anymore. This is a short-sighted sort of fix, and one that is only going to lay the groundwork for a much, much messier attempt at resolution. We need to fix the .gov.<p>There's always been a kind of wink and nod that yes, the .gov can do better, and yes, we can't all be astronauts, but allowing such direct coupling of personal wealth and policy is quite tacky.<p>EDIT: Removed ranty bit.
Fascinating. For one thing I'm amazed that $8,000 gets your neighborhood 60 hours a week of private security patrol for 4 months. Sounds way too economical.<p>Also, in the article, the CEO of Crowdtilt implies that this is a net-positive because Oakland PD will be able spend more time patrolling other areas--implying that Rockridge will now get less police attention. If that's true, I wouldn't want to pay money for my neighborhood to get less real police patrol.
This is interesting timing given the shutdown of the Federal government. With crowd-funding, citizens can be infinitely resourceful in solving their own problems, faster, and without the long, bureaucratic process that plagues governments. There is a real role for government to play here in securing the safety of their citizens.
Here's the problem - who watches the watchmen? There is a large, complex, troubled, oft-comprised, well-meaning bureaucracy in place to vet police, police training and police actions. Security guards ... not so much. Civic crowd-funding is an interesting concept, but I'm almost certain those that engage in it, over time, will find it deeply flawed.
"Our tax dollars end up channeled to special interests or spent on useless wars or utterly wasted."<p>Not only tax dollars. All the new money we print too, which is a tax in effect, devaluing dollars and favoring those who can grow their wealth with the inflation (either those receiving newly printed money, businesses with pricing power, investors, or workers who can demand raises).
I'm curious how diligent the neighborhood citizens were in soliciting their local government to increase police presence. Did they write to the police chief? Attend council meetings? Voice their concerns to elected officials?<p>I believe people are inherently lazy. More often than not people will take the path of least resistance. What would happen if the volume of support for the crowd-funding were directed at the local government? It seems like people would rather "one-click checkout" (tm) than make the effort to fix their own government.
I definately disagree with the idea that adding private security won't remove funding from public security. If the vasy majority of wealthy townships start funding their own private security, it will be much harder to justify expensive policing budgets, and potentially even cheap police budgets.<p>Short term there are only upsides, but in the long run this will weaken the local governments.