An entrepreneur persuaded New Orleans to let him create a high-tech police force

&quot;...Torres’s squad, the French Quarter Task Force, which at all hours had three armed officers zigzagging the neighborhood in matte black Polaris Rangers that resemble militarized golf carts.&quot;<p>&quot;Torres also became involved in setting policy. Earlier that week, his force had coordinated with the N.O.P.D. in two huge arrest sweeps of so-called transients, whose familiar panhandling presence in the neighborhood (ragged clothes, mangy dogs, rusted harmonicas) had not been the subject of recent outrage. But Torres believed them to be a nuisance...The targets of the arrests had not been connected to any serious crimes, and some of the city’s residents saw the move as questionable.&quot;<p>&quot;&#x27;Crazy, right?&#x27; Torres later said. &#x27;I kind of felt like Bruce Wayne.&#x27;&quot;<p>So basically this rich businessman has a small force of <i>armed</i> private police legally roaming his neighborhood because a) he had his home burglarized and was pissed off b) he wanted to get rid of some homeless people to raise property values in the rich quarter, where he and his family&#x2F;friends own a lot of property c) it makes him feel like Batman.<p>It&#x27;s sad that the current state of public policing has not only allowed, but necessitated this type of questionable vigilante justice.

I worked in the Quarter for the better part of two years. The criminals are criminals; the transients are part of the character of the area. Where else in the world do you have a mix of movie stars and millionaires living alongside musicians and artists working hard to survive?<p>As hard as he tries, the Quarter is still in New Orleans. White washing it may make it more appealing to moneyed types and tourists, but it comes at the cost of turning the Quarter into a shell of what it once was.

There are obvious ethical problems with a private security service supplanting the police.<p>However this is an interesting example of how it might be advantageous to have multiple service providers competing in a market that try to be more efficient and provide more for less money.<p>Maybe there should always be multiple police forces that compete in the same market. It might help get rid of violent cops who driving down the services reviews :-)

The raise of &quot;private cops&quot; should not surprise anyone. In US where income inequality has risen to greater proportions and the city budgets stagnated. Gated communities, private security and private cops are the next steps of it. They are not as much accountable to public at large. It is tempting to paint all the private cops in a bad picture, but there is some good coming out of it. Where the City Police has become moribund, these guys are the only hope between getting robbed and not getting robbed.

OmniCorp - &quot;We&#x27;ve Got the Future Under Control&quot;

Anyone else wondering why a city with a crime problem has had their police force reduced by 500 officers in the last 3 years?

This works as a chase away strategy but East NO is a different matter, nowhere to chase the gangs to.

This sounds amazingly close to the start of the CPS in the show Continuum.

Oh my god. If the US will start to privatise police then we soon have that all over the planet.

We are insane.

USA is a failed state