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Cops Gone Wild: Bull Connor In The OC Edition
AngelHedgie
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
In response to a police brutality protest in Anaheim, the cops resort to rubber bullets and dogs to break it up. In doing so, they started a "near riot".
Didn't they look at what happened in the 60s? This is just disgusting on several levels.
Didn't they look at what happened in the 60s? This is just disgusting on several levels.
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Sometimes... I think Shadowrun has the right idea, partially. Fire the PD and replace them with a private security company with the same powers.
Hear me out on this. A corporation would be concerned with public image so there wouldn't be a blue wall of silence (due to needing a good public image for contract negotiations) or paid vacation for those under investigation (due to budget concerns). Of course the recent London thing proved how bad of an idea that was so I'm just gonna shut up now.
This is a great idea until you get arrested for wearing Nikes in an Adidas patrolled area.
That's what triggered the London riots as well, don't need to remember that far back.
A private police force would be selling to the city, not the people. They would have the same motivations as the public police force to cover up incidents, and it would be immensely harder to pierce the inner workings and shine light on what's being covered up.
Only need to look to where cities have privatized things that are usually public, like fire departments. There was a news story not long ago about a private fire department showing up at a guy's house to make sure the uncontrolled fire that was going to be allowed to destroy his home didn't spread to people who's checks hadn't bounced.
This actually happened in the current continuity (Lone Star botched their handling of a gang war, if I remember correctly) and they were replaced with Knight Errant.
Of course, the existence of things like the various Barrens Z zones and the like in Shadowrun, as well as the rampant abuse of the SINless, are examples of the perils of private security forces.
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Sweet, next time i get back to Shadowrun i can toss in that Knight Errant took over. The players will get a kick out of it.
Private security definitely has its issues, makes me think of Punisher 2099 where if you called the cops and were behind on your police protection insurance payments they would neither send help, nor investigate the crime.
At the moment, I have yet to see any video of a clear chain of events nor any testimony from participants that isn't skewed one way or another. Even news reports are filled with second hand accounts of cops letting dogs out and offering to pay money for cell phones containing video.
It's a well known fact that bulletproof vests are essentially force fields that prevent any harm to the wearer, regardless of being drastically outnumbered. As well, those things cannot be pulled off by other people, and can only be removed by the wearer.
Fixed that for you, because its very nearly the truth in Puma/Adidas's hometown in Germany.
No such thing as a Puma.
I'd say this speaks to deeper issues that crop up between lower-income communities and the police, though. Not a whole lot of trust to go around in either direction.
Well, the idea is that with a large enough vocal outcry, city reps would be pressured to change security companies (as opposed to not doing anything). Of course the whole idea is bad because people are bad. The fire department argument though wouldn't work in this case. The company would be contracted by the city/government to provide the service to everyone, not the individual citizens (though I think in that case, the people had the ability to op out of the program?).
Two responses to this:
1. How frequently does a large vocal outcry work against the public police department? It will not be any less effective against the private one, and might be even less effective if your typical small town public servant contract lawyer can't measure up to the big expensive firm the department hires.
2. How many competing offers are you likely to find? (going back to my example of privatized fire departments, most places if the city decides to terminate their contract, their only option is to reassemble the public fire department).
And then there's the real fun thing about privatizing public services: Who does the private company hire? Usually the same public employees you just put out of a job. And if you manage to find a competing offer and switch police providers, guess who they're going to hire to meet the demand? The people the last company just laid off. For the same reason: They've got immediate relevant experience, know the area, and since the new provider generally takes over the buildings and equipment of the public department/previous corporate provider, they can pretty much be put back in their old jobs with a minimum of transitional stress. You're rarely actually getting rid of the problem, just putting it on somebody else's payroll.
If I recall the details about that fire department was that the local government had been foisting the cost of fire prevention on the neighboring town for years, and putting their foot down was the only way they had to get said local government to actually put money aside for the fire service.
It isn't a good example for this argument, if I am remembering the correct incident.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
The area had to outsource their fire services to another town who did have local fire services, because it was too small to maintain themselves.
As someone who used to work private security, I can tell you right now that private security is largely a joke. It's being a cop for people who couldn't cut it as cops, or couldn't even get a foot in the door.
Or couldn't even get a job at Walmart.