Oakland Neighbors Crowdfunding Private Security

http://techpresident.com/news/24395/oakland-neighbors-crowdfund-private-security

by vellum • 13 years ago

68 51 13 years ago

“We shouldn’t have to do this,” says Steven Kirsh, who is running the last of the three Rockridge campaigns, “but we need to do this.” He doesn’t see the Oakland Police Department suddenly getting more resources, so in order to protect his belongings, family and property value, the $82 per household doesn’t seem like much to ask, for 12 hours of patrolling five days a week. For a four month trial it will work out to less than a dollar a day.

What do you wanna bet this guy would scream to high heaven if the city wanted to tax him an extra $82 a year to fund more patrolmen?

mattbaker• 13 years ago

My first thought exactly.

jmspring• 13 years ago

Knowing someone in Oakland that is part of a community considering private patrols, they'd rather not be paying for their own security. That said, Oakland like many municipalities granted the moon for pensions during the boom times without considering the busts. This, coupled with the pensions of higher ups, is putting a serious hurt on dollars available to boots on the ground.

Yes, people at some point might have griped about "an extra $82" in taxes, but they are way beyond that point now. OPD isn't patrolling the hills, property crimes are rarely followed up on, etc.

Snark all you want, but there are people with families living there that are at their wits end.

yapcguy• 13 years ago

Have they ever thought about leaving Oakland? I know it's not easy to just move, especially with family and job commitments, but I wonder if the people you know have ever mentioned what the breaking point would be.

Vekz• 13 years ago

Thats the thing about taxes though. You don't know where your moneys going to end up for sure. Oakland's government is notorious for squandering funds on private consultants and good will projects. A Tax raise is more like an uncontrolled penalty scenario for your money. People are a lot more willing to put funds in when they feel they control outcome.

cmsmith• 13 years ago

I don't accept your premise that the people paying for this program would reject higher taxes. But it's worth noting that Oakland has some of the highest property and sales tax rates in what is already a highly taxed state. And as a reward, it has some of the highest crime rates in the country. So I could understand if someone thought that increasing tax rates was not a particularly effective way to increase public safety.

vellum• 13 years ago

It's earmarked specifically for his neighborhood. Plus, the neighborhood has more control. If the security firm sucks, the neighborhood can fire them, or have them bring in different people.

Lazare• 13 years ago

Honestly, I imagine he would LOVE to pay $82 per year for that level of extra patrolling. In fact, I'm sure they'd prefer it, because taxation can remove the free-rider problem Kirsh is struggling with, meaning that he'd get more patrolling for less money, all else equal.

The problem is that all isn't equal. Krish no doubt knows, just as you do if you'd think about it, that there is no possibility of paying $82 in taxes to obtain that level of extra patrolling. The local government is dysfunctional, their cost structure bloated, the political process broken. Keep in mind, Oakland has some of the highest local taxes in America; in a very real sense Kirsh is already paying that $82 per household (and more besides) yet not getting the patrolling he wants. What would adding another $82 do? Would it fund 12 hours of patrolling, five days a week? If you know ANYTHING about the cost structure of modern police departments in general, or Oakland in particular, the notion is absurd. The city of Oakland is not capable of providing what Kirsh and his fellows want.

It's like looking at someone buying a second hand Acer laptop $200 off Craigslist, and muttering that you bet he would refuse to pay $300 for new Macbook Retina. He almost certainly would not refuse that, but we'll never know, because that deal is certainly not on offer.

krakensden5• 13 years ago

This is Rockridge. There is a 99% chance this person is Very Liberal(tm), and would be just fine with increased taxation.

There are also extenuating circumstances- OPD is its own worst enemy.

agilebyte2• 13 years ago

It would have to be more than $82 though (how much?) because they would have to pay for the citizens in others hoods whose income is less or non-existent.

bluedino• 13 years ago

$82 probably buys you ONE hour of police officer time, but three hours of private security officer time.

No unions, no pensions, no politics, blah blah.

dragonwriter• 13 years ago

Private security officers are cheaper because lots of them are either: 1) Considerably less trained/qualified than police officers, or 2) Police officers working part-time for additional income, whose training, benefits, etc., come through their main job (and who become unavailable when required to perform overtime in that job, for which they are paid more.)

was_hellbanned• 13 years ago

....with the aim of compensating for an understaffed police department...

When I left Oakland in 2009, I was throwing away one of the free, local papers when something caught my eye. It was a short article stating that the Oakland PD truancy rate was, I believe, 37%. So, a significant portion of Oakland PD don't show up for their shifts. Perhaps there is a legitimate reason for this. Unfortunately, every time I try to dig up this statistic, I just get results regarding student truancy efforts by Oakland PD.

Also, in 2008, Oakland PD blew $15,000 on, I believe, Screamin' Eagle exhausts for their police Harleys. After complaints of hearing loss, they took the pipes back off, then spent $1,200 on a 'study' to test whether they increased safety (they didn't), caused hearing damage (they do), and complied with noise standards (they blatantly violate Federal noise laws, and OPD doesn't care). The article I'm looking at is unclear as to whether or not the $15k was in addition to the initial cost of $500 per bike, from before the hearing complaints, removal, study, and re-installation.

I miss a lot of things about Oakland, but Oakland PD's antics are not among them. I don't blame people one bit for wanting private security.

ballard• 13 years ago

It sounds absolutely ridiculous to pay someone else to do what the police are getting paid to ostensibly do. It also further divides a community between protected and unprotected.

Perhaps someone that knows more about OPD could chime in:

0. Can't slackers be fired?

1. Is there a recruitment problem that constrains 0.?

2. Is leadership failing to motivate and/or inspire morale?

3. How many OPD regular officers live in Oakland? (I would wager it's very high or very low.)

Postscript: I love Oakland, both its gems and its warts. It's hard to find good music in the Bay Area, especially live blues.

krakensden5• 13 years ago

I don't know the specifics of shift truancy, it's possible that management is making impossible demands- but OPD has a plummeting budget to work with, and has been flunking out of federal receivership for years. Leadership regularly gets booted for that offense.

Probably ~90% live outside the city: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/the-high-costs-of-outs...

Detroit passed a fatwa requiring police to live within the city a while back, I'm not sure it solved anything.

bandy• 13 years ago

It's hard to find good music in the Bay Area, especially live blues.

Surely you've missed finding out about JJ's…or you live on the opposite side of the bay from them.

Long, long ago, in a valley far, far away, people would drive from Berkeley to Sunnyvale (or the opposite trip) to meet their friends for dinner. (Midweek, even!) Traffic wasn't nearly as bad then.

michaelt• 13 years ago

This surprised me so I googled it. Lo and behold [1]:

  According to an independent arbitrator last November, the 
  daily absentee rate for the Oakland police department was 
  more than 40 percent. [...] Oakland's rate is at least 
  twice as high as comparable departments.

  Michael Rains, attorney for the Oakland Police Officers 
  Association, did talk to us. He attributes many past 
  absences to Oakland's high injury rate and current and 
  future ones to a new 12-hour work schedule.

[1] http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local&id=59864...

krakensden5• 13 years ago

12 hour shifts are too long for people making life and death decisions.

bdamm• 13 years ago

Bring on the franchises.

frank_boyd• 13 years ago

[...] crowdfund private security services, with the aim of compensating for an understaffed police department in the city with the highest robbery rate in America.

Why?!

Why should security become the responsibility of private people? That's pretty sick.

You are paying taxes to receive this service. But your "representatives" prefer to provide "security" to everybody but their own citizens, it seems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

The solution is to protest and vote!

noarchy• 13 years ago

The solution is to protest and vote!

I suspect that they may have looked into that solution, and found it wanting. Hiring their own security gives them far more control. They know where their money is going, and they can adjust things, as needed.

This doesn't end the problem of continuing to be taxed, of course. That's a much harder nut to crack.

tlrobinson• 13 years ago

Federal government shutdown. Oakland residents crowdfunding private security. Libertarian dreams coming true.

Well, minus the Silk Road raid.

aric• 13 years ago

Classical liberals/libertarians, voluntaryists, minarchists, and anarchists don't ultimately want underground markets. It's actually closer to a living nightmare to them. People who want 'real' liberation want freedom: not having to hide and not being victimized for consensual interaction. That is the freedom of choice and ability to choose openness. In other words, underground markets don't exemplify more liberal-libertarian models of governance. Underground markets more so reflect liberal-libertarian people attempting to coalesce under extreme duress. This holds true for other issues in parallel.

nikcub• 13 years ago

A modern spin on something that has been happening in less developed and some developed nations for a long time. While I lived in Cape Town, South Africa part of my office lease went towards private security guards, and at one apartment I rented part of that rent went towards private security as well.

It was very common throughout the city and other regions to find co-ops form around businesses, farmers, home owners, etc. who would pool their money together and hire a private security force.

At our second office, it was the entire main street of shopholders with some of the offices chipping in to hire a dozen fulltime security guards to patrol the street, check cars, etc.

It worked reasonably well. You get to know the guards really well, they get to know the area well, and they were much more effective in responding to incidents than the police or other local authorities (in an earlier incident a man was once stabbed right infront of me, I called the ambulance and waited with him for an hour, he died and his body was eventually picked up later that night).

There were also times it failed. In one incident the guards caught three people trying to jump a fence, they used a disabled toilet in one of the stores as a makeshift prison cell and beat the three 'suspects' up and kept them in there for 24 hours. I can't describe how much blood there was on the floor and walls, but the three were eventually released (I was told they 'have to' do this so that other potential thieves go elsewhere, and that the police wouldn't do anything)

At first I was uneasy with the thought of having private security, but because of the failing of government to provide basic safety I ended up only every moving to areas that had a similar setup.

Residents resorting to self-funded policing is a sign that something is very, very wrong with government administration. I never thought i'd see this play out in a major American city.

agilebyte2• 13 years ago

Quick fix, yes. What happens with those security companies once the crime goes down though? Just like private prisons in US, I'd be worried these guys will make crime to keep the paycheck going.

mseebach• 13 years ago

The prison lobby is a problem, not just because of what they're peddling, but because there are takers - the political system. Private providers to private clients don't generally have that problem because the gravy train has a nasty habit of coming to an abrupt halt if any shenanigans are discovered.

Symmetry• 13 years ago

Private prisons don't make crimes in the sense of making people do things that are widely regarded as immoral, they just seek to make sure things already regarded as immoral become or remain illegal, and seek to have the penalties set as high as possible. That isn't what security companies would need to do to increase demand.

Remember that the costs to security companies of trying to increase crime rates would be born by whoever lobbies to reduce police effectiveness, whereas the benefits would be shared by every security company. Industries form associations to get around these problems, but you can only really do that if you can claim with a straight face that you're acting in the public interest. But while "We need to be tough on crime" and "I'm helping to keep criminals behind bars" are two statements that are easy to publicly resolve "We shouldn't waste so much money on police" and "You should give me money to protect you" make the speaker look like a hypocrite.

I'm sure that security companies lobby in various ways to get legal exemptions to weapons laws, let their employees detain people more easily, etc. Just probably not in ways that would increase crime.

buyx3• 13 years ago

I had similar thoughts reading this. However, American standards are far higher than our own, and they have a lower tolerance for crime: in Johannesburg we've had robberies outside Gautrain stations, where people have been shot, and there hasn't been an enormous amount of outrage.

I have a friend who just got back from San Francisco (not Oakland, admittedly), and I specifically asked him about bums and filth in SF, because I've seen that mentioned previously on HN. He said that he saw a few bums, but as soon as they jay-walked the cops were all over them, courteously, but firmly, pulling them back onto the sidewalk; and asking them to move on when they were loitering. He was astonished -contrast this with cities like Johannesburg where bums, beggars and vagrants occupy intersections with impunity.

I don't want to belittle the Oakland problem, but I do think some perspective is required, and it's a bit of a stretch to say that conditions are approaching those in South Africa.

dwiel• 13 years ago

Theres a big difference between the nice parts of sf and the most unsafe parts of oakland.

smtddr2• 13 years ago

> There were also times it failed. In one incident the guards caught three people trying to jump a fence, they used a disabled toilet in one of the stores as a makeshift prison cell and beat the three 'suspects' up and kept them in there for 24 hours. I can't describe how much blood there was on the floor and walls, but the three were eventually released (I was told they 'have to' do this so that other potential thieves go elsewhere, and that the police wouldn't do anything)

I hope this doesn't make me sound like a cruel person. I realize sensitivity to this kind of stuff is different depending where you are in the world. But, why do you consider this a failure? I understand it isn't as "civilized, humanitarian, feel-good" as the western-world's perceived standards, but this is absolutely how it's done in areas without reliable police enforcement. Until a stable & reliable law-enforcement can be set up, I honestly believe significant beatings for would-be thieves is the best deterrent for crime. Especially for 3rd-world countries; less things truly fall into complete chaos.

buyx3• 13 years ago

Good point. Mobs beating suspected crooks up is frowned upon by the educated middle class (Rule of Law and all that), less so by the poor (which these security guards probably were), and who are more exposed to police ineptitude.

(Not that it makes it right, of course)

sneak4• 13 years ago

Because the rule of law hinges upon the fact that people are innocent until proven guilty. Jumping a fence is not sufficient evidence alone that they were going to steal.

Furthermore, beating people like savages is not an acceptable punishment even if they were.

It seems to me like you've never been accused of a crime you didn't actually commit.

The idea here is that it's better to let 10 guilty people go free than erroneously punish one innocent.

I shouldn't have to explain this.

sneak4• 13 years ago

I understand it isn't as "civilized, humanitarian, feel-good" as the western-world's perceived standards

Also, you're using weasel words. They're not "perceived standards", it's simply uncivilized, animalistic behavior.

It is unacceptable, regardless of circumstance.

king_jester• 13 years ago

This has always been a terrible system and will continue to be. Giving an authority class an unchecked license to beat, harass, rape, and assault persons that may or may have not been intending to commit a crime is a recipe for brutality in a community.

mryan• 13 years ago

Louis Theroux's documentary Law and Disorder in Johannesburg touches on the topic of private security. As someone with no experience of such situations I found this fascinating:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZJ1w9-Umcw

One section shows a situation similar to that which you described, in which the private security guards beat a suspected criminal to discourage repeat behaviour. Interestingly, the most brutal of the private security guards later falls foul of a mob of citizens, and must be protected/arrested by the real police (there's a chance I'm confusing this with another Theroux documentary).

sneak4• 13 years ago

Residents resorting to self-funded policing is a sign that something is very, very wrong with government administration. I never thought i'd see this play out in a major American city.

As someone who grew up in Detroit, I never thought it would take this long to happen.

jmccree• 13 years ago

It's also not like this is new in the US, it's just becoming more affordable and easier to arrange. Private railroad police have been here since the time of Lincoln. Office buildings, hotels, and apartment/condo buildings have had door men and security since forever. High end gated neighborhoods have had private security patrols, "armed response" services, even hiring their own dedicated sheriff/police patrols for a long time. More recently there are plenty of middle class "gated" neighborhoods with their own security.

For over a hundred years ranchers in Texas have had an industry association with it's own private deputized investigators for cow theft. Look how many downtown areas now have "Ambassadors" that are just private security patrolling. In many states there are some form of "Improvement Districts" that allows a neighborhood to self-tax and pay for private security or extra police patrols. Where I live, in Atlanta, almost every neighborhood you'd want to live in employs off-duty police to patrol.

And of course, every government agency from federal to local you can think of has their own police force to protect their property. FBI Police, CIA Police, National Zoo Police, Mint Police, Federal Reserve Police, (insert state here) Capitol Police, University Police, School District Police, Park Police, Hospital Police, Convention Center Police... It goes on.

The US is a huge country without a nationalized police force. Since the beginning those that could afford (or legislate) more security/policing have done so. The more directly a security force works for their clients, the more responsive they can be. This is why many cities were and are incorporated, to provide a higher level of police than counties/states were providing. It's why the FBI has it's own police vs relying on local PD. As the standard of living for everyone in the US rises, so will the amount of people hiring private security and police, it's no longer the domain of just the rich and powerful.

pasbesoin• 13 years ago

A fair number of years ago, the company I was with swapped in new senior management in conjunction with / for the purpose of executing a severe downsizing.

Suddenly, I'm walking past armed guards in the lobby.

This was not a "security" related company. Just an old-line business suffering under the changes brought by technology and too long under reactionary management.

But this new management was paranoid that someone was going to come in and shoot them up.

I'll differ with jmccree in that I don't see this as the result of rising prosperity. Rather, I see it as the result of rising inequality.

The rich are all the more able to pay for this and to force it through, when the masses -- including those from whom they hire their security -- are worse off. They can more easily afford the wages, and they more easily -- through their influence -- control the political implications.

As for the trend in the U.S., which also is occurring in e.g. fire fighting support and other areas. Many would argue it's another sign that, beneath the GDP totals, the U.S. is no longer a first world country. Piece by piece, link by link in an increasingly severed social contract.

simbolit• 13 years ago

i am terribly afraid that if this "works", they created a great incentive for the city council / government (whoever is responsible in your jurisdiction) to cut corners at the PD.

s/ libertarian dystopia here we come /s

scarmig2• 13 years ago

Oakland has already cut so many corners at the PD that it approximates a circle...

e12e• 13 years ago

This really reminds me of Virtual Light:

"But Rydell was always glad to have him on shift, because he was as determinedly nonviolent a rentacop as you were likely to find. And he probably wasn't even crazy. Both of which were definite pluses for Rydell. As Hernandez was fond of pointing out, SoCal had stricter regulations for who could or couldn't be a hairdresser. Like Rydell, a lot of IntenSecure's response people were former police officers of some kind, some were even ex-LAPD, and if the company's rules about not carrying personal weapons on duty were any indication, his co-workers were expected to turn up packing all manner of hardware. There were metal detectors on the staff-room doors and Hernandez usually had a drawer full of push-daggers, nunchuks, stunguns, knucks, boot-knives, and whatever else the detectors had picked up. Like Friday morning at a South Miami high school."

  -- Virtual Light, Willam Gibson, 1993

It's sometimes hard to tell if Gibson's fiction is moving closer to reality with each series, or if the progress of time takes reality closer to his fiction...

protomyth• 13 years ago

Considering parts of Oregon have had to go back to private citizens doing patrols due to budget cuts, I can see where private police forces or citizen patrols will probably happen more and more.

It should be noted that standing police forces are a relatively new concept. Rome had one at the end, but that was became quite corrupt.

Oakland Neighbors Crowdfunding Private Security

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