Austin

Exploring what's next. Founder /launchcaster. YC alum. Avid trail runner 🍊🏃

One idea I think is really good is community supported policing.

Most businesses cannot afford Lance Armstrong’s private police. But you could organize a small group on a block that could together could afford these amenities. 

Start a private security firm with an SLA mandated response time for in person responders, and augment that with digital surveillance like Flock https://www.flocksafety.com/

Organize the community to say enough and sell to the group as a whole

More people are thinking about how to replace the void left by understaffed police https://x.com/2112power/status/1847108205845074106

The Farcaster formerly known as Kchamp. Books, beats, bodybuilding, bright ideas and beautiful things.

katherinechampagne.com

I can’t tell, honestly, if it’s actual understaffing or spiritual understaffing

are police actually understaffed? it just seems like they don't give a shit anymore

SF already has a private police force that are full law enforcement officers, it's the most libertarian city in America, few understand this 🫡

Software Engineer @ Cadence Design Systems. B4: Stanford EE / Illinois ECE

SF already has a private police force that are full law enforcement officers, it's the most libertarian city in America, few understand this 🫡
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Patrol_Special_Police

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In my OP I posit it is cheaper to distribute costs if you are able to get all the people on a block to chip in to share

"In Defense of Looting" spends a portion of the book talking about how modern policing came to be - including tracing its roots back to community-managed security. Any kind of policing carries the risk of abuse, but one built from and by the community being policed has an appeal of more direct management to mitigate that risk.

That assumes the community has the capital to actually fund such a thing, though.

Isn’t “police as a service” just… security?

There was a time after the American Revolution where citizens took up the responsibility of self-policing, out of fear that police departments would become “forces of repression”

From The Killers of the Flower Moon,  

“Inquests were a remnant of a time when ordinary citizens largely assumed the burden of investigating crimes and maintaining order.”

...and SF recently approved the use of "lethal robots" in policing.

I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong with privatization...