There was a notable absence of opposing views in the article so I looked up "echelon security portland" and found a lot of objectionable actions they've taken. According to this article https://www.opb.org/article/2021/12/02/part-two-police-prose... they've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them. This is all just from the first quarter of the second part of a report so there is a lot more.
>>hey've been unaccountable to the public, they've lied about what people do (pretending they've attacked them), they've lied about their use of force, and attacked people in tents to displace them.
So a normal police force then?
This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
> I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
> There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you."
I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1"
action taken by them.
I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
The author works at The Federalist Society. A conservative online magazine.
Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force.
The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
A few bad police apples create a mass left-wing media outrage which results in the withdrawing of a public good (police protection), which results in people needing to hire private security, which results in even more objectionable actions taken by this less-accountable private security, than there were previously by the taxpaid police force?
You don't say.
I guess the only relative improvement here is that some of these security firms aren't armed with anything more than billy clubs.
Saying that people pushing for police reform results in withdrawing police protection appears to be an unexamined logical jump in your reasoning. That's only the case because the police often choose to withhold police protection in response to police reform.
The Portland city government cut the PPB budget by less than 10%. Yes that's a relatively large cut, but it is not the main driver of officers leaving the bureau. The underlying reason is politics.
I wish the focus would have been on improving the situation with internal affairs, where the police are investigating themselves if an officer does something illegal. This doesn't seem right - the rest of our government is built on checks and balances.
To me it is bizarre that this hasn't been a bigger part of the narrative around these issues.
I just moved to Portland and I live in SouthEast (where this article is talking about). It was a shock seeing guards dressed in the same kit I wore in Afghanistan. They're not exaggerating the homeless situation here either. There's tons, and many of them are addicted to fentanyl or meth.
The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.
I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.
It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
Maybe I'm a bit of a small-town boy, but I find it hard to understand that a lot of people choose to live in these conditions and don't move away to somewhere quieter/safer.
I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:
1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)
2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.
In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.
And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).
In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.
I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.
SF is similar and the excuse almost always is: job opportunities. We can actually move out now that we work remotely but my SO’s salary would be decreased by her company based on change of location and she doesn’t want that.
Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.
The Portland area has lost population in the past year, so many who are able to move are taking advantage of it. I am from Portland and will be moving in a few months mainly due to the lack of safety described in the article.
I hope they stay. The last thing anyone wants is for them to leave the hellholes they voted for and turn nice places into new versions of them. I know many people in places like Austin and Boise are very nervous about the types of people moving in and not picking up on local values.
It's always a balancing act, I suppose. Portland, like many other West Coast cities, is set in a truly beautiful location, with a marvelous blend of mountain and water; and with all the big city amenities on top of it, it does make for a strong proposition.
I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.
Completely agree. I don't understand why anyone would move anywhere near places like this. These are places to run away from as fast as you can get away. Even the rare crazy person that's walking down the street screaming random nonsense around where I am (a richer part of north San Jose) unnerves me and I think they should be locked up somewhere out of sight and out of mind. I plan to move away from here at some point.
It's bizarre. I live in Chicago and don't have to deal with anything like this. The West coast has a really strange set of blinkers on about these problems.
Many people might not have a choice. Cities are where a lot of the work is. It's where services are, rental housing, etc. I see it as a privilege to be living in a small city.
It's simple. People live there for the economic opportunity, which is also why the housing is expensive, which is also why the homeless have no homes. Under the supply-constrained NIMBY regime in which housing is never produced, inequality and the effects thereof rise to an equilibrium point where the benefits and the drawbacks are of equal value.
This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.
You say SE, but by your description it almost sounds like you moved to Felony Flats. That's a rough area indeed, even by Portland standards.
I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.
It that a PPB issue or a policy of local prosecutors?
I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)
So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?
But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.
But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.
I moved here in early 2021 for work and my girlfriend moved up with me as well. Her car was stolen twice and broken into once, twice from controlled access parking. Her bike was stolen as well.
My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.
The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy.
Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.
The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history.
I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene.
This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.
The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.
An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.
Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.
The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.
Gun laws, you mean? Not technically, because the courts have temporarily halted measure 114, but if allowed to go into effect? Yes, absolutely.
114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.
There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).
And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.
As a country we have played around with private policing (the Pinkerton detective agency) after the civil war. We decided we didn't like it.
Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go.
The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
There's an alternative to that as well. When the poor couldn't pay for the private police they didn't just give up on security they just created their own police force, the Italian Mafia the Irish mob, etc. Almost all of these started to provide security to communities that were otherwise not being provided for.
Well, if the problem they’re addressing is largely petty crimes against businesses like shoplifting, you really only need private security in the business districts. Preventing crime in private homes seems like it’s a much harder task for either private or public security, given the coverage area required.
Law enforcement doesn’t prevent crime (and there is no legal expectation for them to do so). They disincentives crime by seeking to punish those who previously committed a crimes, and they disincentivize vigilante justice by offering a (ideally) non-emotional legal system alternative to retribution.
Thank you for this reply. It’s scary to see how many are so ready to “defund police” by “funding corporate ability to murder” (my quotes re sentiment) - which is what happened with Pinkertons, etc.
If those homeless camps have drug problems - the lowest hanging fruit may seem like enabling a private police force, but the hanging fruit will be in actually helping the drug problem…
while this should be obvious to anyone who has seen the camps, we still get articles that claim "the obvious answer to homelessness" is just more housing. Of course we need more housing but how do cheaper rents convince addicts to change their lifestyle?
it's the conventional argument that's being brought up all the time while claiming "everyone's ignoring it".
doing some novel reporting on homelessness without leaving their homes:
> by “funding corporate ability to murder” (my quotes re sentiment)
I don't know about the discussion, but what I'm taking away from the article is actually what policing could be if the shield of immunity that fuels the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude is taken away.
I live and work in Portland. The article paints a rosey picture of a nasty set of problems.
The government here is experimenting with social justice ideas. We've legalized drugs, empowered homeless camping and defunded our police.
I see and empathize with the reasons to legalize drugs, not demonize the homeless or blame people for their addictions or mental health problems... and I understand the academic case for not viewing all social problems through the lense of "how can more policing fix this."
All that said, our family is moving away... at the minimum to the suburbs if not to Idaho or Texas. Portland can't make these decisions in a vacuum, absent thoughtful national policy Portland has become a magnet for drug dealers and chronic drug users who are often homeless as well.
While the rights of all people matter, Portland is too focused on the rights of the people like the kid in the article who are from other states and come here to destroy their lives and our community. They are not focused on my rights as a taxpayer to enjoy a safe walk around my neighborhood.
We need national solutions to these issues, but until we have that I'm moving away and taking my tax dollars with me because I don't want to live in this experiment anymore. It's just not safe for my family.
Many people who believe themselves to be anti-capitalist are in fact blinded by the capitalist myth that money can take the place of historically reliable pro-social behavior. "A good, prosperous life" is the result of many people collaborating in a trusting, honest environment, not "a community of fairly compensated people".
People playing games with social justice seem to think that they can simply pay away problems like theft and ignore the ensuing consequences of large scale societal distrust that occur afterwards. When you leave they'll be more unhappy about the loss of your money than they will about the loss of your predictable, nonviolent daily habits.
1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone.
2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
1. They may only be the 1% of portlanders who own businesses, but they own 100% of the businesses. The other 99% have to buy bread from somewhere, so it totally affects them. Further, it's happening because of how they voted.
2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
> Further, it's happening because of how they voted.
[citation needed]
Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
It’s interesting that Portland is seeing record homicides because it’s far more gentrified than ever. Portland had only 54 homicides in 1993, when crime was much higher nationally, and Portland specifically was much seedier. Last couple of years are close to double the 1993 peak, but population growth since then is only 50%.
First, I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing.
Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results.
Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
If you remember your police history, the title of this story is wrong. It’s re-privatization of the police force.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to your comments, there is one “private police force” that is doing well (and good) enough that people have started copying it, and that’s the Cahoots program from White Bird Clinic in Eugene Oregon. They are somewhat of a third party intervention system.
And as a nonprofit they are probably more accurately a public than private sector organization, which might be the key here to avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to the common good. I don’t want bands of hired thugs or the return of the Pinkertons. That’s basically step 2 on the route to a Stephensonian dystopia.
Well, the Pinkertons were only semi-private. They got a federal contract from the Department of Justice in 1871, and it’s after that point that they hit the largest and most powerful state. That’s also when they began getting involved in violently suppressing strikes. This is the opposite of the actions mentioned in the article here. Additionally, the government moved against the Pinkertons as a result of their bad behavior.
I'm shocked (but not totally surprised) at the response to the concept on HN. I cannot even imagine how one could think this is a good thing - necessary, I can understand, but not a good thing.
I don't even know how to argue that this is bad. I'll just lose all my faith in society if this ever happens where I live.
I support private police because they insulate my family from others horrible policy choices. Life isn’t something you can retry.
If there aren’t private police options, I’ll just produce and distribute illegal arms, like many already do. Johnny Methhead gets 0 control over my life, regardless of how his apologists vote.
I’m curious as to your thoughts if you care to share. I’m not really a partisan on anything, but I am strongly distrustful of both megacorps and government.
Well, personally, I don’t think that police are largely held accountable for the bad actions they sometimes take. Also, the article doesn’t mention anything approximating a cyberpunk hell.
Fourth, if private security violates your rights you can sue. When government violates your rights they typically get the case dismissed due to 'qualified immunity' which USSC made up in 1970s.
Until the lines get blurred and an off-duty police officer starts moonlighting for private security who violates your rights while you're in commission of a crime and now the question of qualified immunity while off-duty becomes a question. It doesn't seem too unlikely where in the not-so-distant future these private security companies would be made up of accredited police officers.
> I like this model of private policing. In the instance the article sites, the security force went at the heart of the problem rather than throwing someone into a cage. That’s a good thing.
I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
Private policing predates public policing,[0] and so asserting that this is is a new development is not really correct. The same is true, incidentally, of firefighting: private insurance companies formed their own private brigades to protect their policyholders' property.[1] Lots of things that we tend to think of as "naturally" public services have only very recently taken that form.
The first link appears to have died, at least from my point of view, so I’ll just ask — what era was this early private police force from? In Rome for example it seems like a lot of state-like functions were performed by wealthy/prestigious patrons, right? So the line seems a little blurry there.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
Readit News
So a normal police force then?
This is a natural reaction when property crime goes unenforced by the government. I know this will be an unpopular take but property crime like shoplifting is not a "victimless" crime against evil "corporations" and when it allowed to occur unchecked it creates an over all unsafe condition for everyone.
There needs to be ALOT of police reforms, not punishing crime should not be in that list of reforms but that seems to be the #1 action taken by "reformers" of late
I have trouble taking anyone seriously who claims those are "victimless crimes". There's little common ground I can find because their fundamental facts tend to be so backward. Shoplifting ruins people's livelihoods and corrupts the social contracts of a society over time. It gradually erodes the living standards of people living in an area.
I would say it's not exactly an action taken by "reformers"... it's a lack of action (for one thing) resulting from an interplay between attempted reformers, and police (individually and collectively) basically deciding "fine, if you think we need reform, we'll just stop doing our jobs, that'll show you."
I don't think there are any police reformers (or even police abolitionists) who think their agendas have been successful at all, lest you think the current situation is what anyone was going for. I would not call this... situation to be an action taken by police reformers, exactly, let alone the "#1" action taken by them.
I do think "punishing crime" is a more complicated concept than you imply, I admit (all "crime" has never been universally and consistently "punished"), but before we even get into that.
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Honestly, why is this article even on HN? It's copaganda but with an even worst twist of being a pro-private military force.
The militarization of the police has been an on going issue since the 90s and now we're jumping to having corporations hiring random goons as a private police force for the wealthy and their corporations.
Well, not quite the same, because they can't payoff victims with other people's money.
A few bad police apples create a mass left-wing media outrage which results in the withdrawing of a public good (police protection), which results in people needing to hire private security, which results in even more objectionable actions taken by this less-accountable private security, than there were previously by the taxpaid police force?
You don't say.
I guess the only relative improvement here is that some of these security firms aren't armed with anything more than billy clubs.
To me it is bizarre that this hasn't been a bigger part of the narrative around these issues.
A few bad apples spoils the bunch.
Rotten apples produce gases that accelerates fruit ripening and turns everything else in the container rotten more quickly.
The political situation is exactly as they described. The county and city in Portland have a weird relationship. They're both "Progressive" but fight over what to do and how to spend money routinely. That's how we got the tents. It's incredibly cold in Portland and we don't have sprawling shelters to go to; most people don't want shelters near them because the homeless can be wild. For example, the night I arrived in Portland I started hearing a succession of booms. I got on to Reddit to find out that at the UHaul I'd dropped my trailer off at earlier that day that someone had tried to drill one of the gas tanks, which is made of magnesium, which sparked a fire. The fire spread to multiple vehicles and they exploded. Things like gunshots are heard pretty commonly; my neighbors deal meth, and down the street a man in the Mexican Mafia had a drive-by done on his house by his ex-girlfriend. PPB (Portland Police Bureau) isn't too interested in anything that's not immediately life threatening.
I didn't know these private security firms were doing this, and I'm glad they are now that I know. This situation between our county and city is what fuels this, though. PPB is its own beast; I haven't been here long enough to know what their issues are. In true Portland style, we are a bit miffed they had the energy to shutdown the Mushroom house downtown but not to deal with immense property crime. The problem with the model in this article is that stores are protected though not all businesses will pay for private security, so we have entire brands thinking about leaving Portland. People are left out of this equation though. If someone breaks into your house or your shed, I doubt you'll have the training to do what Echelon employees have. Oregon, over night, through Measure 114 also became the state with the strictest gun laws in the country thanks to Progressives and the Lutheran Church.
It's a wild state of affairs here past the Cascades.
I've spent time in dangerous urban areas as well as safer urban areas and rural areas. Dangerous urban areas have a combination of two things that are of major benefit to people looking to better their life situation:
1.) Being an urban area, they have the population density to support a greater number of jobs and potential career paths. Living in a small area means you have much fewer choices and your options for starting over if you fuck up are much more limited. (Or if you just don't fit in: That 'safer' middle of nowhere area might not be safer depending on who you are.)
2.) Dangerous urban areas are usually more cost accessible and the lack of policing makes it easier to be an edge case and live on the margins. As an example, the car I drove when I lived in Flint, MI was absolutely not, strictly speaking, street legal. (It was too loud + it died at stops). The cops in Flint had other shit to worry about, so I didn't get a ticket as I saved up money to fix it. That would not fly in Cambridge, MA or most of the rest of the Boston area. Likewise, in Flint who gives a fuck if my tags are expired or I don't have my mandated car insurance? Nobody does. You need some lucky breaks to get established somewhere new, and breaks of any kind are more likely when there are cracks in the system.
In a very real sense, most people do not even recognize there is an actual option to move. Yes, there are all sorts of costs associated with the moving and there is stress to be incurred as a result, but I think most people do not even entertain the idea of living anywhere else compared to where they are for numerous reasons including familial ties.
And then there is the 'why should I leave' aspect of it? Maybe if I stick it out, it will get better ( especially if I own that piece of land ).
In short, I would like to be able to say that it is economically prohibitive to do so, but, I dunno, I moved from the old country to US. And separately the moment I heard a first shot in my neighborhood in Chicago ( and police came to my door asking if I saw anything ), I was out of there in a couple of months in the suburbs.
I think people feel safer being where they have always been ( as unsafe it may be to an audience from a statistical point of view ). It is the environment they know. For all they know, anywhere else may be even worse.
Writing that I do realize that its actually second. First reason for most people is probably just inertia.
I myself moved from a big metro area to a smaller and quieter (but unfortunately not safer) city in a different region of the country, because I didn't care for those big city amenities all that much. But I can easily see how someone could live with the faults.
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This is why paradoxically cities with high poverty and bad economies also have little homelessness.
I may eventually leave the area altogether, but at this point I only enjoy Portland by not living within the city limits. Instead I live in a quieter area of town that doesn't involve Multnomah County or the City of Portland, and we manage to avoid much of the dumb politics they experience. But if I want to enjoy some aspect of urban life, downtown is only 20 minutes away.
I dont know about Portland but in many "progressive" cities there is a directive to not prosecute minor property crimes (i.e car break ins, shoplifting, etc) unless there was violence involved (i.e a Car Jacking at Gun Point)
So the police have naturally reacted by not arresting anyone for those crimes, why bother to arrest them if they are just turned back out in 2 hours anyway?
But even if they were fully staffed and had time to “criminalize homelessness”, the DA is reluctant to prosecute.
But even if the DA presses charges, there is a huge public defender shortage. Loads of people are being set free and having cases dismissed for want of legal representation.
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/car-thefts-dismissed-...
In summary:
- police don’t have time or resources to investigate anything that isn’t a homicide (with some exceptions)
- the DA won’t prosecute, to the point that criminals actively know to commit crimes in MultCo
- if the DA does take the case, it will be dismissed because there aren’t enough public defenders
My car, in the same month, was rear ended by an uninsured driver with a history of DUIs and a family history of crime and bankruptcy. When my car was rear-ended the trunk popped open and all of the contents were stolen by a 3rd party. In all of these times, calls to 911 failed often and it often took hours to get connected to an operator. Even when I found my girlfriend’s car in a high-crime, high-transient part of the city the police would not assist, nor provide a police report for hours. When my car was totaled by an uninsured driver police did not provide a police report, and when I made a FOIA request none was on record.
The private security here, particularly on/near Hayden Island and around N/SE. Portland are completely justified when they have to use force or project force against shoplifters, squatters and other criminals because it results in business closures which depresses the local economy. Unfortunately Measure 114 was heavily funded by out-of-state billionaires who want to disarm citizens, this measure increases police power, but is fortunately currently blocked due to its unconstitutionality.
The wilderness is beautiful here, unfortunately many people turn a blind eye to the violence and crime because it’s a direct result of their own voting and demonstration history. I’ve found that police dispatchers here don’t ask much info about crimes in progress or physical details of criminals. I’m not sure if it’s because they don’t want to add to federal or state records or because they understand that police can’t/won’t actually arrive on the scene. This being said, I’ve taken reasonable and logical precautions to safeguard myself and my property against crime that any free-thinking patriot would take because I don’t want to end up like a person I talked to - they were kidnapped at gunpoint and taken from ATM to ATM withdrawing money recently, his passport and all forms of ID were taken, marooning him here. Every day in this city I see so many cars with windows bashed in and car glass shards on the floor, even in trendy neighborhoods there’s a new puddle of glass shards every morning right off the main streets.
The tents on sidewalks keep people in wheelchairs from using them, forcing them onto city roads where drivers are not anyways lucid. Needles, trash and human waste is a biological hazard that collects even on notable streets like 23rd and particularly on Burnside.
An unusual contradiction is that many people here who call themselves progressive ignore victim’s voices - victims of property time, assault, kidnapping and robbery. I do see that normal citizens here project a sense that they care for others but not when those others are victims of crimes.
Enclosed, closed-off parking, living in controlled-access housing, living on upper floors away from the sounds of paramedic sirens and insane screaming is something I’d recommend. I do also recommend getting a CHL in your county.
The federal government distributes funds to the states which in turn distribute money to nonprofits to give to victims of crime, 10% to my knowledge is supposed to go to victims of violent crime and sexual abuse, with 90% free to go to any victims of violent crime. I don’t see any organizations in Multnomah County that provide funds to people like my girlfriend and I who are victims of nonviolent property crimes, which I find curious because so many occur here.
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114 is poorly written, with several "the authorities will develop and manage this process" without providing additional funding to do so, nor definite timelines. One example is background checks - currently if OSP doesn't complete the check in a certain timeframe (3 days) the FFL is allowed to release the firearm. Under 114, there is no limit. OSP can delay approvals forever, thus effectively denying certain people or groups of people from obtaining a firearm, all at their discretion.
There are other dumb things as well (i.e. many shotguns would be illegal because of the magazine capacity limit, the requirement for "approved" training, but little definition of what that looks lime, etc).
And through all of it, those who obtain firearms illegally will continue to do so, thus bypassing all these new measures anyway.
Privatization of police is bad because only those with money get the benefits. What's this article does not talk about are the countless neighborhoods and streets that don't have security guards protecting them. The article puts security guards in a very pretty light and maybe this is true, but even so: they can only go where they're paid to go.
The whole point of socialization is to make sure that everybody gets a benefit, poor or rich.
If those homeless camps have drug problems - the lowest hanging fruit may seem like enabling a private police force, but the hanging fruit will be in actually helping the drug problem…
while this should be obvious to anyone who has seen the camps, we still get articles that claim "the obvious answer to homelessness" is just more housing. Of course we need more housing but how do cheaper rents convince addicts to change their lifestyle?
it's the conventional argument that's being brought up all the time while claiming "everyone's ignoring it".
doing some novel reporting on homelessness without leaving their homes:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
I don't know about the discussion, but what I'm taking away from the article is actually what policing could be if the shield of immunity that fuels the "shoot first, ask questions later" attitude is taken away.
That’s a really weird thing to believe.
This is what happens when luxury beliefs are realized.
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The government here is experimenting with social justice ideas. We've legalized drugs, empowered homeless camping and defunded our police.
I see and empathize with the reasons to legalize drugs, not demonize the homeless or blame people for their addictions or mental health problems... and I understand the academic case for not viewing all social problems through the lense of "how can more policing fix this."
All that said, our family is moving away... at the minimum to the suburbs if not to Idaho or Texas. Portland can't make these decisions in a vacuum, absent thoughtful national policy Portland has become a magnet for drug dealers and chronic drug users who are often homeless as well.
While the rights of all people matter, Portland is too focused on the rights of the people like the kid in the article who are from other states and come here to destroy their lives and our community. They are not focused on my rights as a taxpayer to enjoy a safe walk around my neighborhood.
We need national solutions to these issues, but until we have that I'm moving away and taking my tax dollars with me because I don't want to live in this experiment anymore. It's just not safe for my family.
You lost me there. Let's not spread the problems of Portland and SF to the other States where you can still escape.
People playing games with social justice seem to think that they can simply pay away problems like theft and ignore the ensuing consequences of large scale societal distrust that occur afterwards. When you leave they'll be more unhappy about the loss of your money than they will about the loss of your predictable, nonviolent daily habits.
1. Don't conflate business interests with the interests of the population of a city. I don't doubt there is rising demand for private armed security from the 1% of Portlanders who own businesses, that does not reflect on everyone.
2. Portland has seen rising violent crime but this is part regression to the mean (Portland is the safest city of it's size, even after the 2020 spike) and part of a larger trend (crime rose everywhere in the U.S. since 2020). The assertion that policing has broken down and the city is lawless is laughable.
2. Anyone who's ever been to Portland wouldn't or couldn't call it an average city. Even before the pandemic there were homeless people everywhere. I couldn't turn my head and not see a tent. It didn't look particularly fun either; Portland gets a lot of rain. Also the article doesn't assert that policing is broken down, they assert that the police are underfunded and take two hours to get there.
Its happening because business-backed city leadership decided to deprioritize affordable housing in an effort to uplevel the tax base and get rid of all the artist types, with the completely forseeable result being an explosion in homelessness
But ignoring homicides traffic violence is at a 70 year high after the traffic policing team was cut to support homicide investigation and patrol. https://www.koin.com/news/portland/portland-sees-rise-in-ped...
By which measure Portland is safer than both of your examples, even after this supposed apocalyptic crime wave caused by defunding the Police
Second, if you have a failure from a public institution, a private alternative is a good thing. You get more competition, which often yields better results.
Third, this isn’t very thought out, but trimming public police forces and dedicating funding and staff to more serious types of crime while allowing private police to handle petty crime could be an interesting use of resources.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to your comments, there is one “private police force” that is doing well (and good) enough that people have started copying it, and that’s the Cahoots program from White Bird Clinic in Eugene Oregon. They are somewhat of a third party intervention system.
And as a nonprofit they are probably more accurately a public than private sector organization, which might be the key here to avoiding conflicts of interest with respect to the common good. I don’t want bands of hired thugs or the return of the Pinkertons. That’s basically step 2 on the route to a Stephensonian dystopia.
I don't even know how to argue that this is bad. I'll just lose all my faith in society if this ever happens where I live.
If there aren’t private police options, I’ll just produce and distribute illegal arms, like many already do. Johnny Methhead gets 0 control over my life, regardless of how his apologists vote.
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I mean this with all sincerity and zero snark: I barely recognize today's America in this story. There's a dynamic with both LEO & Privatization and it isn't leading to bulk mistreatment of vulnerable people. This lack of mistreatment is almost startling in how unfamiliar it feels.
[0] See p. 1193 et seq. of this article: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/default/fi...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Early_...
On the other hand, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that bounty hunters and private security pre-date the police.
I would love to read a comparison of the two approaches.
https://portlandstreetresponse.org/
https://www.opb.org/article/2022/12/19/portland-street-respo...