This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Law enforcement officers are, according to Peelian principles, agents of the state and members of the community.
If they can be rented then they are no longer police officers but mob goons. Hred guns. The same category as mercenaries (PMCs) and hit-men.
While you're not wrong, hired mob goons wearing local PD uniforms has been a common thing - in the US at least - since forever.
The police in the United States teaches the Peelian principles but it's heart is in its origins as hunters of escaped slaves. In the 20th century, there are two notable shifts in police trends:
The first was Prohibition and the rise of the booze-runner gangs. This is where Cosa Nostra got a foothold here in the states and even after Prohibition was repealed, it was already installed, and this pushed law enforcement to start identifying civilian neighbors as other. Anyone not law enforcement was on the outside. By the time of the International War On Terror (and the PATRIOT Act) then the people were not just suspect but enemy on the pretense that terrorists were among us.
(There was a similar sense of this during the cold war, in which we were encouraged to suspect our neighbors as communists or Soviet spies, but since they didn't really blow things up - ...yet... - it became a running joke among us civvies, especially after the McCarthy scare ended.)
As a note, the whole Saints Row series of video games is based off the gang myth, and that street kids in the urbs unable to afford new Nikes could rise up to become bosses of international syndicates.
The second was Nixon's war on drugs, essentially a war on blacks (which -- it can be argued -- is a war on the poor). It started with cannabis. Then the DEA was formed which had easy license to do SWAT raids on houses (rather than knocking with a very specific warrant). This is also the era when gang myths rose. Not that gangs didn't exist -- they most certainly did -- but the police gang experts claimed they were simultaneously feral teens that could not be reasoned with, and international crime syndicates that command all the drug trafficking with an iron fist and an AK47. Mostly it was teens doing mischief with little to do with the drug shipments blended in with all the other freight.
(And the gangs didn't really have guns until the police started selling confiscated firearms on the cheap in back-alley deals. I'd like to think those were an illegitimate racket, but it wouldn't surprise me when they were endorsed by department admin.)
Anyhow, the brutality of US law enforcement became evident after the Furguson unrest of 2014 (the killing of Michael Brown, where we saw officers pointing military weapons with poor trigger discipline.) At that point the public realised that BLM had been right about Trayvon Martin. Videos of officer involved killings became ubiquitous, and we were supposed to see reform after George Floyd and the 2020 unrest nationwide. (We were also supposed to abolish ICE as well, and are FOing what happens for not pushing the matter).
So yes, absolutely this is an old, old problem. Another one of dozens that our national failure to address is coming back to haunt us.
the brutality of US law enforcement became evident
Rodney King "can't we all just get along" seemed pretty evident in 1991. George Quintana handcuffed/hog tied near the exhaust of an idling police car and dying while being ignored was happening around then on the other coast too...
The pubic was plenty aware of "Pigs" and police brutality during Kent State in 1970.
Our continued failure to address the adversarial stance of police, courts and populace has been haunting us my whole life, and my father his whole life back to the Vietnam draft days.
We really wanted to believe all the copaganda.
During the Law & Order phase everyone was way into the copaganda.
Now we have Blue Bloods and I bet people still watch that.
Yeah, feature length movies will show "bad cops" on screen for a few minutes, but the ongoing series tend to shy away from anything other that wholesome upstanding proud law men and women keeping the world safe from itself.
I used to live in a neighborhood with a lot of police residents. Most of them are "good" in their own actions all of the time. All the ones I knew were "good" in their actions most of the time, but once in a while they'd go all judge-jury-and-executioner with a badge and a gun - I never knew about any coverups, but I did have a neighbor get suspended for a month with pay and a strong word from his sergeant "don't to that again..." The worst of it is that virtually ALL of them will look the other way / assist in spinning an issue to "help a brother in blue out of a jam," and they know that they have each others' backs that way, so they will do bad things because they have that confidence that they are untouchable.
Police exist solely to defend capital, and always have.
If they have time to work off-duty they have time to work an extra shift.
They're supposed to serve the people, not the rich.
I hate walking into a supermarket and seeing a cop there working, in uniform. If those rich fucks want "security", hire regular security guards.
I mean, cops effectively protect wealth, not people, so being rented like that certainly aligns with their daily jobs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
established around 1850
Oh rain on me dystopia.
Do they vet the people? Could someone hypothetically sign up for the app, case the rich person's situation, and then do crimes? Sounds like a good way to find rich assholes.
Do they vet the people?
Yes
According to a press release, Patrol "officers" are "vetted professionals" from law enforcement, military, and special forces backgrounds.
Sounds like they'll rate those that killed at least one innocent person higher
Unless the business is ran by complete morons, it's pretty unlikely that there is not some form of vetting or validation.
The validation may have problems and may have holes but it probably exists.
At least to me the one of the first questionswhen building a X For Hire service, aside from where do you find X and where do you find the people to hire them, Is how do you know that these people are actually X.
In the book Parable of the Sower, all the cops and firefighters work for the rich and the poor cannot afford to hire them.
So like real life then.
In my experience firefighters are alright. Cops like shooting people but firefighters just want to put fires out and otherwise be the hero, they want nothing more than to be pictured saving a cat for a house fire. If you want to be the hero you can't be the villain, cops don't care though because they get off on bullying people.
You should look up the history of firefighting in the US, because we're heading back there and it's not great.
Or firefighting back in Roman times. "Oh no, what an unexpected fire in this place I'd like to buy! Too bad my men only put out fires in places I own, which, by the way, would you like to sell your burning home to me? I'll pay half the price because I'm generous, you see"
Ferengi Firefighters, coming to a town near you!
Streamlining the existing process by disintermediating middlemen like politicians and police chiefs.
This is taking advantage of Off-Duty officers and the way Extra Jobs work. You too can hire a police officer if you negotiate with that agency without this app. This is how some small towns are able to get police officers from other agencies to patrol their neighborhoods, and not just the rich ones, when they are short cops. This app is a shortcut to that and yes it is a problem because they are essentially offering a gig job to cops much like Uber or Doordash and seem to be bypassing a lot of the negotiating. But this is not at all a new concept. You know those cops working on the side of the road with their flashy lights on construction projects? Yeah they have been doing that for years.
You now how you fix this problem? You vote out the mayor, or whoever that agency's top boss is in favor of someone that looks out for the public interest and not their own. Or you read your local laws on how to start legislation to outlaw apps that offer gig jobs to law enforcement.
Sounds like an arrangement that happens in the developing world, where landowners and businessmen are down with police chiefs at weekend drinking binges and sports betting.
So people can now hire a cop to actually prevent a crime, instead of waiting for it to happen so that they can report it afterwards? Crazy times.
This has been going on my entire life (since the 1960s and before) - maybe it's a new twist that a "startup" put up a website explaining the process but the process has been around forever.
Example: ever see a cop hanging out at your grocery store, in uniform? Yeah, he's not on duty, he's been rented.
Can I rent one for our next protest?
BFD
I am friends with five people who were once police, are police or are retired police and every single one them had/has a side job.
The most fascinating side job was, he did homicide investigations for the DC police department.
The mundane one was he belt decks.
So this is a niche staffing firm.
you guys in America have completely lost it, how rich the country is, and how terrible the level of crime is. it's awful...
how terrible the level of crime is
yeah it's not nearly as bad as conservatives would have you believe. other than gun crimes, which obviously we're leading the world in because... merica
The big deal is intentional homicides, which we have at a higher rate than most industrialized nations. The US used to have a rate comparable to slavic, post-eastern block countries but they've gotten worse and the US is catching up to Russia.
Similarly, US suicide rates.
Gun access facilitates this, as does recreational drug access (specifically alcohol). However desperation and precarity (food, housing, family, etc.) are all factors.
The US would solve the majority of its crime problem (based on harm: death, destruction, cost) by investigating and prosecuting white collar crime (and mandating businesses / government pay amble restitution to survivors)
Regarding petty crime (including intentional homicide) most of those would be solved with welfare programs and drug rehab.
There will still be serial killers, but they'll be rare enough that we can write true-crime books about the handful in a given era.
The big deal is intentional homicides, which we have at a higher rate than most industrialized nations. The US used to have a rate comparable to slavic, post-eastern block countries but they’ve gotten worse and the US is catching up to Russia.
citation requested as I can't find stats that back this up.
Similarly, US suicide rates.
similarly, see gun accessibility. our suicide success rate is so high because we provide one-way tickets anyone can get easily.
The US would solve the majority of its crime problem (based on harm: death, destruction, cost) by investigating and prosecuting white collar crime (and mandating businesses / government pay amble restitution to survivors)
this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. white collar crime isn't violent crime involving death and destruction - don't get me wrong, I think wage theft should be prosecuted at a higher rate than shoplifting, but your premise is all over the place.
Regarding petty crime (including intentional homicide) most of those would be solved with welfare programs and drug rehab.
no disagreement on that one. it would save us tons of money. But it wouldn't help the for-profit industrial prison complex that keeps conservatives in power, so good luck with that.
There will still be serial killers, but they’ll be rare enough that we can write true-crime books about the handful in a given era.
who was talking about serial killers? they're an aberration in the stats, speaking holistically. I didn't bring this up.
I've been following this page since the aughts. Sadly, the BJS and the CIA factbook don't chart it out so conveniently, and I'm looking as a layfolk researcher. Would love to have Langley's data, though.
Re: Suicide rates and guns, in the 2010s guns counted for about half of the successful suicides. Now the non-gun successful suicide rate is higher. The pre-Trump CDC got better at tracking failed suicides and estimates them higher than they used to (suicides, successful or not, much like sexual assault and harassment, go unreported at a conspicuously high rate, so we have to guess how many there really are based on how many we find. This happens a lot, such as officer-involved homicide. As one of the 13 million (per year) that seriously considers suicide, I keep track of this, and it started rising fast after 2016. Conspicuously so did hate crimes.
Re: the for-profit industrial prison complex. Again, even after Trump's first term, most penitentiaries were state-controlled (the big for-profit market was in immigrant detention centers in Trump's first term). There was still an industrial complex in the eighties, which profited from prisons getting built which was the stronger promoter of tough on crime (tough on poor people) legislation. But in 2025 the choice is to bring down the industrial complexes that fuel ~~conservative~~ fascist autocratic politics, or expect yourself and everyone you know to end up in a work camp, at least until it becomes a death camp (once the network of concentration camps becomes too expensive to maintain).
Re: Serial killers
I bring them up only because this one of the common argument that comes from the right when discussing police reduction or abolition. The questions are like this:
It's more profitable to let crime happen and punish it than it is to pay fair wages, and both ruling parties (along with their supporters) are capitalists.
Worth it to note that you don’t need an app to do this. It’s very common for cops to work off duty private security for retail stores, in uniform, with a full ability to make arrests.
Yeah they make BANK too.
You couldn't pay me to let a cop linger on my property, off duty or not, I don't want someone unbound by law hanging around.
I feel like, if the land's law doesn't bind them, the law shouldn't protect them. But that's crazy talk, that'd mean fairness for the average Joe
Sentences for anybody given such powers when they do get caught breaking the Law and are actually prosecuted and found guity, should be at least double the sentences that people who had no such powers and inside influence in the Law Enforcement process get.
If they have a priviledged position within the legal system with powers which others do not have (including, directly or indirectly the power to make it less likely that they are made accountable for their own crimes), the punishment for breaking the Law if and when they do get caught, prosecuted and found guilty (a big IF) should reflect their superior familiarity with Criminal Law, their lower probability of getting caugh, prosecuted and found guilty because they're inside the very system that does it, and the fact that they abused the authority they were entrusted with.
just a reminder, mercenaries aren't to be trusted as a military force due to weak loyalties completely dependent on financial compensation.
but hey, you rich folks do whatever you want to do.
But what about the code??
No thanks, I prefer to order one "Armed Militia" please 😉
Rather trust the neighbors than some random conservative mostly white dudes that aren't even from the neighborhood.
Nothing new here. Private citizens and organizations have rented real cops, both on and off duty, since forever. I can drop a dozen examples off the top of my head.
Yet none are dropped?
I’m not GP, but Stadiums, concerts, conventions, traffic control, high value stores like apple, etc.
