What would be different if there was no police

[Husar]

So you're really in favour of having a Warlord in every part of the city with the different warlords fighting wars between one another? Some rich guy will buy himself enough mercenaries to try and control as large an area as possible, the mafia can just operate more openly and the citizens will have to dodge bullets and shoot back to prevent it. Of course you can solve this by fighting back with a militia but you can also die in said militia if the others are too strong, the police force are many, they have a monopole on power, they can draw forces from other cities if necessary etc. which is why it makes little sense to fight them openly, a local militia is a lot weaker than that.
That the police are not patrolling certain areas is a problem that isn't inherent to the concept of a police force, it's about how our police force is used, handled, trained, equipped and financed. In countries were there is no effective police force that establishes control of an area to keep the peace, it's usually the poor who are at the whim of marauding bandits, warlords and what not, now you can say that all our middle class citizens can afford a gun, but then when I murder someone two blocks away at night, who is going to find out it was me? There is noone to stop me from murdering again, noone who knows how to find me, there will just be a lynch mob that chooses the most unwanted person in the area, perhaps a stranger, and blames, then kills him.

[Fragony]

Yeah I prefer paying the maffia over having to pay police and the maffia, is that so odd. Every policeman costs you twice, got to pay his salary and the job he's doing, said job being writing fines. You are on your own anyway, police or no police.

[Lord of Lent]

There's no point in living like that. People simply have to come to an agreement if they want to live in peace. And the poor people are already forming mobs so I think privatising security isn't a bad idea.

[Fragony]

Absolutily awesome for the poor, the poorer the easier after all, actually collecting is a different agency, here at least. Police is just too useless to be of any use, too dumb and lazy. Guns please.

[naut]

Why not?

[bobbin]

Why do people think private security would fill the void? With no one watching over them they could do what ever the hell they liked and so would very quickly become protection rackets, also being private organisations they would undoubtably focus on the most profitable forms of policing ie: fines, lots of them.

So you would be paying extortionate sums for protection and they would only really focus getting more money from you through fines, it would be far far worse than the current situation.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Why do people think private security would fill the void? With no one watching over them they could do what ever the hell they liked and so would very quickly become protection rackets, also being private organisations they would undoubtably focus on the most profitable forms of policing ie: fines, lots of them.

So you would be paying extortionate sums for protection and they would only really focus getting more money from you through fines, it would be far far worse than the current situation.

Perhaps you ought to take a look at the police abuses thread. In the US, the police largely monitor and investigate themselves, so they can do a sham investigation of an officer killing someone for a door ringing prank and say nothing's wrong.

And police are already focused on fines; whether it be speed traps or asset seizure, which involves taking any money they find on a person without charging them with a crime. To stop that, we need to remove the incentive, which means police departments shouldn't get any of the money or items they seize or any of the fines they charge.

The answer, whether private or public security, is proper oversight and accountability. We don't have that in the US for the police, though I think it would be easier to get oversight on private companies than on the government police.

CR

[jabarto]

The answer, whether private or public security, is proper oversight and accountability.

Well spoken. It's nice to see that we can agree on some-

I think it would be easier to get oversight on private companies than on the government police.

welp

[bobbin]

Perhaps you ought to take a look at the police abuses thread. In the US, the police largely monitor and investigate themselves, so they can do a sham investigation of an officer killing someone for a door ringing prank and say nothing's wrong.

And police are already focused on fines; whether it be speed traps or asset seizure, which involves taking any money they find on a person without charging them with a crime. To stop that, we need to remove the incentive, which means police departments shouldn't get any of the money or items they seize or any of the fines they charge.

The answer, whether private or public security, is proper oversight and accountability. We don't have that in the US for the police, though I think it would be easier to get oversight on private companies than on the government police.

CR

My point wasn't that it doesn't happen with public police organizations but that it would be worse under private policing because they are driven by profit, this will undoubtably lead to to them over focusing on more profitable policing.

A similar situation can be seen in the pharmaceutical industry where companies spend disproportionate amounts of money on designing things like anti-obesity drugs because they are more profitable, rather than new antibiotics or HIV drugs that would do more good and save more lives.

Proper oversight is definitely a must but I don't think it would be any better for private companies, I mean look at the state the banks got into recently, it doesn't bear thinking about what would happen if something as vital as policing were to undergo a similar event.

In Britain we have the IPPC that does the job of "policing the police" although it's not very good at it (the recent case of Ian Tomlinson a rather shocking example), the problem is that the police don't do their job properly not that the concept of goverment policing is wrong.