* pro active annexation & police protection

Topics: Misc
22 Aug 1993

From: ervan


While watching "This Week with David Brinkley" I heard two police chiefs
decry citizen "vigilante groups". I asked myself why are people willing
to pay for police protection in small collections (neighborhoods) in the
form of hiring private security or volunteer labor but they are not willing
to pay the city more money for properly trained and full time police?
Surely the latter would be better in all but the smallest communitites.
What do you think?

I see several reasons:
1) The large city will not, despite its promises, actually spend
increased tax revenue on police protection. There are too many
votes to be bought with handouts. Voters realize this at some
level and will not vote the tax increases.

2) The protection will not go to the people paying for it proportional
to the amount they pay. On one hand, this looks like more equality
of protection, but the results are less protection. Of course this
is true of all kinds of striving for equality, everyone is brought
to the lowest level, the public schools being a perfect example.

3) Though the public at large wants drugs and prostitution to be
illegal, when it actually comes to paying for the enforcment they
are far less willing. Thus, there is political pressure to spend
someone else's police dollars on vice and actual protection gets
short shrift. As David Friedman says "No private policeman has
ever spent many hours at a restroom peephole in hopes of
apprehending deviates."

4) And finally, one that hurts, constitutional safeguards are
expensive. The good news is that citizens can do some of their
own policing without sacrificing this because they are not (and
should not be) empowered to act as courts. Still, other parts
of the system are evaded by citizen patrols.

Pro active annexation exacerbates (1) & (2) since police forces
organized at levels lower than the city are not permitted.
The effect of (3) is less, i.e. it will still exist with
any tax funded police. It really does make sense for Hunter's
Village to be separate so that they can have an effective
police force to protect them. What do you think would happen
if the following were put a vote even in the 5th ward:
Taxes will be lowered by the amount you spend on police protection
and you'll have to use the money to buy your own local protection.

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