From the East Bay Times:
Large retailers are paying for police protection in Oakland
Walgreens, Target join Home Depot in requesting dedicated officers
In an apparent effort to reduce crime inside and outside their stores, Walgreens and Target are joining Home Depot in paying overtime to Oakland police officers for some protection.
Walgreens and Target last month asked the Oakland Police Department to provide officers at their locations, police spokesman Paul Chambers confirmed. The department, which in 2019 allowed officers to work overtime at Home Depot, agreed.
At an hourly overtime rate of $91.43 plus a 15.5% fee the city charges for officers’ service, Home Depot has paid out $2.1 million since the arrangement began in March 2019, according to Chambers.
That is a lot of money for a big company to pay out for security.
That’s not the only consideration.
Pamela Drake, the former director of the Lakeshore Business Improvement District and member of the Coalition For Police Accountability, expressed some skepticism about the deal.
“This seems like a screwy arrangement,” Drake said. “If something happens, which is inevitable, who is going to be liable for that bad response?”
While officers are working outside their normal shifts for the detail, “they are not under the direction or supervision of the store’s management,” Chambers noted. He said they still have to abide by police department rules and are supervised by command staff.
Still, the arrangement blurs lines between private and public policing, and Drake said she also wonders whether it is right to have armed police officers securing the stores.
“Whether we should have armed people at these stores, I think that is something that should be a public discussion,” she said, adding that she hopes the police commission looks into it.
The anti-cop, pro-criminal Leftists are clearly going to try and put the businesses on the hook if a criminal is shot by police while providing overtime security.
Big-box retailers can afford this, for now. This means criminals will target the smaller, independent retailers that can’t afford security, driving them out of business.
The big-box retailers are also probably considering closing some locations. I would. Look at the balance sheet of which stores have the lowest retail revenue to security costs and shut them down.
The police are unable to handle the amount of crime on the streets so are hired for post-shift security work, which increases costs and now you have a death spiral.
These cities are doing a bang-up job of making it impossible to do business and live a decent quality of life there.
It amazes me that these blue bubbles have so much political power when inside of them they are all third-world failed states.
The company I work for has several locations that we hire from a private security company off dutys from the local PD.
In this case, they absolutely are working for the private agency.
There are other times where we are obligated to pay for police OT or coverage in certain events, but they are on city time
This is sort of a logical conclusion to defunding police, elimination of cash bail, and a $950 free pass on theft.
One wonders if this were the intended result.
One also wonders who benefits most from it? Police in the short term. Big retailers in the medium term. Politicians in short, medium, and long term?
Interesting to contrast this to the Oakland (I think it was) store owner who was arrested for trying to save a lady from being (at least) robbed.
It kind of reminds me of the early days of fire departments … when there were multiple companies per area, and the one you paid is the one that came to put out your fire. You hadn’t paid; they didn’t provide coverage.
In the long run, I could see independent merchants doing a few things. They could band together, say as a block association, to collectively provide for additional payment for police services. They could do the same for private security. Or, they could use less … mainstream … private services, which would provide a more permanent solution on an incident-by-incident basis. I could see that latter starting to happen if the store owners get fed up enough with catch-and-release; neither of the first two scenarios would fix that.
In todays world “less mainstream security” would be a yuge liability problem for the security people
It amazes me that these blue bubbles have so much political power when inside of them they are all third-world failed states.
Once everyone gets a vote, regardless of anything else, this is an anticipated result. If you have no “skin in the game” (e.g. landowner, employed, net taxpayer; whatever you want to use as “net contributor”) there’s no reason not to vote for giving yourself other people’s stuff.
Sorry … I’m a little more cynical than usual this morning, apparently.
This has been going on for DEACDES. Disney hires off duty cops in Florida.
They use their taxpayer funded uniform, patrol car, weapon, and radio. They have on duty police on at their beck and call. Because they are cops they don’t need a security guard license, and since they are subsidized by the taxpayer, this makes it impossible for security companies to compete against them. They are able to search you and violate your fourth as well as fifth amendment rights, because they are working as private security and not as police. However, if you lie to them, resist them, or in any way assault them, you are then arrested for obstruction of police.
They also cannot be sued for anything they do, because qualified immunity.
Nice little business you’ve got here, be a shame if something bad happened to it.
We’re getting closer and closer to a Feudal system where the big money owns what government there is, and provides security to the proles/serfs/peons for a price. Thugs either work for the overlords, or form their own competing fiefdoms.
Changing conditions so that everyone has to work for one of the approved multinational big corporations does make people easier to control. Especially if they have massive student loan debts for degrees they were scammed into thinking would get them into the Nomenklatura.