Facebook To Pay City $200K-a-Year For a Neighborhood Cop

theodp writes "Valleywag reports that Facebook just bought itself a police officer and questions what kind of mechanism will be in place to make sure the officer — whose position Facebook has agreed to fund to the tune of $200K-a-year for 3 years — doesn't provide preferential protection for the social network giant and its employees. It's probably a fair question, considering that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder made the City of New Orleans enter into a federal consent decree designed to address the 'divided loyalties' of the city's moonlighting police officers. But for now, everything's hunky-dory in Menlo Park, where Police Chief Robert Jonsen called the deal a 'benchmark in private-public partnerships.' No doubt it is, as was last week's Google-City of San Francisco deal to fund free bus passes for low- and middle-income kids. But is giving earmarked funding to facilitate self-serving city expenditures a good or bad development?"

Comments

Bad development

[Anonymous Coward]

Pay your fucking taxes and accept good service in return. If the service isn't good, fix it for everybody or buy your own private cops. The need for private cops embarrasses the public cops, which it should.

Buying government cops is the merger of corporation and state--the very definition of fascism and inherently corrupt.

Not just cops. The Google "public private partnership" is corrupt too; but not quite as bad since it doesn't involve guys with guns.

Ultimately business pays for everything...

[Karmashock]

Everything. And at some level, society needs to be built around facilitating and accommodating business. Again... they pay for EVERYTHING.

Should any one business get preferential treatment? No.

However, business itself should get preferential treatment.

Why? Because if business is unhappy in a given area... the area dies. Look at Detroit. That's what happens if you piss all over business for decades. And keep in mind, Detroit has had tens of billions pumped into it by the federal government to try and keep it alive. Over many years going back generations now. It doesn't matter. Piss on business and you'll wither and die.

So... getting to the issue of these private police and bus passes. Why are these companies giving the local government extra money? Because the local government is shaking them down. Google for example is having its ability to commute workers into and out of San Fransisco interfered with... that's not sustainable. Either it has to stop or Google can't maintain a workforce in the city. Google has therefore attempted to bribe the city into doing something the city should have done at no additional cost.

As to facebook... no idea why they're buying the police. But I can only assume they've had security problems and the local police were not responsive. As a result... they've felt the need to incentive assistance.

All told the whole thing is pretty sad. And before someone talks about the evil corporations, lets get something straight... look around the country in more business friendly areas. Take texas or South Dakota or either of the Carolinas... how much of this police buying are we seeing there? Not much. So California is where we're seeing this now.

Why of why would that be?

Re:Ultimately business pays for everything...

[Mashiki]

Perhaps you can explain what part in his post he was stating that someone should get beaten for being a different race. Well perhaps I should just reply, look we found a liberal-democrat...when all else fails they fall back on race. Because it's the "magic card."

Re:Ultimately business pays for everything...

[FuzzNugget]

You're right that business pays for (almost) anything, but they should not be given a backdoor to pay for things at their discretion. Those decisions should be made by the represented public.

For that to happen, high percentage tax brackets would need to be re-enstated and embargoes placed on offshore tax havens. Fat chance.

Oh, and Detroit is dead because they made shitty cars for too long.

Re:Ultimately business pays for everything...

[Tom]

And where does the money people have to pay for things come from?

Here's the thing: Money is an abstract entity. It doesn't grow on trees. However, corporations are abstract entities, too. A corporation does not generate wealth, because if you take away the people, there is nothing there.

People can generate wealth without a corporate entity around them. Corporations make things easier because they provide a framework, legal and organisational, but they are not essential. A dozen people setting up a workshop together will produce wealth, whether or not they incorporate.

But corporations can not generate wealth without people. If there's nobody there doing the work, then the organisational framework is just an empty shell.

Apologies for not satisfying your preconceptions about "marxist bullshit". I personally think that both marxists and capitalists are equal parts full of shit and in the right, it's just the parts which are which that differ.

Yeah, because it is so easy to get rid of any cop

[hsmith]

When they are fully funded by taxes alone. Please, it is virtually impossible to get rid of any police officer for anything. Look at the CA Dorner case. Police shot at two cars of innocent people and nothing happened to them - at all. And people worry about this. Bullshit.

Some compensation?

[godel_56]

Perhaps large corporations contributing to public funds goes some tiny way to compensate for their tax avoidance schemes, that helped make the local and federal governments short of cash in the first place.

Beats the heck out of paying taxes

[rsilvergun]

Jokes aside this stuff scares me. It's basically the rich getting their social services without letting the poors have them. Very few people recognize the tremendous amount of luck that goes into becoming and then staying wealthy. It basically means either a) life was handed to you on a silver plate or b) absolutely nothing major ever went wrong in your life or the lives of your immediate family.

It's like how the fund the schools here with property tax. They don't do that to be fair. They do it so the rich don't have to pay for the poor's educations.

Now, on the topic of why the rich _should_ be paying for that. Well, that's the price of a stable and progressive civilization.

Pretty Simple

[The Cat]

This is just a quiet, PR-positive way of very slowly taking governance out of the hands of voters and putting it in the hands of corporate executives. You can read about it here.

Armed soldiers with arrest powers no longer accountable to the people? What could go wrong?

Re:"If the service isn't good, fix it for everybod

[AK Marc]

The problem is that when that happens, then the city cuts police funding by $200k. Earmarks don't work, unless the person giving them has some say over their use (as an annual grant has). But like the Lotto in Texas going to schools resulted in the school funding from the general fund decreasing by the amount earned in the lotto, the result was exactly the same as if the lotto funded the general fund, but was an easier sell to lie about it's use.

Detroit lost nearly every viable job...

[rsilvergun]

when all the manufacturing moved to Mexico & China. It happened almost overnight, but they still had millions of people and a large infrastructure. Naturally the tax base collapse and the schools became hopelessly underfunded while their students struggled with a level of poverty normally reserved for blasted out sections of Afghanistan.

I know it's fashionable to blame Detroit's problems on the Evil Tax And Spend Democrats (tm), but even a cursory glance at the facts proves it otherwise.