This morning I came across an article in Gizmodo: In Nod to Dystopian Fiction, Citizen Wants to Send Private Security Teams to Your Neighborhood. A subscription service (for a mere $999/month) can allow you to summon, by app, armed private mercenary goons. Is the kid next door playing his music too loud? That pool party attracting the wrong kind of people to your street? That woman across the fence having another mental health crisis? Those kids chalking slogans onto the sidewalk again?
One of the companies Citizen is apparently testing its pilot with is a company called Los Angeles Professional Security, a self-proclaimed “subscription law enforcement” firm that provides “personal rapid response” to alarm activations and other emergency services. For $999 a month, you can hire LAPS to do all sorts of interesting security-related stuff, from anti-stalker assistance to getting you out of a tight jam when “civil unrest” is threatening your well-being. The company partially describes their services like this:
Ever been walking around the city and felt unsafe? Thought to yourself is someone following me? A few shady looking characters near by car? is someone screaming outside your building? LAPS Officer will arrive and provide you with personal protection you need. We can ask them to stop screaming.
This sounds just lovely, doesn’t it? No opportunity for something to go wrong there!
The cops are all for it:
The cops seem to think this is all a good idea, too. Emails viewed by Motherboard allege that the Los Angeles Police Department has been in touch with Citizen and called the solution a “game changer.” The emails intimate that the LAPD has been “overrun with property crime, and the agency has effectively thrown its hands up because they don’t have enough officers on the street to respond to these sorts of calls.” The police department, when reached for comment Friday, neither confirmed nor denied that it had made contact with the company: “We are working to verify if anyone at LAPD was contacted by Citizen app,” said Det. Meghan Aguilar, of the LAPD’s Media Relations Division, in an email to Gizmodo. “At this time, we are not able to confirm if what is included in online articles is accurate as it relates to LAPD.”
Suppose one neighborhood decided to fight fire with fire, and hires mercenaries of their own? What then — street battles between rival bands of mercenaries? Oh yeah, this is going to work out just fine.