What Was Spotted Cruising Around California Shows the Worrying Reality the Left Wants to Bring Us with Push to Defund the Police
Is the real outcome of progressive utopianism a more bitterly class-divided dystopia?
It’s well enough known that over the past year, leftist efforts to defund the police have not solved anything, but have exacerbated a number of problems including skyrocketing homicide rates and rampant violent unrest.
Now, however, progressives can thank themselves for adding a brand new problem to America’s streets: Law enforcement on demand.
Citizen, a mobile app that sends users location-based safety alerts in real time, is testing an on-demand private security service in Los Angeles, according to leaked emails obtained by Vice.
The revelation comes shortly after a vehicle branded with the Citizen name and logo was spotted driving around L.A., and was linked to another company that specializes in so-called “subscription law enforcement service,” according to Vice.
New: crime app Citizen is driving a security vehicle around LA and won’t say why. Citizen confirmed to me it’s part of a pilot program. The vehicle is linked to a private security company that describes itself as a “subscription law enforcement service” https://t.co/Kywvt1hxB5
— Joseph Cox (@josephfcox) May 21, 2021
For the time being, there is only one vehicle operating in L.A., and that vehicle is part of a pilot program for Citizen employees. However, Citizen’s initiative demonstrates a real leap forward in its level of service, and it is all too likely that the near future will see those who can afford law enforcement assistance pony up for protection, while those who cannot pay will go without.
“There’s no way this can go wrong,” tweeted entertainment website IGN above a picture of RoboCop, the fictional cyborg police-officer turned brutal corporate enforcer.
Leaked emails show Citizen, the crime and neighborhood watch app, reportedly plans to roll out functionality that will send out private security to disturbances based on app user requests.
There’s no way this can go wrong. pic.twitter.com/9KpStOZcSA
— IGN (@IGN) May 22, 2021
The development also raises questions concerning how transferring the duties of personal protection and community service from police departments to private corporations will affect the professionalism and reliability of law enforcement.
Journalist Kari Paul noted that Citizen, formerly called Vigilante, previously issued a bounty of $30,000 on a homeless man whom the company alleged was a suspect in an arson case. It was later revealed the man was innocent.
Citizen, the crowd-sourced local crime app, put out a $30,000 bounty on a homeless man they said started the LA fires on purpose. It was the wrong man. https://t.co/vpCIfroz23
— Kari Paul (@kari_paul) May 19, 2021
This uncertainty over the efficacy of law enforcement, this push to privatize everything up to and including the personal safety of individuals within our communities, is the natural outcome of the left’s dangerous attempts to revoke funding for the very departments and officers who maintain law and order in our country by putting their own lives on the line.
This is what the end result of defunding and abolishing police looks like: The powerful who can afford security have access to it, while those who cannot, do not.
Democrats have repeatedly pushed their anti-police efforts as something that would benefit the poorest, most vulnerable among us, but it’s pretty obvious that their vision of utopia would only open up those communities to a new kind of hell.
Americans deserve better than to have their very safety privatized right out from underneath them. They deserve more than security as a private service.
If that future is to be avoided, the left needs to step up and invest in our law enforcement community, and it needs to stop demonizing the very people who protect them while they sleep.
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