If I lived in a gated community like the one where the Zimmermann/Martin drama played out (and thankfully I don’t), my first choice for protection (beyond a good lockset and self-defense capability) would be a professional, motivated security force adequate to handle most problems. Second choice would be a responsive local police force. Augmenting either of the above with a neighborhood watch whose goal is to discourage malefactors by their physical presence and by quickly calling in authorities, sounds like a fine idea.
If I lived in a complex or gated community where there was no local security force and police response was crappy, I’d move out.
Yes there is, there’s the police. If an armed civilian screws up, it’s a crime. As we’ve seen in Florida, the police and courts are happy to get involved even when they don’t screw up.
My first thought was I might be alright with it if crime was bad and I felt like the police were doing a bad job.
But then I thought, why am I paying taxes? For police protection. If I can’t trust my elected officials to put together a functioning police force, then something is really wrong. Private citizens might do an adequate job, but then this gives the police an “out”. That’s unacceptable to me.
I wouldn’t trust strangers volunteering right off the street to educate my children, even if the schools were crappy and I was desperate. So I wouldn’t really trust strangers to protect me either. If people want to become cops, they need to get properly trained and then go through the formalities. Any private patrol will have solid Eagle Scouts. But it will also have doofuses trying to make a name for themselves…who you wouldn’t trust to guard first base, let alone an entire community. A patrol of armed volunteers is just asking for trouble.
If I have to fall back on the police to keep a self-appointed patrolman from abusing his self-appointed authority, then I’d just rather not have a self-appointed patrolman at all. It’s a unnecessary risk.
I don’t entirely disagree with this, to be honest. The only time I’d actually like it would be if the police were so terrible it wasn’t actually unnecessary.
I’ve not answered the poll, because I think the whole premise is flawed. The OP states that the behaviour of the patrollers is legal. If so, it’s not really relevant whether I want it or not, unless I care enough to try to get it made illegal.
I said no. Whose idea of suspicious behavior are we using? What if I disagree with their decision - what’s my recourse? I have no desire to be hassled - and possibly shot! - because someone thinks it’s suspicious that I like to walk my dog at night.
I don’t even like unarmed patrols. I hated the idea of the “Guardian Angels” and was, frankly, damned glad when they went the hell away.
I do have some respect for “videogilantes,” people who take video of suspicious activities, and make it available to the police at need. Such video helped corner the Boston Marathon bombers. If someone wants to walk around the neighborhood with a video camera, that doesn’t bother me too much. But a formal “patrol” strikes me as a damn bad idea.
Good point. I think, if the patrols were as part of a community wide safety and anti-crime initiative, I’d feel safer. If they were random individuals doing it off their own back, not so much.
When we moved into this neighborhood some thirty-odd years ago it was in its dotage. Much was rental property. We had groups of young males walking through the alleys peering into garages, cars and yards. And a lot of petty theft. There were wild parties and fist fights in the streets and sometimes our yards. One night we even had some college-aged kids force their way into our house and scare our children to death while we weren’t home.
A group of us formed a neighborhood group. It wasn’t just intended to deter crime but also to provide incentives for people to clean up their property and make additions to beautify as well as provide safety.
We held block parties and got to know each other. Some of us erected lighting in our alleys and others chipped in to pay for the electricity.
We called absentee landlords and complained when their renters misbehaved. We also called police.
We notified each other when we were going on vacation and took turns watching each others homes and yards.
Within a couple of years things were turning around. It’s been a good neighborhood for a couple of decades now. If anyone ever brandished a gun I know nothing about it.
It all depends on how far gone a neighborhood is, I think. And how well I would know the people who were patrolling as well as what kind of supervision they were under.
I was once part of a community patrol organized by my neighborhood association, and I voted no (the members of our patrol were strictly forbidden to confront people or carry guns while on patrol, and we just drove around the area and called police if we saw something that looked suspicious).
If posses worked well as crime control in large communities, we wouldn’t have started police departments. I have no quarrel with people who choose to arm themselves to defend their own homes, and I’m not even all that uncomfortable about random people carrying firearms to defend their persons, but when it comes to deputizing someone to defend my community, that’s why we have the police.
my longest single class in paralegal studies was a single page syllabus, it was also one of the tougher classes.
One of the reasons I voted to go to bed.
I adore private video cameras aimed into public spaces. If I had the money and lived in a town or city, I would have my front and back doors and all my windows fitted with cameras. I love those security lights with movement sensors that you can set for a range of sized from puppy to human. I love the Russian dash cam videos [especially when it is of some guy who is obviously failing at running a scam!]
I can’t put it any better. It’s unavoidably the case that such patrols will end up consisting of people like… well, like George Zimmerman, who whether he is guilty of murder or not certainly was an aggressive dunderhead whose intervention was what initially turned an absolutely peaceful, innocent situation into a dead body.
I absolutely would not feel safer. Granted, I live in a safe area, so there’s that, but I would not trust self-appointed Wyatt Earps to not start a gunfight.
Oh hell no!!! (I wish that was a choice). You want the lawn/yard/garbage can/garage door open too much people to patrol your burb with GUNS??? What are you thinking? I would move first.
I can’t imagine caring. British police gave got rather thuggish looking of recent times — shaved heads, tattoos and reading the Murdoch press appear to be qualifications now — and if some strange person wishes to patrol the neighbourhood in his free time, I doubt he’d be much worse. And if he’s an obsessive loony with a gun, how does that differ from any number of gun-owning Americans who are free to carry, unbeknownst to you, but are not patrolling anywhere ?
And if he’s part of some volunteer, perhaps uniformed, or even paid for, group, he’s still not doing harm except in those cases where they pry into lives on a moral basis — such as bloc informers in various past regimes — rather than only patrolling and challenging.
And should he murder someone, then it is for the — admittedly slow and strange — legal system to decide whether he was justified or not; which were he a regular police officer would be more likely to decide to protect and acquit him. There have been an awful lot of police killings over the centuries and countries where the system just slapped the murderer’s wrist, compared to the full weight of the law breaking civilian killers.
Wouldn’t those sort of people need extra protection from random maniacs and kidnappers ?
Not that until now I had ever heard of Mr. Jones, but he seems kinda rich.
I voted yes. The police in my community spend their time patrolling the main roads and writing tickets. They need to generate revenue because my community is flat broke.
I’m probably oversimplifying, but the absence of patrol cars in the neighborhoods is noticeable, despite there being no reduction in the numbers of police and fire protection. Crime numbers, especially property crimes and break-ins, have increased. So yes, armed citizens might send a message to local criminals that we are not sitting ducks, ripe for the picking.
