Hi Anthony,
I can not disagree with people seeking help - and from the best sources available to them. I don't think that we do anyone any favours at all by glossing over or diminishing very real problems where they are present.
Re-stating a general principal; No human institution (or individual human) will ever be perfect, but there is great variability, both for individual and institutional reasons.
I would certainly recommend that people make and keep up to date plans (even if it is just a couple of numbers as quick dials on their phones) for where to get the best help, and don't limit their options to the state sector police, when better options might be available.
In a town centre or a strange area, someone might have no alternative to calling the state sector emergency number - and getting whatever the local equivalent is of the "British Leyland" of dysfunctional state sector services.
In large shops, or malls, there may well be very good private security provided, who will respond long before state sector cops can get there.
Closer to home, or in a work place, there may be better alternatives, for example caring neighbours or a neighbourhood watch group manned (and womanned) by people with local knowledge and requisite skills. Often far different skills to those employed by the state sector's coercively funded monopoly.
Particularly in places like South Africa, it is usual to have a contract with a private defence contractor, who provides hot buttons all around your house and typically neighbourhood patrols and a 24/7/365 rapid armed response which actually gets to you in minutes.
The article which I suggested on Will Grigg's "prolibertate" blog, in the September 2014 post "Call the Anti-Police", describes similar for profit private security providers in the America, and contrasts their philosophy and service (if it wasn't good - no one would pay for it) with service provided, or not provided, by the coercively funded state monopoly.
Unfortunately state sector police services are destined to fall far short, due to an number of institutional factors. These factors are fairly mundane economics, and have been elaborated by economists in increasing detail, starting with Gustave de Molinari's "on the production of security" first published in 1849, and continuing to the present with for example Hans-Hermann Hoppe's "the private production of defence" and "the myth of national defense" (they're all available free on the net - de Molinari, is long out of copyright, and Hoppe does not believe in intellectual property - so almost all of his work is freely available).
as a brief taste of some of the institutional factors which state sector policing falls foul of, here are the following.
*no profit and loss test hence there is no rational way to allocate services and resources from uses that are less valued by customers to uses that are more valued by customers.
*Service is "free" at point of use - hence no mechanism exists to balance supply and demand, and rationing by some means other than price is therefore necessary. Lacking any market signals from paying customers, that rationing inevitably becomes either completely arbitrary or heavily politicized.
*payment and service delivery are separated, hence police have no incentive to adapt service to consumer needs rather than to follow their own preferences at tax payer expense.
*I've mentioned "monopoly" several times. Simple, micro-economic theory tells us that (all other things being equal) a monopoly will provide fewer, lower quality and higher priced goods and services than would freely competing providers.
*If a private provider in a competitive market, fails to attract customers, then they loose funds and make a loss - that is a signal to change their services to better suit customer wants. If they continually fail to attract and retain paying customers, then they will go out of business. By contrast, failure in the state sector usually leads to additional funds being provided - there is therefore a perverse incentive to provide a continually failing and crisis bound "service". It is no surprise that state funded services are constantly in crisis - they get rewarded for it.
Empirical examples of the problems are available worldwide. They don't tend to be well publicized in the mainstream, but the info is there for anyone who's inclined to ferret it out.
as a brief example, check out the UK government's "Public Administration Committee - Thirteenth Report
Caught red-handed: Why we can't count on Police Recorded Crime statistics" from April 2014
From the conclusions (bold added):
7. Any instance of deliberate misrecording of sexual offences is deplorable, but especially so if this has been brought about by means of improperly persuading or pressurising victims into withdrawing or downgrading their report. (Paragraph 39)
8. The disparities between different police forces in the 'no-crime rates' for rapes and sexual offences are sufficient in our view to raise serious concerns about the varying approaches taken by police forces to recording and investigating these horrendous crimes. We look forward to the outcome of the research commissioned by the Metropolitan Police examining the force's 'no crime' decisions in respect of sexual offences. (Paragraph 40)
9. The fact that this research is necessary, following the 2008 Independent Police Complaints Commission report into the Sapphire Unit is a damning indictment of police complacency, inertia and lack of leadership. However, the data indicates that the Metropolitan Police Service is unlikely to be the only force of concern. (Paragraph 41)
Note also that the same institution (the metropolitan police) is still somehow considered to be competent to investigate itself. Compare and contrast that with for example criticisms in various parts of the world of the catholic church's historical approach to internal investigation of abuse. The cognitive dissonance displayed by time and again allowing police institutions to investigate themselves, would be unbelievable in any other context.
As a second example of the same thing, from the same time (spring 2014) in the next state, search for the "Gagneron report" into the fudging of figures by the French state sector police.
An additional double standard occurs when abuses or failures occur. A freely competing for profit service will be quite rightly condemned for their failures and castigated for their selfish profit seeking motives, whereas a coercively funded monopoly, even if it spends its days preying on motorists and indulging in “asset forfeiture”. Somehow the coercively funded state sector are portrayed as martyrs, and givers, and if any state sector offenders receive more than administrative leave (paid holiday), they are presented as lone "bad apples".
I've so far refrained from citing recent examples of state sector cops being called to help with people who are experiencing mental health problems, and the cops murdering the person and claiming impunity for doing so. I'd suggest that anyone who is interested in researching such events (big trigger warnings), visit some of the sites which specialize in investigating and documenting police abuses, for example blogs by Will Grigg and Radley Balko, and sites such as police state usa, also sites by movements such as copblock (who advocate filming of police public interactions in order to to discourage abuse).
Thanks if you've read this far! Seeing how much space it takes me to present the reasoning and a couple of empirical examples, I'm thinking perhaps this might be better as part of a new thread, rather than it becoming a hijack of Sarofan's thread.
