Oakland Citizens Renting Their Own Cops
With rising crime, downsized police forces, and no help in sight, some neighborhoods are dipping into their own pocketbooks to hire private security firms. The guard’s job: pick up where the police cant.
Oakland California is a community that has tried to remake itself several times over the past century. Currently, it is in the middle of a perfect storm. Since 2009, the city of 400,000 has seen its full-time police force drop from more than 830 sworn officers to just 615. In the same time, not surprisingly, the crime rate has soared. In fact, since 2012, robberies in Oakland are up 24% and burglaries have increased a whopping 45%. This led to the disquieting fact that law-abiding citizens in residential areas were liable to be robbed while out and return home afterward to a burglarized home. Police response times lagged. The average response time for a burglary of a dwelling in progress last year was 17 minutes.
So the citizens have started renting their cops…
Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk.com