https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1344024907416535052
Kennedy's shooting on Dec. 21 has galvanized a group of Atlanta city council members to announce on Monday they were allocating $125,000 to fund the Buckhead Security Plan, NBC reports. The proposed plan would fund a private police force in Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead residential area.
City council members J.P. Matzigkeit, Howard Shook and Matt Westmoreland backed the plan along with support from the Atlanta Police Department, members of the Fulton County Commission and a member of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s administration.
Along with added security patrols, the plan also calls for additional security cameras and license plate readers, NBC reports. The plan will cost $1.6 million with private police officers already scheduled to begin patrolling the area in January, according to a report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Yeah so long as these contractors don't receive the same legal privileges as cops (which they might who knows) this is an absolute win for criminals of any flavor.
That's the real risk here -- that this will just jettison what little public accountability current police have, and legislatures and courts will simply treat rent-a-cops as traditional police. Basically, you'd pull the worst elements from both approaches.
I don't see how they can do that and keep up any sort of facade that this place isn't some kind of Corpocracy, where the law is just completely bought and paid for by corporations; but we do seem to be in the worst possible timeline so shrug emoji
You're right that the mask is coming off more and more. The question is whether this (and a hundred other things like it) will produce pushback or apathy.