
Facebook Will Be First Private Company in U.S. to Pay for Full-Time Beat Cop - josephscott
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Facebook-1st-in-US-to-Pay-for-Fulltime-Beat-Cop-248429631.html
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sdrothrock
This is an interesting idea and I can see why Facebook would want to do it --
it enhances the community and thus their image.

If Facebook can do this, why can't an individual do it? Companies are
individuals.

What's to stop municipalities from "giving" police officers to rich
individuals or gated communities?

The article says that "[the officer would] be a regular beat cop with a
special assignment." So this means that a publicly-funded police officer is
being given a special assignment in a special area due to private money and
that the general "beat cop" pool has shrunk by one?

Taking this to extremes, what happens in a theoretical town with 10 beat cops,
five of them on "special assignment" due to "generous gifts" from individuals
or companies? Perhaps Amazon would like to have five police officers on
"special assignment" in the area around its warehouses.

50% of the publicly-funded police force is no longer "public."

But I think this sets really bad precedent, even if Facebook has nothing
(directly) to do with the hiring or disciplining of the police officer in
question, simply because it allows money to blatantly purchase the privileged
use of publicly-funded services.

