Incoming police chief Marc Parent will have a very tricky job managing the issue of whether, and how much, city police can rent out their services. With government cutting police budgets (yet not expecting to see any drop in service as a consequence) some folks thought it would be great to get the police service to “pay for itself” but this risks creating premium clients who get snappy service vs. the rest of us, never mind conflict of interest issues like whether officers would be free (or feel free) to investigate or testify against paying customers.
I’m noticing a trend here of authority thinking citizens here should be satisfied with notions from the worst banana republics: unregulated taxis, police and doctors who only work for you when bribed. The people dreaming this stuff up always have deep enough pockets to feel comfortably above it all but the nightmare they are creating will be ours to cope with.
Martin 09:44 on 2010/08/26 Permalink
Another problem I am wary about is that in such a scheme, it would be tempting for the police force to prioritize easy money, The report states that Place Dupuis already pays for greater surveillance. Place Dupuis and SPVM may benefit from this contract, but homeless persons may not.
I work in one of the 4 universities in Montreal and we’re already tangled up in those kind of problems. Social sciences are weakened, while “hard” sciences are better-off, since the latter can show more “results” than the former.
In short, distributive justice cannot be settled by economics. Period.