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#police#military#care#flock#surveillance#state#core#isn#don#grade

Discussion (62 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

randycupertinoabout 21 hours ago
Answer: Military Grade surveillance tech

> Naturally, it wasn’t just $4.5 million for four 2026 Chevy Tahoes, though the SUVs themselves were still bizarrely expensive at $150,000 a piece. Here’s how the purchase order breaks down:

- FalcoNet Core System (x4): $2,850,000

- Unlicensed FalcoNet core system: $200,000

- Delta 5G Perpetual license for FalcoNet V (x4): $280,000

- 2026 Chevrolet Tahoe (x4): $600,000

- FalcoNet Backpack core V2 – 6 x BTS (2G/3G/4G/5G): $355,500

- Flexable [sic] antenna kit: $27,000

- Cognyte PA Ranger: $105,000

- Unlicensed FalcoNet Backpack core V2 – 6 x BTS (2G/3G/4G/5G): $70,000

- Total PO Amount: $4,487,500

adverblyabout 18 hours ago
The obvious question then becomes why 4 military-grade surveillance Tech Tahoes are needed.

Was three not enough for the current demand for military grade surveillance by the police?

Why is there so much demand for military grade surveillance? Is there a better way to address that core need?

A million bucks buys a lot of essential services.

janderson215about 11 hours ago
The cartels have also militarized. Bit of a vicious cycle we’re in.
FireBeyondabout 10 hours ago
Yes, the cartels have always been at war with the Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division...
pseudohadamardabout 7 hours ago
> Why is there so much demand for military grade surveillance?

Because there's just not enough room in the budget for things like community engagement, rehabilitation programs, and similar things, so we have to spend millions on military surveillance gear to compensate for the absence of community engagement, rehabilitation programs, and similar things. Isn't it obvious?

troupoabout 18 hours ago
John Oliver did a report on militarization of police 11 years ago. It's only become worse since: https://youtu.be/KUdHIatS36A?is=C86HI8463VZnqjXU
fingerlocksabout 7 hours ago
And Radley Balko blogged about it every day 20 years ago before publishing a book in 2013 literally subtitled as The Militarization of America’s Police
ronsorabout 19 hours ago
Every police station needs to be a mini-CIA, surely.
WillPostForFoodabout 19 hours ago
It is 4 trucks for the state police, and it is a big state.
OutOfHereabout 19 hours ago
Mass surveillance is prohibited by the Constitution. The majority of the funds went toward it.
nilamoabout 18 hours ago
4 trucks... That can intercept and record all nearby 5g traffic? That's not even useful for police lmao
cucumber3732842about 18 hours ago
You'd think the real CIA would get pissy about these upstarts and stomp em.
yourapostasyabout 18 hours ago
Maybe the Chevy Tahoes were priced as the initial capex, and a maintenance and support contract covering capex and opex for the next X years with a local dealership? I’ve sometimes seen this in corporate budgeting. Some companies prefer to lock in support and maintenance in advance for a more expensive fixed price instead of pay a variable but lower price over the same time period because of the budgeting vagaries that entails.

Considering the amount of time and the number of expensive management staff involved in them I’ve seen some budgeting knife fights burn up, I see the logic.

pyuser583about 19 hours ago
Wait I read the memo - it said “duty of care.” That’s powerful rhetoric but really narrow and well defined legalese.

I checked, and Texas police only have a duty of care in narrow situations: if someone requires emergency medical care, they must call an ambulance; if they are driving an emergency vehicle, they must do so safely.

That’s about it. There’s no “general duty of care” obligation.

Maybe they’re just using scary sounding language, or maybe this narrow clause is being interpreted to grant the police much larger powers.

But “duty of care” is usually intended to hold someone accountable.

bob1029about 21 hours ago
I find it amusing how ineffective all of this stuff becomes if you simply leave your phone at home. No one is doing the hard kind of police work anymore.
SoftTalkerabout 19 hours ago
Most criminals are dumb, some of them not only carry their phones with them, they even post their crimes on social media. With that and Flock I would think police work has never been easier.
throw0101aabout 18 hours ago
> With that and Flock I would think police work has never been easier.

“A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.” — Touch of Evil (1958), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgNNfnNAa8

entropieabout 19 hours ago
> Most criminals are dumb

You mean most criminals who get caught?

SoftTalkerabout 19 hours ago
I think both can be true.
Hikikomoriabout 19 hours ago
Cops are lazy and dumb as well. They use flock to find people in the area and accuse them of crimes they didn't commit.
alwaabout 18 hours ago
They also use flock to find and accuse people who did commit crimes and accuse them of having done so.

They also find and accuse people of crimes they didn’t commit without using Flock.

They also use Flock to skip accusing people who they might have suspected if it weren’t for Flock evidence that exonerates them.

It seems like any meaningful analysis needs to consider the rates of all four combinations of {true|false} {accusations|exonerations}, and compare that matrix to the matrix for the status quo techniques.

cucumber3732842about 17 hours ago
They don't care about catching criminals. They can use real police work for that. They care about being able to profile everyone going back some arbitrary amount of time so that when someone who isn't homeless with nothing the state can steal gets out of line they can come up with a short list of who done it.
mmoossabout 19 hours ago
Another story in the same publication is about one of their writers being arrested because of Flock cameras (falsely IDing their test-drive car).
DivingForGoldabout 18 hours ago
This just adds fuel to the fire favoring police location apps, where users who spot police vehicles, in this case DPS vehicles post on their app and all app users receive notifications, so anybody nearby can turn off their cellphones - - or, "clam them up" in a ball of 50 layers of aluminum foil slit on the side. Of course, police will merely start placing hardware in inconspicuous vehicles then. What if there was a way to massively FLOOD these devices with spurious data though?
bottle_roketabout 16 hours ago
Isn’t most of the data sent between your phone and the cell tower encrypted anyways? This would only catch voice calls and SMS right?
throw1234567891about 14 hours ago
They do have their own BTS. If that BTS is the one strongest advertising itself to your phone (most often simply the closest one), your phone will connect to it.
OutOfHereabout 19 hours ago
A core issue as I see it is that the police has too much money. Why are people willingly paying so much in taxes? Why don't people move to lower tax cities and counties? Granted, fines also contribute to their income.

There are ways of lowering crime that don't require police militarization, some of which are covered in https://youtu.be/YJTPGu2E4qk.

mike_bobabout 19 hours ago
As a country, we spend nearly as much on domestic police (~$250B) as China does on their military each year. And from what I've seen, there is no correlation with increases in police spending and drops in crime rates. It's pretty disturbing if you think about it.
eclipticplaneabout 18 hours ago
It's a mass jobs program with a powerful set of unions behind it.
mmoossabout 19 hours ago
It's an interesting question: Isn't Texas widely marketed as a 'low tax area'?

It may be a 'low income tax area', with more regressive taxes used to fund the state and an equal or higher total? Texans need to pay for the same things, generally, as people in Massachusetts (though maybe they don't invest as much in schools, health care, etc.).

cucumber3732842about 16 hours ago
You vastly under-estimate how expensive social services programs are. The people of Texas can pay less have piles of money for 1984 equipped police cars and highschool football stadiums and other boondoggles by simply not having those programs.

Is it the right thing to do? ehhh....

That said Texas isn't that low tax overall compared to a lot of other states. They have pretty oppressive property taxes.

ck2about 19 hours ago
I realize this particular case is state level but at the federal level $21 TRILLION has been spent on militarization including police forces from 2001-2021

https://ips-dc.org/report-state-of-insecurity-cost-militariz...

enough is enough, it is beyond ridiculous, imagine how much food, clothing, shelter and healthcare that could have bought instead

BobbyTables2about 9 hours ago
I think the vast majority of the public has no comprehension of what a trillion even is. All the “*illions” are units they will never have to deal with in their personal lives.

However, I suspect a family of four could start to understand $300k of cash they (and everyone they know) couldn’t have because the money was used for such purposes...

Even over 20 years, that’s like a nice new car every other year…

Sure, taxation isn’t uniform but this is an enormous amount of money!

mindslightabout 18 hours ago
And what do we get for it? Cops that think they are in the military, acting as a hostile occupation force and killing our own citizens. Their personal urges should have led them to put up (join the actual military) or shut up (don't). Instead they were given an easier and safer option that requires all of the bravado of shooting fish in a barrel, so they took it.
stasomaticabout 14 hours ago
The new Miami police chief's salary is over $300K. I don't mind, fix this rathole, will ya?