San Bernardino: Meet Robocop

In 1987 Orion Pictures released a futuristic science fiction film called “Robocop” about a dirt poor city, Detroit, that had contracted public safety services to a large, privately owned corporation.

The comparisons to the City of San Bernardino are obvious: Entrenched poverty, large crime problems, disengaged elected officials, and the City of Detroit which is also currently bankrupt.

Now there is one more comparison to the fictionalized Motor City of the future with present day San Bernardino, the effort by San Bernardino’s elected officials to privatize public safety services, in this case the City Fire Department.

Fire Departments and Police Departments have traditionally been the responsibility of local governments. They are funded with taxpayer money through property and sales taxes. They are paramilitary organizations that have the highest levels of training and engagement with the public on a daily basis. But, the most obvious reason that they have been retained as public agencies is that they are essentially NOT profit motivated (except for some agencies that unlawfully set ticket quotas or create fees for illegitimate purposes which are becoming more common in local government.)

The problem that future Detroit has in the movie is that the private company hired to operate the police department begins the obvious first steps in making a public agency like a fire department financially profitable; they reduce services, either through reduction in manpower or equipment, or in the case of fictional Old Detroit, offing their own officers and automating their positions.

Corporations, unlike public agencies, are accountable to shareholders, not the public. Reducing funding to the busiest fire department in the region will require reductions in any or all of the following: employee compensation, number of firefighters and/or support staff, facilities (stations), equipment (fire trucks) and training budgets. Where do you think reductions will come from? What additional reductions will be necessary to make the San Bernardino Fire Service profitable for a private company?

The results are predictable. Being a firefighter OR a resident of San Bernardino will become more dangerous. Any reductions in funding outside of salaries will result in fewer responders, traveling farther distances, with less equipment for a fire or medical emergency. There is no possibility of meeting the savings requirements through compensation reductions alone.

But the most troubling aspect of the privatization of public safety services is the accountability factor. While taxpayers will still be footing the bill for fire and rescue services, the accountability for those services will no longer rest with their elected officials, the people responsible for their city. No, there will be a third layer of detachment beyond what currently exists already at city hall and that will be the private company’s corporate lawyers.

Please don’t fool yourself into thinking that current elected officials don’t want that insulation either. No, once the deal is done, it will have to be for the long term. Once accomplished, it will also make your representative government less representative, because up to a third of city government will be under the control of a private company based out of Florida.

San Bernardino, meet the world of Robocop.