• I went to this little deli place in the small, chill and frankly Mayberry RFD ass town I live in, and this 5’6" ass guy comes walking around a corner with his drink refill to go back to his seat and eat his little sammy.

    and the guy is 100% kitted out with the fully loaded plate vest, multiple guns in holsters and all the bullshit is color coordinated for light desert camo. this is a forested temperate region and you’d have to fly like 650 miles in a straight line to even find a piece of landscape to blend into. it has like POLICE across it too and his table had like 4 other pigs in their normal oink oink gear.

    it was such a a surreal getup I almost said, “dude how the fuck is any of that necessary?” but I didn’t want to get blown away by possibly the most insecure and heavily armed loser on the planet.

        • AGENT

          there is or was a reddit community that posted photos of these bozos and tracked their shenanigans. they called them “whackers”. it’s one thing (albeit lame) to be a private security guard. it is a whole other deal when they purposely try to make themselves look like official LEOs with shields, logos that look like badges, and official sounding verbiage. because digging into the details of any of these weirdos generally results in paydirt.

          anyway, think about the kind of piece of shit who can be a cop in the US. now, imagine the guy who couldn’t meet the bare minimum psychological or background check requirements (which don’t seem to exist, but you know there’s some kind of floor, below which no agency in the US will hire) but still wants to command the attention and respect on the streets.

          Jeremy Dewitte is the king of this shit with his “Metro State” Vehicle Protection Services. there are probably a hundred videos on youtube of this guy getting caught pretending to be a cop by cops. he used to have his own channel where he recorded videos of himself impersonating a cop and upload them. stuff like pulling people over and giving them warnings, being generally menacing and threatening. he buys all of the most insane gear, multiple vehicles with modifications, and just does this shit. there was a lot of speculation about how it was all afforded, because the funeral escort game cannot be that lucrative. his wiki is wild.

  • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Americans have never been rugged individuals, they just wanna be cops. HOAs are not a thing and I’m pretty sure are even illegal here. Feels like the murica thing would be to say it’s your home and therefore castle and it’s weird as hell that the same person who will shoot at you for being on their lawn will let some COMMUNITY MEETING BEAUROCRAT tell them how their home should look.

    • AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      Yeah, it’s bullshit, but unfortunately, homes in an HOA are contractually obligated to obey the rules. In at least some cases, failure to comply results in fines that, if left unpaid, can result in the loss of the home as the HOA effectively gets to sell it to recoup what they’re owed.

      And cities are encouraging them all over the US, so it’s getting increasingly difficult to find a newly built home that isn’t in an HOA. Cities love them because they raise and spend their own funds to maintain things, which means the city doesn’t have to spend tax money to do those things.

      • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        I’ve had the ins and outs explained before. It’s absolutely baffling. I don’t even invest somewhere cool like China or Cuba, I’m in America with less embarrassing accents and it’s still mind blowing it’s allowed, especially somewhere that having land and making it yours is so much a part of national mythology as well as the McCarthyist urge against neighborhood

  • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Rent-a-cops are those who wanted to be a cop but couldn’t cut it at the academy, and “HOA enforcement” are those that couldn’t even get hired as a meter maid