That was a huge problem in NYC subways around the 80s and the policing strategies for dealing with it were the origins of CompStat. It’s not a red herring because as soon as you make 1 on 1 mugging impractical the criminals will adapt and start using different strategies.
The value in a publicly funded police force is that they don’t have to worry about the economic viability of their countermeasures.
Drug cartels are on the decline. Rise of the Warrior Cop is directly correlated with centralization of power and the influence of police unions over politics and public spending.
It's also correlated with the change from the US military Soldier's creed, to the "Warrior ethos" [0].
The differences are quite interesting: The soldier swears to always act in ways creditable to the service and the nation, recognizing it as a honored profession not to be disgraced.
While for the warrior the mission always comes first. Honor, credibility, disgrace? Not even in the vocabulary, replaced with "deploy, engage and destroy the enemies of the US, in close combat".
Are you just saying that because weed is being legalized?
Economic inequality sure isn't in decline, and there are a lot of 18-24 year old uneducated men out there with nothing to lose. The turmoil in places like Venezuela and Colombia leaves power voids that cartels step in to fill.
The person you replied to did make a claim with no evidence, but so did you. What about the southern border, do you have a reliable citation for something bad happening there compared to 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago?
If you hire mercenaries to beat the crap out of someone, both you and the mercenaries will go to jail.
There are already more private security officers than government police officers in the US today. This isn't new. They have co-existed for many decades.
I don't think the author ever claimed there's no value in real police. It actually, ironically, matches the recent left-wing demands to defund. Let the police with their armored cars and helicopters handle real crime, like when your mercenaries beat up my mercenaries. Let the mercenaries handle the small stuff :)
If often, then there's a market for it.
If not often, then you're intentionally using a red herring to distract from the real discussion.