I'm both disappointed and not all that surprised. I grew up here, and this is the product of something that has been brewing for twenty years.
The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia. Lots of upper middle class people terrified that their fragile existence might be upset by [Mexican immigration, terrorism, <insert fear here>].[1] I'm not sure if 9/11 was a turning point per se, but planes crashing into the Pentagon in neighboring Arlington didn't help.
It wasn't always like this. When I was growing up you'd almost never see a Fairfax County cop. Vienna was always a police state, but the small-bit speed-trap kind. Today, there are cops crawling around Tysons (where the biggest danger is rowdy teenagers).
[1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
"Lots of upper middle class people terrified that their fragile existence might be upset by [Mexican immigration, terrorism, <insert fear here>]"
It probably doesn't help that your average Northern Virginia McMansion is owned by a .gov / defense / national security contractor who under a variety of scenarios might see himself on one indictment / target list or another.
> The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia
Your comment makes it sound like the fear and paranoia are a natural consequence of the environment and the US citizens are responsible for this kind of police force.
Fear and paranoia exist in the US primarily due to the media portrayal of certain events and the fact that political parties and certain corporate interests have a lot to gain from cultivating this mentality in the population.
> [1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
Yes, for example the safety of children in the US - I have not seen any statistically significant evidence to support the statement that they are less safe today than they would have been 50 years ago. This is a very likely case of media and culturally induced paranoia.
> It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.
It's interesting to compare the different fears people are cultivating nowadays. We have many people fearing that if a child is not near its parents or a teacher at all times, the kid is at great risk of getting snatched by predators, to the point that parents that know this is nonsense and let their kids get out of their sight have concerned strangers calling the police, and child welfare services investigating their fitness as parents.
And as you also noted, we've got upper middle class and above people thinking that someone is going to be coming for them in their homes.
In a comment on another thread a few days or a week ago, someone linked to an article explaining how it is reasonable for a woman, any time she is in a place with men, to fear sexual assault or rape. The author did some hand waving math to show that statistically a woman encounters several rapists per day. Every man had to be treated as potentially her rapist and so she should plan accordingly (keeping in public places, making sure someone knows her plans and can call the police if she is late, and so on).
Here on HN, the impression I get is that the first fear (child predators everywhere) is believed to be greatly overstated, the third (rapists everywhere) is a reasonable thing to fear, and the middle one (not safe in our homes) has not been discussed enough (that I have seen) here for me to figure out what the majority thinks of it.
I took a brief look at the numbers for the child predators everywhere fear and the sexual predators everywhere fear. It's kind of annoying, because different sources give different data, but from what I could find it looks like (1) the probability of some random child being abducted for the purpose of sexual molestation in a given year is about the same or a bit higher than the probability of a given random woman being sexually assaulted in that year, and (2) the probability of #1 where the abductor is a stranger is about the same or a bit higher than the probability of #2 where the sexual assault is a rape.
For comparison, both of the above are higher than the probability that a given random person in the US will be injured in an automobile accident in that year, but only by a factor of around 2 or less.
I think we have too many people living in fear over things whose risks they have greatly overestimated.
The citizens here are to blame. The police are just giving the public what it wants. It's a county full of McMansions and extreme paranoia. Lots of upper middle class people terrified that their fragile existence might be upset by [Mexican immigration, terrorism, <insert fear here>].[1] I'm not sure if 9/11 was a turning point per se, but planes crashing into the Pentagon in neighboring Arlington didn't help.
It wasn't always like this. When I was growing up you'd almost never see a Fairfax County cop. Vienna was always a police state, but the small-bit speed-trap kind. Today, there are cops crawling around Tysons (where the biggest danger is rowdy teenagers).
[1] It's notable that this story takes place just across the Potomac from where those parents got in trouble with the police for letting their kids walk home less than a mile from school.