The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail | Hacker News Reader

The Case of Jane Doe Ponytail

nytimes.com

98 pointstonic_section17 comments

An amazing story, so rare to see the effort put into finding the human behind what would otherwise be a nameless tragedy. There's a good interview with the Dan Barry, the lead reporter, about why he was interested in investigating this story:

https://www.poynter.org/news/interview-dan-barry-writer-nyts...

> I had finished a long-form piece last November called “The Lost Children of Tuam,” and was looking for the next thing to do. A few days after Thanksgiving, I was reading the New York Daily News, and came across a very short story with the headline: “Prostie Death Jump As She Flees Police.” [0]

> I don’t know how else to put this except to say: This really pissed me off.

> I didn’t like — or even know — the term “prostie,” and I really didn’t like how a woman’s life and death was summarized so crassly. At that point I felt almost obliged to tell the story of this woman, who wasn’t identified in the Daily News piece. I wanted to explain who she was, where she came from, what her massage-parlor world was like, and how, if possible she came to this tragic end.

[0] https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-news/20171127...

Although her story was an abject tragedy, it's inspiring to hear about this writer's urge to humanize her and tell the story of the downtrodden. We need to see more of this compassionate attitude in all aspects of life.

People are human . Barry undehumanized her.

My gynecologist is on this street. Flushing is a dark place.

I grew up here. Some dark things that go on here on a regular basis:

Exploitation of immigrants. Don't pay them at all and threaten to call ICE. A famous Korean restaurant Kum Gang San was forced to pay millions in a lawsuit for exploiting their foreign staff. They made their employees pick cabbage at a local farm on the weekend to make kimchi... https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/nyregion/judge-tells-kore...

Abuse from landlords. I have friends who grew up in small apartments with multiple families. One family to a room.

Corruption in the police. I don't think her brother is crazy. It's a real thing. My favorite restaurant also served as one of those Hollywood trope Chinese gambling dens. My dad got beaten by a pipe by some drunk whackos in a parking lot trying to break up a fight and ended up in the ER. When we went to the police station, the restaurant had deliberately erased the video footage. The officers couldn't help us, it ended there.

The dark prep school industry that preys on poor families kids whose only chance at escaping poverty (or making their parents suffering worth it) is standardized testing. Multimillion dollar industry.

Accountants who do shady tax things and should be arrested and jailed. Thanks for ruining my parents retirements and those of all the other immigrants who don't know better but trusted you.

This illegal birthing place where a woman tried to murder new parents and their newborns not too long ago. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/21/nyregion/queens-stabbing-...

Not to mention all the foreign investment in Flushing right now...

Rampant exploitation but that's why Flushing has some of the best and cheapest Asian food in New York City. :(

If you saw Abacus, the documentary about the Asian Bank and felt sympathy for them, I heard they built their wealth as slum lords.

Abacus the movie: free-stream in US: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/abacus/

free-stream in Canada: https://www.cbc.ca/passionateeye/episodes/abacus-small-enoug...

Possibly available in your country on the world's biggest streaming site: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=abacus+movie

For the readers who may not be familiar with Flushing; it is in Queens, which is one of the 5 boroughs that make up New York City.

Queens, unlike more popular boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, is diverse and middle class (more diverse may be apt).

Flushing, particularly is all-the-world-in-one-place, and largely immigrant and per-capita is on the lower side of NYC (about 1/3rd of that of a Manhattanite, who lives 10kms away) . Purportedly, about 800 languages are spoken in Queens.

https://www.businessinsider.in/Queens-has-more-languages-tha...

The police complaining that prostitutes don’t work with them is so annoying.

I’m sorry, if you’re not arresting the Johns and the pimps, or you’re putting undercover officers down to catch individual prostitutes, then why would you /ever/ expect help?

It’s why things like any politician who favors tougher sex laws that functionally only punish the prostitute is very simply supporting and enabling pimps, pedofiles, and traffickers. Anything that makes it harder for a prostitute to go to the police is very simply enabling the abusers.

The original sadly short news story that started this investigation:

https://www.pressreader.com/usa/new-york-daily-news/20171127...

Always nice when law enforcement is a bigger problem than the problem they attempt to solve. Poor woman.

Indeed, it is very important to remember that there is always a human cost of making things illegal, and that the harm of the enforcement needs to be weighed against the harm of the problem you are trying to solve.

Not to mention the slight problem with entrapment (not the legal definition, but the human definition) and the heavy handed approach, this all besides the issues with making prostitution illegal.

There's been a larger push for evidence-based medicine over the past decade or two. I'd love it if our criminal justice system was more evidence-based and focused solely on reducing crime/suffering/injustice and better rehabilitation. Many police departments fall into the trap of using number of arrests as their KPI, because that's easier to measure than outcomes.

Serial season 3 has had good discussion on minimum sentencing and judges who sentence based on whims, not on what's effective.

Not to mention the fact that her family and friends say she was extremely traumatized by the ex-cop who pointed a gun at her head and made her perform oral sex.

1. It was an ex-cop who put her in this mentally disturbed situation 2. The cops then "allegedly" retaliated by setting up a sting operation on only her (when she reported the crime) 3. The cops were ineffective at apprehending her, leading her to make the non-premeditated decision to kill herself

The phrase "to kill herself" often implies suicide, but the story says it's unclear what happened -- she may have slipped on the balcony trying to escape. Whatever her mindset at the time, it doesn't absolve the police of their role in the circumstances leading to her death.

I sympathize with the feeling that law enforcement, the judiciary, political appointees, and elected officials should be punished more severely for breaking the corresponding laws that they pledge to uphold and/or enforce. However, I am not sure how anyone would get that sort of law passed besides a referendum.

It's a moral panic, not entirely unlike your urge to exact revenge from the political class.

To me, labeling this sort of situation a moral panic implies that we should behave differently. How do you think we should behave?

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