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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

> After one 15-year-old was arrested for stealing bicycles out of a garage, the algorithm continuously dispatched police to harass him and his family. Over the span of five months, police went to his home 21 times. They also showed up at his gym and his parent’s place of work.

Context from the article (I haven't dug into the sources), but if the kid was already charged (and after 5-months presumably sentenced) then this is way beyond what should be expected. And showing up at the parent's place of work could result in them losing their job which would be a net-negative for the family and the kid in question. It creates a downward spiral from deliberate police harassment. Which fits with the police's stated goal:

> As one former deputy described the program to reporters, the objective was to “make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

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We don't have enough context to evaluate these statements, and the EFF has a long history of misleading and exaggerated claims. It would be appropriate for the police to visit the parent's places of work if they suspect that the parent's claims about what they do in the daytime are lies. It is absolutely proper for the police to try to figure out how a family went so far off the rails that their teenage child is a burglar.

Also I find the idea that the perpetrator's family may face "net-negative" consequences to lack empathy with the victim. Their family may have faced net-negative consequences from the absence of the bicycle. There's an entire famous film about this!

Ah yes. A kid steals a bike, so lets try to deprive the family of livelihood and further the downward economic spiral that often leads to more crime. Good plan there, keeps the police in business.

Maybe it's reversed. Families with no livelihood don't watch their kids. I suggest everyone cuts bait quick before they capsize the ship and kill us all.

They have the self control to break into homes, to steal. But they don't have the self control to follow rules and live in a society hundreds of millions thrive in? I have zero sympathy. I know how truly awful people are. And they are everywhere because rich lawyers found a loophole, preying on people's naivete and conflict avoidance.

The goal of handling young criminals should be rehabilitation, not forcing the entire family into a spiral of desperation.

Maybe the family is already desperate because the breadwinner goes to work every day as a manual laborer where the boss steals half his wages, the most common economic crime in America. That's something the cops can find out by visiting their place of work. You can't expect the cops to be effective if they aren't allowed to make contact with people in the social circles of known criminals.

Do you have any evidence of the cops investigating the employers of these parents, or are you just spitballing on how cops might improve society if they were gunning for white-collar crime? Because that's not what cops do. That's what the Labor Relations Board does. I'd say to test it out yourself, dial 911 to report wage theft, but making false reports is a crime that I wouldn't recommend committing.

Contact is a bit different than harassment. There are instances of officers as role models and helping the community. This doesn't appear to be one.

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