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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

FYI the neighborhood is Kalorama in DC, where a lot of diplomats and high-level government officials live. Maybe the agents didn't want one of the neighbors to call the director of the FBI to have them chewed out for "making the neighborhood look bad", which is not an impossible thing to happen there considering who the neighbors are.

I imagine if you're an FBI field agent, the last thing you want for your career is for the director to be getting angry calls from other high level officials because of you.

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I'd argue that the someone in the neighborhood should call the director of the FBI for unequal treatment of suspects regardless of which neighborhood they live in and who they happen to be.

You think those people have the life experience to know that it was odd that they didn't kick in the front door? Or that they even care that others are treated worse?

The point is whose call the director would have to take.

It’s worth noting that some of the residents of Kalorama include Barack and Michelle Obama, Rex Tillerson, Hillary Clinton, Jared Kushner, and Jeff Bezos.

Nice, but even Bad Guys live in nice neighborhoods!

Yeah, we just listed 6 of them!

Your knowledge seems to extend beyond the article. Any idea why Kalorama is shaped the way it is? Looking it up on google maps, it looks like two triangles connected by a street, which seems odd for a neighborhood.

Well, I don't have any particular knowledge, other than living in and around DC for a long time.

If you look at the neighborhoods to the west of Kalorama on Google Maps [1], bounded by Rock Creek, they are Kalorama Heights and Kalorama Triangle Historic district, which I think most locals would just consider Kalorama. Although I think a lot of people would consider most of the lower triangle to be part of Dupont Circle rather than Kalorama.

There's also this map [2] which, admittedly, is not trying to be an official map of anything, but it is an artwork featured in one of the DC government buildings. It shows Kalorama more as a single triangle.

[1] https://imgur.com/a/WNii05X [2] https://imgur.com/a/QprVzJm

> Any idea why Kalorama is shaped the way it is? Looking it up on google maps, it looks like two triangles connected by a street, which seems odd for a neighborhood.

I can point out dozens of such intersections in my NYC neighborhood where streets cross at angles not 90 degrees.

Worse - imagine you're an FBI field agent, and your "kick in the front door" operation turned into a "SS agents and FBI agents shooting each other" train wreck - because there was a Secret Service protection detail on the other side of that door, and an agent or few got a very fast judgement call wrong, in the heat of the moment.

Or similar, with some VIP who's got trigger-happy private security - because he knows that (say) Mr. Putin would much prefer that he was dead.

This is a risk that is taken in every "kick in the front door" operation. The people inside generally have right to self-defense and may start shooting. So it's not an excuse to not do it in a certain neighborhood.

Ah...here in the U.S., the consequences for law enforcement agents who gun down innocent homeowners, who were only exercising their rights...those consequences are generally rather mild. Federal agents gunning down each other would have far worse career consequences for the agent who made the "kick in the door" decision.

It’s moot in practice. The people inside the house are caught off guard while the people kicking down the door are well trained, staffed, and practiced. Their zero injury success rate is impressive.

The FBI wasn't reigned in after killing dozens of women and children in cold blood at Waco, I'm not sure anything will at this point.

Many people don't appreciate the connections here and the degree to which the FBI and their friends are holding our country hostage.

thanks for pointing something out that is in the article?!

They briefly mention it, but quickly move on to "the FBI doesn't knock down rich people's doors". In this case it's more likely these particular rich people (i.e. well-connected people in the US government) than a blanket policy of "don't knock down doors in affluent neighborhoods".

Are there many neighborhoods packed with unconnected rich folks?

Not in the DC area, but in plenty of other cities sure.

It's not that they're particularly rich, as far as rich people go, it's that the neighbor is like, the chief of staff for the Senator who's in charge of the committee that sets the FBI's budget. Imagine you're a low to mid level employee of a company, and you go do something that makes all of the CEO's friends, business partners, and investors pissed off at him. Do you think that's going to be good for you?

A bit unsetteling how institutionalized corruption is talked about so casually.

Sure, plenty of rich people choose not to cultivate political connections.

After all, maybe I make $300k a year and think our mayor is, by the standards of politicians, one of the good ones; and getting invited to fundraising dinners and charity galas and rubbing shoulders with influential people makes me feel important and successful. So maybe I'll donate a few thousand dollars every election cycle.

On the other hand, maybe you make $300k a year but think political donations are a grubby embarrassment; that fundraising events are full of fools, the stuck-up and the self-important; and that the two parties produce policies that are barely worthy of your vote, let alone your money. So you don't donate anything.

What’s the difference? What would the implication be of „don’t knock down doors in affluent neighborhoods“?

Presumably if they avoided kicking down doors in a rich part of Dallas Texas or something. This is on that upper 0.01% of politically connected areas at the national/international level and perhaps top 1% of wealthy areas. Describing it as a wealthy area isn’t wrong, but that not why it’s unusual.

He's pointing out that people in the neighbourhood are politically influent, that's why they are treated that way, not because they are rich. Which I did not get even after reading it. I'm thankful he pointed it out

> people in the neighbourhood are politically influent, that's why they are treated that way, not because they are rich

When (and where) is there a difference?

What neighborhoods are there where rich people reside who have no more social or political influence than people living in The Projects?

>What neighborhoods are there where rich people reside who have no more social or political influence than people living in The Projects?

Compared to this one? Nearly all of them. The neighborhoods in Mountain View are filled with affluent people that have no connection to federal politicians and no influence over the FBI at all.

Exactly. Surely wealthier people have more political influence all else equal. But busting down the door of a wealthy person in Mountain View is pretty unlikely to get anyone fired at the FBI. Go ahead, shoot their dog for good measure-- no problem.

I understand that you're saying that rich people usually have political influence everywhere, but I believe the only rich people that have direct jobs in Washington, DC are the ones living in DC. The slumlord that went to high school with the mayor isn't the same as the white house official who is employed by the FBI director (hypothetically speaking).

Diplomats and senior government officials have more political influence than their wealth would normally provide.

The highest paid government employees earn around $400k [1], foreign diplomats probably earn considerably less (e.g. £150k for the UK's [former] representative to the EU [2], which is the highest-paid ambassador position) but have perks like paid-for private school for children and tax exemptions.

[1] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/top-100

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

An FBI director makes less than 200k, and will be very politically connected and influential; an engineer making that much probably has as much political influence as people living in the projects.

Money can buy political influence, but that's beyond the reach of lower echelon of wealthy.

Not only that, but the FBI director is appointed by the President, which means the President knows who they are and personally wanted them to do that job (or at least the President's trusted staff recommended them).

The same is going to be true of a lot of people living in Kalorama - they're on "personally know the President" level of political influence or they work directly for someone who does.

It's the neighborhood where Obama lived after his term ended. It's where Ivanka Trump and Jared Kuschner lived during Trump's presidency. That kind of thing.

It's a little different than a standard affluent neighborhood of doctors and lawyers and executives that you might find in any random city in the US.

Money is power. That is a truism everybody is aware off. But Liberalism is fundamentally incoherent if that were true. So people have been deluded into forgetting this simple basic fact.

That's jsut not true. A county sheriff has far more power than a software developer, despite being far less wealthy

The median salary for cops in this state is $105k a year. The median salary for software engineers in this state is $89k. Sheriffs make much more than your median cop does.

I think the general point raised by GP stands up pretty well. Even if sheriffs make a little more than devs in some states, it's not that extra bit of money that gives them a lot more political power.

But just for another data point, in California the average salary for a software developer is $139K, while the average for sheriffs is $28/hour.

https://www.indeed.com/career/sheriff/salaries/CA

https://www.indeed.com/career/software-engineer/salaries/CA

what kind of comparison is that?!

https://www.careerexplorer.com/careers/police-officer/salary...

anyway median police officer in California is 111.3k.

We could keep pulling up relative salaries from different sources for different states all day, but it wouldn't shed much light on the basic claim that sheriffs tend to have political influence out of proportion to their salaries.

The police exist to protect the property of the wealthy. Of course they have more power than people who make similar money. They have been granted that power by much wealthier, more powerful people. And it is conditional on fulfilling their role.

So, you don't believe that money is the same as power, like you stated up there.

What?

Money is a measure of economic power.

Money can buy some forms of power, but as the Taliban know, money and all the technology it buys aren’t the only form of power.

It's also possible that knocking the door down is less effective in wealthy places. The reasons to knock a door down are things like flight risk, destruction of evidence, etc. You can mitigate the flight risk more easily if the property has gardens around it, and knocking the door down might make it easier to destroy evidence because an FBI team would take much longer to sweep a big house.

Obviously I don't know anything about FBI tactics, but it's conceivable that they choose what to do based on experience of what works best instead of just applying the same strategy regardless of where the property is.

Other reasons to knock down doors include: it looks cool, you saw it on a TV show and wanted to try it, no one will punish you for knocking down poor people’s doors and shooting their dog, you’ve been wanting to try out that battering ram…

There is another reason to knock down doors: search warrant and no one available to open it. Also, they did knock down a door - the back one.

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