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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I mean no offense to those having a mental health crisis, it happens (I have had one myself), but that also doesn't mean a non profit should have its funds walked off with (regardless of why). I've reported non profits to the IRS in the US when it appeared they might not be entirely above board, and I never felt like I was "calling the cops" in the same way I would where they're going to break down someone's front door; it's asking people who are tasked with oversight to do their job.

Unequivocally, I hope this person gets whatever help they need if they need help, regardless of the outcome of this non profit.

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I understand you didn't feel that way, but I think maybe you should do a thought experiment of what "doing their job" would mean? Once those events are set in motion, you can't control how they unfold or predict the outcome; even if that person didn't do the thing you were worried about, law enforcement may well find some reason to antagonize or imprison them.

I'd encourage people not to contact any law enforcement entity of any kind if they don't have a really solid understanding of the situation. Consider this story from a few weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33626670 where someone called the cops because they were concerned that they saw a child walking alone, and the mother ended up going to jail. That wasn't the intention of the person who called the police; but once you invite law enforcement into someone else's life, you have no idea what they will do and you have no power to recall them. 'pessimizer relayed a similar experience yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33836312

I honestly encourage everyone to consider whether letting it go is the best thing to do in any given situation. Someone might've stolen money? Contacting law enforcement probably won't get it back. An organization is dissolved? We can form it again, with a structure that ensures a higher bus number. These are things we can control, and where we can predict the outcome.

The purpose of reporting crime is not to receive compensation; it's to create a norm where crime is punished and hence deterred. It's a societal benefit not a personal one.

It's not good that miscarriages of justice do happen, but that doesn't change the overall point.

Given that miscarriages of justice happen, maybe calling the cops speculatively is not a great plan?

I understand the principle of what you're advocating for, but the unfortunate reality is that miscarriages of justice are the norm and not the exception. I'd put forward another principle; it is better to let 1000 guilty parties go free than to condemn 1 innocent party (and "innocent" here should be taken to include people who are committing a "crime" that is normally tolerated, employed as an excuse to arrest someone - each of us commits dozens of these "crimes" regularly, without realizing it). When we reflexively invite law enforcement into other people's lives, when we do not and cannot understand the situation at hand, we are not likely to promote a societal good. We are far more likely to promote a societal ill; that of overpolicing.

I'd encourage people to think of law enforcement as an adversarial entity, constantly trying to do everyone in, who needs your invitation to act. It might be because they need to drive their performance metrics up, it might be because they're overzealous in the pursuit of what they view as justice, we can't really know and it doesn't matter. When you give them that invitation, they will make the absolute most of the opportunity. If you invite that monster into someone else's life - you had better be damn sure that they are a real threat to the community. You don't want to ruin (or perhaps end) someone's life over a miscommunication.

>I understand the principle of what you're advocating for, but the unfortunate reality is that miscarriages of justice are the norm and not the exception. I'd put forward another principle; it is better to let 1000 guilty parties go free than to condemn 1 innocent party (and "innocent" here should be taken to include people who are committing a "crime" that is normally tolerated, employed as an excuse to arrest someone - each of us commits dozens of these "crimes" regularly, without realizing it).

I think the ideal solution to this would be to work on fixing the system, not avoiding contact with the system. Hold police accountable for violating people's rights. Remove laws that don't need to be enforced, and consistently enforce ones that do need to be enforced.

>When you give them that invitation, they will make the absolute most of the opportunity.

When my car's window was broken and my work laptop was stolen, I reported it to the police and they didn't seem to do anything besides enter it into a database. I even have the thief's blood, but the police didn't want it.

> I think the ideal solution to this would be to work on fixing the system, not avoiding contact with the system. Hold police accountable for violating people's rights. Remove laws that don't need to be enforced, and consistently enforce ones that do need to be enforced.

This is a fair point. Personally I don't believe this reform is possible, as I believe that the nature of police powers is such that they will always become abusive and insulate themselves from accountability. Regardless, in the same way you go to war with the army you have, when you contact law enforcement, it's the law enforcement that you have and not the law enforcement you believe should exist.

> When my car's window was broken and my work laptop was stolen, I reported it to the police and they didn't seem to do anything besides enter it into a database.

I'm sorry that happened. Once my laptop with full disk encryption was stolen - while it was booted and asleep (thus defeating the full disk encryption), and I felt like such a fool.

I meant this more as a mental model of what the worst case scenario you should anticipate is. Because we simply cannot predict how law enforcement will respond on a spectrum of not giving you the time of day to showing up with their weapons drawn, we have to consider whether the most extreme scenario is acceptable before contacting them.

For what it's worth, I believe we should have a more diverse array of emergency services, who can be contacted directly, so that you have more control over what kind of response you are requesting.

Yeah, you have some good points. It's a complicated situation.

>while it was booted and asleep (thus defeating the full disk encryption)

Well I thought it would require a cold boot attack which would be extremely hard against a laptop with soldered RAM (like my stolen macbook pro). Until I looked it up just now and found this video...

https://youtu.be/RqvPZnLkP70?t=2327

It sounds like you have a deep (and IMO unjustified and motivated by wrong or weirdly interpreted statistics) hatred of law enforcement, probably from either personal experience or political activism. That's your prerogative, of course, but it's a really fringe position and most people would disagree.

Nope, no hatred. Just conclusions I've come to through observation and reflection.

This is something I'm seeing more and more, where people will say "You just have strong feelings on X, so your opinion doesn't matter." And for one, it presumes to know things about the contents of someone else's mind that you don't know, and for another, it's just not a criticism. It's a way to avoid engaging with the substance of someone's ideas.

Basically what this comes down to is saying, "because you have an opinion, you don't get to have an opinion," which is nonsense.

I haven’t seen any hint of “hate” in their comments and their position is anything but fringe. Focusing on having a diverse set of emergency response teams has become mainstream, I’d say it’s a fringe position to think otherwise. Trust in police is very low nationwide and you seem to be out of touch.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/us/gallup-poll-police.htm...

> Someone might've stolen money? Contacting law enforcement probably won't get it back.

You are advocating for a society where criminals steal with impunity, and everyone else shrugs.

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