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Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

> In one case, law enforcement didn't pay their bill, resulting in the person being wiretapped having the wiretap connection show up on their bill, blowing the case.

In the fictional world of The Wire, one of the "wires" were blown when the guy checked on his mobile bill to find out his account was flagged to not be disconnected. I'm sure this was art imitating life or inspired by type of thing

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The Wire is allegedly one of the more realistic crime shows in how incompetent it portrays the police.

You’re doing my boy McNulty dirty.

At least they’re not drinking Protestant whisky

That's the kind of thing that makes you wake up in the wrong town.

That, and the alcoholism

In their defense their target was amazingly adept.

Many criminals even today don't engage in basic counter measures like you see on that show.

And I'd call them "dysfunctional" more than inept. Bad leadership stymied by political goals overcomes even good policing.

Criminals with competence still operate in big numbers today, but LE very rarely targets them. The soft targets are just so abundant and easy, and the LE incentive system does not reward choosing hard targets at all.

Doesn’t help that a big chunk of the competent criminals have fully or partially internationalized their operations which acts as a very strong shield against LE.

"According to political scientist Marie Gottschalk of the University of Pennsylvania, since the 1970s while the prison population of the United States was rapidly increasing as the U.S. was targeting mostly poor and working class people by harshly punishing street crimes, drug crimes and immigration offenses, there was a simultaneous mass deregulation and decriminalization of white collar and corporate crime "despite a tsunami of elite-level criminal activities by leading banks, accounting firms and major corporations." Sociologist Loïc Wacquant writes that during this time period neoliberalism has not shrunk government but instead set up a "centaur state" with little governmental oversight for those at the top and strict control of those at the bottom."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_collar_crime

This is a very high level "class war" analysis by academics that suggests that the poor are being oppressed while the rich go free.

It's a nice morality tale, and I'm sure there are instances where it is absolutely true. But that it is true as a rule, or even that they are comparable levels of analysis (one are "white collar" crimes and the parallel would be "blue collar" crimes, no? But street crimes and immigration offenses aren't working mans crimes - these are "no collar" crimes: anyone can commit an immigration offense, even rich people. And street crimes are often drug driven.

This analysis by Gottschalk and Wacquant suggests a "conspiracy" tone within a class war context. I would want to know if they didn't have some class war bias in their analysis before I accept their analysis from authority without examination.

Indeed that was one of the tropes of The Wire: the "street rip" bust was preferred over real investigation work that they police wanted to do. However the street busts yielded immediate (misleading) metrics of action and public photo ops: patient investigative work didn't.

The politicians wanted the immediate appearance of effectiveness over real effectiveness, top police brass wanted to keep their jobs, and rank and file police got to do ineffective work that made little difference.

It was created by a journalist and a cop, who both had long careers in Baltimore before working on the show. Not surprising how realistic it is. (Also a beautiful work of art beyond the realism.) If you find the show interesting, David Simon's book "Homicide" is a great read.

And a few of his other series, such as Treme, The Deuce, and Generation Kill are all fantastic.

"The Corner" is also a great read by him.

Digital forensics examiner here; it’s extremely accurate especially for the tech involved at the time. I think I spotted a very small handful of things it had to kick under a rug for the plot to work, which is unbelievably small for a show like that.

It’s easily the best LE show that exists, but not just because of its accuracy; it’s incredible in its pure honesty. Some of the cops are total worthless shit bags, worse than the best of the criminals easily. Allowing that overlap, one that exists in real life, injects a whole lot of nuance into the story that is basically nonexistent outside of the show. And allows characters to grow and improve. It takes writers with actual LE experience (which they had) and a lot of talent to write that kind of thing without totally blowing it.

I’m interested in forensics, is it worth getting a cert? I barely see jobs show up on USAJOBs in the Bay Area, do you have any recs on finding roles?

Perspective shift: whether positive or negative, have there ever really been any unapproved, rogue media portrayals of law enforcement?

"Training Day"

Or that bit wasn’t true to begin with.

The billing accounts never would have crossed the same desk,

let alone been crossed.

The lines also weren’t terminated at the suspects’ homes. So, again, no vector for the bill to be sent there.

I’d lean towards “myth” on that - until a more convincing story appears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

Never watched the wire...but I remember back 25+ years ago some people joking about not paying their phone bill to see if the phone was tapped.

They claimed that since it never got shut off when they didn't pay it must be tapped.

Possibly correct I suppose...

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