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Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

thestranger.com

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Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#31

Post by meddlepal »

aggieben wrote: post #29

As a programmer, this seems like this is almost entirely Clemans fault. Good grief: you can't just walk into a mission-critical, production environment and start deploying crap, even if the dispatchers like it. Yelling at your boss who rightly pulled the plug on that stunt is hardly justified. Whether or not it's a firing offense depends on a lot of things the article doesn't tell us, but.. This is really not the "id…

Exactly. Like holy shit liability if something goes wrong due to this software in the emergency response room.

This article has a huge bias.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#32

Post by CountSessine »

woodman wrote: post #30
buffportion wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Cops are trained to push peoples buttons and make them lose control" They are? I could see why, say, detectives interviewing a suspect might use that approach to try to get them to say something incriminating, but for regular cops I would think their job is made much easier if the people they interact with are calm.

That is not in their own interest though, the incentives aren't aligned with the stated mission. Consider job security, advancement and cop culture.

That's a very cynical view of police.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#35

Post by CountSessine »

ihsw wrote: post #26
btilly wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is worse, it is not even clear that the captain is entirely wrong here. If Clemans screwed up, he had the potential to have 911 calls be routed to /dev/null. If he succeeded, the department became more efficient. However the 911 system is already working "well enough". Therefore in terms of outside perception any win will be small, and disasters could be huge. He is not the one who has been give the authority to…

Never is a strong word, I think it's too strong. You are absolutely correct that he had no authority to perform modifications to a critical public service, and that his actions bordered on reckless and negligent and that his response to the captain's accusations was cringe-worthy as well as indicative of the ignorance of his actions, but I think it stands to reason that the captain could have handled the situation mo…

Clemans' actions can be chalked up to youthful ignorance and exuberance, whereas the captain has no excuse. He is the central source of truth and the ultimate arbiter in the situation, he should know better than to react so aggressively to one of his own staff members.

React aggressively to some aspergers-afflicted kid cavalierly modifying and possibly breaking a public emergency response system with an expected uptime of always?

The captain's response was 100% measured and appropriate given the situation.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#36

Post by meddlepal »

jharger wrote: post #15
pascalmemories wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read the story quite differently from me. I don't think he changed how they operated at all. He gave them a program which highlighted the most critical calls for most urgent attention. That's EXACTLY how 911 operators are SUPPOSED to operate. CAD systems are supposed to do that but it can be difficult to properly do that when lots of calls come in - and when a really critical calls does come in, it frequently is…

I don't know that much about 911 dispatch centers, but highlighting calls as more important definitely sounds like a change in the operation procedures of the center, and definitely sounds like it should have been approved first. Can you imagine the PR nightmare the captain would have had to deal with if someone died or was severely injured because one of the calls wasn't highlighted when it should have been? I think…

PR nightmare... can you imagine the legal fallout? E911 operators are trained to treat every call as an emergency because that's what E911 is for. I don't think they can prioritize them either correctly, for example, how do you treat a domestic abuse call where the victim is talking in very abstract or nonsensical terms, for example, "I'd like to order a pizza?" in order to avoid alerting the abuser who might be a few feet away. Assign it a low priority and you risk getting someone seriously hurt or killed.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#37

Post by CountSessine »

pascalmemories wrote: post #11
metric10 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the reason he blew up was because any changes to the way 911 operators worked had to be approved. Wow. What I can't believe was that he was allowed to resign and wasn't fired on the spot.

You read the story quite differently from me. I don't think he changed how they operated at all. He gave them a program which highlighted the most critical calls for most urgent attention. That's EXACTLY how 911 operators are SUPPOSED to operate. CAD systems are supposed to do that but it can be difficult to properly do that when lots of calls come in - and when a really critical calls does come in, it frequently is…

He helped them do their job, in the way they should do their job, but in a way which was efficient and directly led to better, and possibly life-saving, outcomes to residents of Seattle.

How did it determine call priority?

How did it order priority?

How was the ordering presented?

Was the computer system itself modified, or was it running on a parallel, out-of-band system?

Did the call system computer need to run new, untested and unverified processes?

Did the call system computer need new untested dependencies installed?

Was the deployment procedure for the new system worked through with IT? Could IT restore a system with the new call prioritization display on it?

What are the security boundaries for the new call system with the prioritization display? Is the threat model the same? Has he assembled a threat model? Does he care? Does he know what a threat model is?

But you are suggesting he should have been fired ?

On the spot.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#38

Post by logfromblammo »

metric10 wrote: post #21
pascalmemories wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read the story quite differently from me. I don't think he changed how they operated at all. He gave them a program which highlighted the most critical calls for most urgent attention. That's EXACTLY how 911 operators are SUPPOSED to operate. CAD systems are supposed to do that but it can be difficult to properly do that when lots of calls come in - and when a really critical calls does come in, it frequently is…

Yes, it's how they are supposed to operate. But what makes a call "high priority?" Are 911 operators actually working off this list? What happens if the program fails; what's their back up plan? What happens if there's a bug in the program, is he going to fix it or will he have lost interest? Are their regulations about maintaining a log of what was displayed in case of a lawsuit? Where's the source code, what happen…

Not knowing much of anything about 911 dispatch, this would be my short list of criteria for elevating call priority:

  - Caller has indicated a situation wherein a delay in the arrival
    of emergency responders may contribute to more serious harm
    being done in the caller's vicinity
  - Caller has indicated a situation wherein a delay in the arrival
    of emergency responders may result in them being unable to
    render any meaningful assistance
  - Caller has described a situation that may require multiple
    units of responders or multiple types of responder to bring
    under control
  - Caller is unable to respond to the dispatcher
I would also assume that the normal method for elevating call priority would be for the dispatcher connected to the call to click a button or use a keyboard shortcut. I further assume that this priority was usually indicated by something like an asterisk in a table column, or even something like appending "-PRIORITY-" to the end of a string. The idea to highlight the entire row in a GUI for a priority call would not be inherently risky, other than the possibility that an extremely incompetent person might set Visible="Collapsed" or something.

But I don't know any of the details. It may well be that the 911 dispatch software is so badly written that business logic is present in the view layer. I have seen it before in software used by government entities. The code is so brittle that everyone is deathly afraid of doing anything to it unless something is already clearly broken.

Re: Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

#39

Post by robwilliams »

tonomics wrote: post #22
arcticfox wrote: post #2

From the limited context of the article, Clemans sounds very talented and helpful but "blowing up, yelling, and cursing" when someone dismisses the helpfulness of a project is not an ideal way to change a culture.

I'm not convinced a 'calm and rational conversation' would help either. Seems like his superiors were filled with aggressiveness and testosterone.

What makes you say that? Clemans sounds like the aggressive one.
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