Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

thestranger.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 105 posts

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

#41

Post by aeorgnoieang »

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…

I'm not sure that the author of the post would understand enough to provide any evidence that Clemans deployed anything in an unsafe or inappropriate manner. Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access. The post is so light on details that I can't discern that he did anything wrong.

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

#42

Post by 15charlimit »

CountSessine wrote: post #32
woodman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

  That's a very accurate view of most police.
Fixed it for you.

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

#43

Post by aeorgnoieang »

CountSessine wrote: post #37
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…

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…

Are all of your questions rhetorical? Or would the answers to them change whether you think Clemans should have been fired on the spot? Would it matter that, as badly as Clemans may have behaved, he was significantly better than the other IT staff that worked in the center?

Just based on the post, I don't expect its author to even know enough to ask any of the questions you have. Why are you assuming the worst? Is there anything specific that makes you think Clemans was irresponsible?

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

#44

Post by kzhahou »

aeorgnoieang wrote: post #41
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…

I'm not sure that the author of the post would understand enough to provide any evidence that Clemans deployed anything in an unsafe or inappropriate manner. Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access. The post is so light on details that I can't discern that he did anything wrong.

> Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access...

I can hardly thing of a single bit of code that should be deployed in such a literal life-and-death environment, which shouldn't go through FULL REVIEW.

Maybe it's a small webapp that gives a bit more information -- which leads dispatchers in the wrong direction one out of ten times. Maybe his "highlighting the most critical calls" was highlighting the wrong ones. Maybe he solved a minor problem only, but took up dispatchers' time in training.

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

#45

Post by vijayr »

ihsw wrote: post #5
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.

It seems pretty clear that the captain wasn't dismissing the helpfulness but rather dismissing Clemans' authority to deploy the project. It's a power play, and Clemans' disdain for rigid power structures clearly contributed to the friction between him and the SPD administration. EDIT: the captain's response is not unwarranted at all. Emergency response call centers are a critical public resource and he is ultimately…

Not saying Clemans is right, but couldn't the captain have handled it better, instead of just banning him from the building? We have a talented, enthusiastic, but inexperienced youth on one side and a police captain (whose job by definition is to handle all kinds of personalities) on the other - he could have used a bit more patience and tact in explaining, containing Clemans instead of just throwing him out of the building. The cops lost more than Clemans here.

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

#46

Post by sleepybrett »

kzhahou wrote: post #44
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the author of the post would understand enough to provide any evidence that Clemans deployed anything in an unsafe or inappropriate manner. Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access. The post is so light on details that I can't discern that he did anything wrong.

> Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access... I can hardly thing of a single bit of code that should be deployed in such a literal life-and-death environment, which shouldn't go through FULL REVIEW. Maybe it's a small webapp that gives a bit more information -- which leads dispatchers in the wrong direction one out of ten times. Maybe his "highlighting the most critica…

Clemens is in the comment thread. It seems like the system he wrote read out of the 911 call database and displayed all the active calls. Then highlighted calls based on keywords so the head dispatcher could more easily see high priority calls ( crimes in progress ? ).

This seems very safe. The captain in question is just protecting his turf. Even if he saw the benefit he would never admit it because it wasn't his idea.

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

#47

Post by seathrowall »

meddlepal wrote: post #31
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.

It's The Stranger — a local Seattle rag with huge and transparent anti-police bias. You have to take everything they write with a huge grain of salt.

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

#48

Post by sleepybrett »

btilly wrote: post #17
ihsw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty clear that the captain wasn't dismissing the helpfulness but rather dismissing Clemans' authority to deploy the project. It's a power play, and Clemans' disdain for rigid power structures clearly contributed to the friction between him and the SPD administration. EDIT: the captain's response is not unwarranted at all. Emergency response call centers are a critical public resource and he is ultimately…

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…

Clememns is in the comments explaining how the system worked. He just reads the current calls out of a database and displays them with some highlighting. There is no write.

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

#49

Post by njharman »

pascalmemories wrote: post #7

Unfortunately, policing culture is very territorial and operates at extreme levels of testosterone fueled territory marking. A tech-nerd (with possibly some autistic traits from the descriptions) is never going to get along in that environment without someone seriously watching over them. And whoever that is, will have some serious work to do in order to get the best for the department. Cops are trained to push peopl…

> policing culture is very territorial and operates at extreme levels of testosterone fueled territory marking.

Business culture is that way. Heck human culture is that way. To be successful and / or engender change you must learn how to deal effectively with that culture. Hint blowing up and cursing aren't how.

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

#50

Post by aeorgnoieang »

kzhahou wrote: post #44
aeorgnoieang wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that the author of the post would understand enough to provide any evidence that Clemans deployed anything in an unsafe or inappropriate manner. Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access. The post is so light on details that I can't discern that he did anything wrong.

> Maybe he just deployed a webapp that the people in the communications center could access... I can hardly thing of a single bit of code that should be deployed in such a literal life-and-death environment, which shouldn't go through FULL REVIEW. Maybe it's a small webapp that gives a bit more information -- which leads dispatchers in the wrong direction one out of ten times. Maybe his "highlighting the most critica…

Maybe it did go thru full review. I can't tell from the post whether it did and the police chief just decided post-hoc that no changes could be made without their express approval (i.e. in the future), or whether Clemans bypassed existing protocols.

And sure, maybe his changes were imperfect. But surely lots of changes made by others there could have had terrible consequences.

Or maybe his "highlighting the most critical calls" was simply visualizing info that the dispatch personnel were already entering.

Still, I can't tell whether he did anything wrong from the post itself. And I guess I'm inclined to believe he didn't, but maybe my prior belief is inaccurate.

Post reply on HN