18 ms·

Programmer Tim Clemans Resigns from Seattle Police Department After Six Months

121 points by nicpottier 11y ago

arcticfox 11y ago
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.
- metric10 11y ago
  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.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    Basically. Short of owning my own company, I've never been allowed to make sweeping changes unilaterally. Hell, I have a business partner, so even now I don't get to make changes unilaterally. The first time someone isn't as impressed with this guy as himself, he goes red.
    - spacemanmatt 11y ago
      You make him sound like a cop.
      - CountSessine 11y ago
        Cops make a living dealing with people with extremely poor impulse control and bad judgement. This sounds like another day at the office at the SPD.
  - pascalmemories 11y ago
    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 reported multiple times leading to duplicates as other operators key it simultaneously. Many CAD systems will not automatically connect them and require intervention. It sounds like metrics like this and others were being used to automatically suggest critical calls. 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. But you are suggesting he should have been fired ? [edit:spelling]
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      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.
      - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
        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?
  - MichaelGG 11y ago
    In 2005 I was creating a national 9-1-1 company for VoIP. It's understandable why people would be so conservative given the stakes. (Though sometimes they laughably underestimate the fragility they introduce, like initiatives to hook up every PSAP to the Internet and route calls that way.) One PSAP in particular was very upset with our service. He insisted that we do not connect "Internet calls" to his PSAP, as "there might be viruses or something". Note that this was simply dialing the 10-digit number that's part of the public network - anyone can dial it. Though it's hard to tell from the article if this was really just a procedural issue ("great software, but you must clear it and run through this checklist") or territorial/political.
    - timclemans206 11y ago
      A number of people thought it was important software including the Chief Operating Officer who immediately had it put to use in the Realtime Crime Center. It was the Captain who didn't want to have a checklist. My bosses, bosses, boss at the time tried to get the Captain to agree to a structure that would allow stuff like this to be developed but the captain refused.
      - MichaelGG 11y ago
        Ah. Well that sucks then. Best of luck.
- ihsw 11y ago
  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 in charge of them.
  - btilly 11y ago
    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 make this kind of risk decision. The captain is. If Clemans screwed up, the captain would be the one getting fired. Keeping the captain out of the loop is irresponsible. It doesn't matter that it worked. It doesn't matter how good the system is. You need to work with stakeholders, and not behind their backs. However Clemans seems like the kind of person who can never understand this point.
    - ihsw 11y ago
      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 more diplomatically. Granted, I would probably get into a shouting match with Clemans for what he did (and I'm just another developer), but that hardly justifies barring him from entering the premises until further notice. 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.
- tonomics 11y ago
  I'm not convinced a 'calm and rational conversation' would help either. Seems like his superiors were filled with aggressiveness and testosterone.
  - robwilliams 11y ago
    What makes you say that? Clemans sounds like the aggressive one.
    - timclemans 11y ago
      The Chief Information Officer at the time arranged the meeting to put structure around all this app development I was doing for 911: CAD remarks keyword highlighter, instant 911 call history, immediately show call out #s for a shooting etc (so dispatchers aren't leaving their desks to find the numbers in phone books), and TAC channel registration (again so they would leave their desk). It was the Captain that wouldn't go along with the Chief Information Officer was trying to accomplish.
squidfood 11y ago
Seattle (for city council, mayor elections, school board hires) seems to have a history of bringing in "outsiders" who are used to throwing stones at the process, who then (surprise surprise!) fail when trying to work within the process. (Edit: This is indicative of the people themselves, but also of that horribly over-inclusive beast dubbed the "Seattle Process").
- neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
  This was my thought as well. Lets hire someone who has been antagonizing the SPD (and arguably visa versa) for a long time, and make them work together! What cold possibly go wrong? I'm actually not trying to be a smart-ass. There is a very public history of tension between Tim and the SPD. Two parties with such a history mixed with an organization that is already mired in politics created a situation that was all but guarenteed to fail from the start. Shame though, I personally would have love to seen the fruits of a better relationship between these two parties.
  - martin1975 11y ago
    Seems to me they gave him ample chance to play ball, after hiring him because of his dogged persistence - something most cops can relate to. Once he was in the door, it was on him to prove he can work within their framework. He failed and escorted himself out of there. Unless he accepts responsibility for his shortcomings -first-, blaming a powerful institution like a police department isn't going to do him any good.
- martin1975 11y ago
  Because employers love hiring people for the purposes of berating them until they blow up, then firing them when they realize they screwed up and try to play ball. That is a very perverse theory that can be disproved by another techie who has lasted there longer than 6 months. It appears the programmer failed to realize how srructured and protocol driven the SPD is, #1, and #2, his tact was atrocious, which is probably what got him fired. It's happened to me and to the best of us, failure to gauge the pulse of the environment... He seems very talented, however just a really poor fit for SPD. He will be much happier elsewhere. edit for Azkar: then that's what I call a poor fit, without blaming myself or the employer.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
pascalmemories 11y ago
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 peoples buttons and make them lose control. Tim seems to have not seen the play coming and was fairly easily sideswiped before he even got far off the ground. It sounds like SPD are not up to the job - even though someone at least seemed to be in the right direction when they hired Tim in the first place. If they had been able to follow through with the right support, SPD could have been an incredibly awesome exemplar of Policing and tech done right. To me, it sounds like there are serious management problems with the department - this situation would never have happened if people were properly competent. Sadly, in my own experience, Policing and tech are never done terribly well. It always ends up with the snoopers and intrusive abusers gaining more ground and the things which really help keep people safer and more secure being thrown in the ditch or run over completely.
- metric10 11y ago
  > Sadly, in my own experience, Policing and tech are never done terribly well. This is a poor example of the two cultures not getting along. No IT person worth his salt would ever allow someone to come in and start deploying one off applications like this in a 911 call center of all places.
- buffportion 11y ago
  "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.
  - derefr 11y ago
    Think of executing searches. A cop needs a reason to search someone (their person, their car, etc.), beyond just being suspicious. Frequently they can prod people into providing them such a reason.
danso 11y ago
I have to say...I'm very impressed that he lasted that long. And I think credit has to be given to both Clemans and the Seattle PD...Clemans, obviously, for putting his skill and ingenuity toward the public good. But also, to the police for not only being open to change, but willingly bringing in someone who so openly antagonized them. Given the amount of political ego in most police organizations...6 months of collaboration is pretty astonishing. Even if the Seattle PD were at fault, the onus is on them to either adopt or ignore what Tim has done for them...sometimes the attention and public scrutiny is enough to change things, so I wouldn't see Tim's departure as the end of it. It doesn't have to be be, at least, and hopefully other Seattle civic hackers have been inspired by his work.
jason_slack 11y ago
Let's talk about some of the things he did. The highlighting of the most important calls seems useful, but the article also mentioned he developed "blurring of anything that moves in police footage". What is the benefit of this?
- jhou2 11y ago
  It's for privacy. Before this feature, the SPD had someone manually blur out faces to protect privacy. The burden this placed on police resources was a large factor in why they didn't want to or couldn't comply with public records requests.
  - jason_slack 11y ago
    hmm, I thought arrest was public....That makes sense now about the privacy. Thank you for clarifying.
- redblacktree 11y ago
  I assumed it was for automated privacy. So they can release all video footage without review.
aggieben 11y ago
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 "idealistic and pure-hearted lowly programmer" vs "corrupt and overly political, turf-controlling police culture" it makes it out to be.
- meddlepal 11y ago
  Exactly. Like holy shit liability if something goes wrong due to this software in the emergency response room. This article has a huge bias.
  - seathrowall 11y ago
    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.
    - gopowerranger 11y ago
      And it's on the front page of HN?
      - oberstein 11y ago
        You must be new here.
      - krapp 11y ago
        Hacker News harbors a bit of anti-police and anti-regulatory bias itself, so the slant certainly doesn't hurt the story's appeal here.
- aeorgnoieang 11y ago
  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.
demian 11y ago
Organizational Software is, in essence, bureaucratic automation. And if you try to impose bureaucracy, control, tracking and/or regulaiton inside a deeply "brotherly" organization, you are bound to have issues.
fapjacks 11y ago
"I'm gonna PDR the shit out of you!" is probably my favorite part of that whole article.
- CountSessine 11y ago
  You're a loose canon! Hand in your badge and your gun!
- timclemans206 11y ago
  Yep wanna not improve SPD fine but I'm going to showcase everything you and your people do. You're be forced to improve once the media gets ahold of the mistakes being made.
tankerdude 11y ago
Don't get it. This whole thing could have been solved in a 5 minute review with folks. Maybe they want more than just that 1 feature? Either way, installing _any_ software, even those that only do a read (how does he even know that that's all it did?) to a mission critical piece must always be vetted, end of story. Heck, even a _read_ could take down the system if it did lots of JOINs a slower DB, etc. Just because you can get something running doesn't mean you're a systems engineer.
krapp 11y ago
Also in the Seattle Times[0], an interesting quote, apparently by Clemans: “Basically, it all went to hell,” said Clemans, describing his relationship with the department. “The problem is [the department] wants to use technology, but it wants to have vendors who build these large systems that cost a lot of money and are hard to implement. I want things to go fast and I’ve been working with people who realize government moves slowly.” It seems Clemans got frustrated by the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, and the department got fed up with his disruptive attitude. [0]http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-tech-officer-resigns-resumes-public-records-requests/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-tech-officer-re...
- timclemans 11y ago
  The department didn't get rid of me. They tried to keep me from resigning.
  - krapp 11y ago
    Fair enough.
ck2 11y ago
Wish I was even half as smart and half as brave as him, wow
timclemans206 11y ago
The software doesn't highlight calls it highlights messages with keywords. This was asked for by a dispatcher who said during emergencies it's hard to spot the important messages. This particular dispatcher's job was to monitor all of the other dispatchers and ensure that calls were prioritized correctly. The software itself did not do the dispatchers job for them. Calls are prioritized before the Chief Dispatcher typically sees them. There are calls the Chief Dispatchers are supposed to know about but are always notified of. This software was a tool to help keep the Chief Dispatchers in the loop. They dictated which keywords they wanted to use. The meeting was scheduled by the director of IT at the time, a former Amazon VP who left two weeks after this incident, about how to allow me to continue developing apps like this. He was trying to put structure about it. The Captain wanted none of it.
- tptacek 11y ago
  What kind of messages? What kind of highlighting? What's a specific use case you were targeting? (I'm sure there was one! I just see too many of us speculating about it.)
  - timclemans 11y ago
    The messages were by dispatchers. I'll give you an example, shortly after the center was no longer allowed to the app, someone called 911 and claimed his car had been shot. A dispatcher put it down as rock hit the car. A higher up told me that had my app been in used the Chief Dispatcher would have been alerted because they all had keywords for shot, shooting, etc. This is the only tool to see all messages for everything at once. I even asked them if they would like to hide messages and they said no.
    - x1798DE 11y ago
      Hey, sorry to derail, but I've been meaning to get back in touch with you, totally weird to see you here. Email me at x1799faa@gmail.com and I'll explain.
- teyc 11y ago

121 points by nicpottier 11y ago

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.

metric10 11y ago
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.
- themartorana 11y ago
  Basically. Short of owning my own company, I've never been allowed to make sweeping changes unilaterally. Hell, I have a business partner, so even now I don't get to make changes unilaterally. The first time someone isn't as impressed with this guy as himself, he goes red.
  - spacemanmatt 11y ago
    You make him sound like a cop.
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      Cops make a living dealing with people with extremely poor impulse control and bad judgement. This sounds like another day at the office at the SPD.
- pascalmemories 11y ago
  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 reported multiple times leading to duplicates as other operators key it simultaneously. Many CAD systems will not automatically connect them and require intervention. It sounds like metrics like this and others were being used to automatically suggest critical calls. 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. But you are suggesting he should have been fired ? [edit:spelling]
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    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.
    - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
      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?
- MichaelGG 11y ago
  In 2005 I was creating a national 9-1-1 company for VoIP. It's understandable why people would be so conservative given the stakes. (Though sometimes they laughably underestimate the fragility they introduce, like initiatives to hook up every PSAP to the Internet and route calls that way.) One PSAP in particular was very upset with our service. He insisted that we do not connect "Internet calls" to his PSAP, as "there might be viruses or something". Note that this was simply dialing the 10-digit number that's part of the public network - anyone can dial it. Though it's hard to tell from the article if this was really just a procedural issue ("great software, but you must clear it and run through this checklist") or territorial/political.
  - timclemans206 11y ago
    A number of people thought it was important software including the Chief Operating Officer who immediately had it put to use in the Realtime Crime Center. It was the Captain who didn't want to have a checklist. My bosses, bosses, boss at the time tried to get the Captain to agree to a structure that would allow stuff like this to be developed but the captain refused.
    - MichaelGG 11y ago
      Ah. Well that sucks then. Best of luck.
ihsw 11y ago
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 in charge of them.
- btilly 11y ago
  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 make this kind of risk decision. The captain is. If Clemans screwed up, the captain would be the one getting fired. Keeping the captain out of the loop is irresponsible. It doesn't matter that it worked. It doesn't matter how good the system is. You need to work with stakeholders, and not behind their backs. However Clemans seems like the kind of person who can never understand this point.
  - ihsw 11y ago
    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 more diplomatically. Granted, I would probably get into a shouting match with Clemans for what he did (and I'm just another developer), but that hardly justifies barring him from entering the premises until further notice. 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.
tonomics 11y ago
I'm not convinced a 'calm and rational conversation' would help either. Seems like his superiors were filled with aggressiveness and testosterone.
- robwilliams 11y ago
  What makes you say that? Clemans sounds like the aggressive one.
  - timclemans 11y ago
    The Chief Information Officer at the time arranged the meeting to put structure around all this app development I was doing for 911: CAD remarks keyword highlighter, instant 911 call history, immediately show call out #s for a shooting etc (so dispatchers aren't leaving their desks to find the numbers in phone books), and TAC channel registration (again so they would leave their desk). It was the Captain that wouldn't go along with the Chief Information Officer was trying to accomplish.

squidfood 11y ago

Seattle (for city council, mayor elections, school board hires) seems to have a history of bringing in "outsiders" who are used to throwing stones at the process, who then (surprise surprise!) fail when trying to work within the process. (Edit: This is indicative of the people themselves, but also of that horribly over-inclusive beast dubbed the "Seattle Process").

neoCrimeLabs 11y ago
This was my thought as well. Lets hire someone who has been antagonizing the SPD (and arguably visa versa) for a long time, and make them work together! What cold possibly go wrong? I'm actually not trying to be a smart-ass. There is a very public history of tension between Tim and the SPD. Two parties with such a history mixed with an organization that is already mired in politics created a situation that was all but guarenteed to fail from the start. Shame though, I personally would have love to seen the fruits of a better relationship between these two parties.
- martin1975 11y ago
  Seems to me they gave him ample chance to play ball, after hiring him because of his dogged persistence - something most cops can relate to. Once he was in the door, it was on him to prove he can work within their framework. He failed and escorted himself out of there. Unless he accepts responsibility for his shortcomings -first-, blaming a powerful institution like a police department isn't going to do him any good.
martin1975 11y ago
Because employers love hiring people for the purposes of berating them until they blow up, then firing them when they realize they screwed up and try to play ball. That is a very perverse theory that can be disproved by another techie who has lasted there longer than 6 months. It appears the programmer failed to realize how srructured and protocol driven the SPD is, #1, and #2, his tact was atrocious, which is probably what got him fired. It's happened to me and to the best of us, failure to gauge the pulse of the environment... He seems very talented, however just a really poor fit for SPD. He will be much happier elsewhere. edit for Azkar: then that's what I call a poor fit, without blaming myself or the employer.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

pascalmemories 11y ago

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 peoples buttons and make them lose control. Tim seems to have not seen the play coming and was fairly easily sideswiped before he even got far off the ground. It sounds like SPD are not up to the job - even though someone at least seemed to be in the right direction when they hired Tim in the first place. If they had been able to follow through with the right support, SPD could have been an incredibly awesome exemplar of Policing and tech done right. To me, it sounds like there are serious management problems with the department - this situation would never have happened if people were properly competent. Sadly, in my own experience, Policing and tech are never done terribly well. It always ends up with the snoopers and intrusive abusers gaining more ground and the things which really help keep people safer and more secure being thrown in the ditch or run over completely.

metric10 11y ago
> Sadly, in my own experience, Policing and tech are never done terribly well. This is a poor example of the two cultures not getting along. No IT person worth his salt would ever allow someone to come in and start deploying one off applications like this in a 911 call center of all places.
buffportion 11y ago
"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.
- derefr 11y ago
  Think of executing searches. A cop needs a reason to search someone (their person, their car, etc.), beyond just being suspicious. Frequently they can prod people into providing them such a reason.

danso 11y ago

I have to say...I'm very impressed that he lasted that long. And I think credit has to be given to both Clemans and the Seattle PD...Clemans, obviously, for putting his skill and ingenuity toward the public good. But also, to the police for not only being open to change, but willingly bringing in someone who so openly antagonized them. Given the amount of political ego in most police organizations...6 months of collaboration is pretty astonishing. Even if the Seattle PD were at fault, the onus is on them to either adopt or ignore what Tim has done for them...sometimes the attention and public scrutiny is enough to change things, so I wouldn't see Tim's departure as the end of it. It doesn't have to be be, at least, and hopefully other Seattle civic hackers have been inspired by his work.

jason_slack 11y ago

Let's talk about some of the things he did. The highlighting of the most important calls seems useful, but the article also mentioned he developed "blurring of anything that moves in police footage". What is the benefit of this?

jhou2 11y ago
It's for privacy. Before this feature, the SPD had someone manually blur out faces to protect privacy. The burden this placed on police resources was a large factor in why they didn't want to or couldn't comply with public records requests.
- jason_slack 11y ago
  hmm, I thought arrest was public....That makes sense now about the privacy. Thank you for clarifying.
redblacktree 11y ago
I assumed it was for automated privacy. So they can release all video footage without review.

aggieben 11y ago

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 "idealistic and pure-hearted lowly programmer" vs "corrupt and overly political, turf-controlling police culture" it makes it out to be.

meddlepal 11y ago
Exactly. Like holy shit liability if something goes wrong due to this software in the emergency response room. This article has a huge bias.
- seathrowall 11y ago
  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.
  - gopowerranger 11y ago
    And it's on the front page of HN?
    - oberstein 11y ago
      You must be new here.
    - krapp 11y ago
      Hacker News harbors a bit of anti-police and anti-regulatory bias itself, so the slant certainly doesn't hurt the story's appeal here.
aeorgnoieang 11y ago
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.

demian 11y ago

Organizational Software is, in essence, bureaucratic automation. And if you try to impose bureaucracy, control, tracking and/or regulaiton inside a deeply "brotherly" organization, you are bound to have issues.

fapjacks 11y ago

"I'm gonna PDR the shit out of you!" is probably my favorite part of that whole article.

CountSessine 11y ago
You're a loose canon! Hand in your badge and your gun!
timclemans206 11y ago
Yep wanna not improve SPD fine but I'm going to showcase everything you and your people do. You're be forced to improve once the media gets ahold of the mistakes being made.

tankerdude 11y ago

Don't get it. This whole thing could have been solved in a 5 minute review with folks. Maybe they want more than just that 1 feature? Either way, installing _any_ software, even those that only do a read (how does he even know that that's all it did?) to a mission critical piece must always be vetted, end of story. Heck, even a _read_ could take down the system if it did lots of JOINs a slower DB, etc. Just because you can get something running doesn't mean you're a systems engineer.

krapp 11y ago

Also in the Seattle Times[0], an interesting quote, apparently by Clemans: “Basically, it all went to hell,” said Clemans, describing his relationship with the department. “The problem is [the department] wants to use technology, but it wants to have vendors who build these large systems that cost a lot of money and are hard to implement. I want things to go fast and I’ve been working with people who realize government moves slowly.” It seems Clemans got frustrated by the inefficiencies of bureaucracy, and the department got fed up with his disruptive attitude. [0]http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-tech-officer-resigns-resumes-public-records-requests/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/spd-tech-officer-re...

timclemans 11y ago
The department didn't get rid of me. They tried to keep me from resigning.
- krapp 11y ago
  Fair enough.

ck2 11y ago

Wish I was even half as smart and half as brave as him, wow

timclemans206 11y ago

The software doesn't highlight calls it highlights messages with keywords. This was asked for by a dispatcher who said during emergencies it's hard to spot the important messages. This particular dispatcher's job was to monitor all of the other dispatchers and ensure that calls were prioritized correctly. The software itself did not do the dispatchers job for them. Calls are prioritized before the Chief Dispatcher typically sees them. There are calls the Chief Dispatchers are supposed to know about but are always notified of. This software was a tool to help keep the Chief Dispatchers in the loop. They dictated which keywords they wanted to use. The meeting was scheduled by the director of IT at the time, a former Amazon VP who left two weeks after this incident, about how to allow me to continue developing apps like this. He was trying to put structure about it. The Captain wanted none of it.

tptacek 11y ago
What kind of messages? What kind of highlighting? What's a specific use case you were targeting? (I'm sure there was one! I just see too many of us speculating about it.)
- timclemans 11y ago
  The messages were by dispatchers. I'll give you an example, shortly after the center was no longer allowed to the app, someone called 911 and claimed his car had been shot. A dispatcher put it down as rock hit the car. A higher up told me that had my app been in used the Chief Dispatcher would have been alerted because they all had keywords for shot, shooting, etc. This is the only tool to see all messages for everything at once. I even asked them if they would like to hide messages and they said no.
  - x1798DE 11y ago
    Hey, sorry to derail, but I've been meaning to get back in touch with you, totally weird to see you here. Email me at x1799faa@gmail.com and I'll explain.
teyc 11y ago