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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 sta

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.
- kzhahou 11y ago
  > 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.
  - sleepybrett 11y ago
    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.
    - krapp 11y ago
      They hired Clemans as a programmer and already implemented some of his ideas - I don't think jealousy is a motivating factor here.
    - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
      I'd love to read an 'AMA' style post, or even just an interview done by another programmer, to learn more about what exactly he did, and how he did it.
    - 11y ago

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.

kzhahou 11y ago
> 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.
- sleepybrett 11y ago
  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.
  - krapp 11y ago
    They hired Clemans as a programmer and already implemented some of his ideas - I don't think jealousy is a motivating factor here.
  - aeorgnoieang 11y ago
    I'd love to read an 'AMA' style post, or even just an interview done by another programmer, to learn more about what exactly he did, and how he did it.
  - 11y ago