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Disclaimer: I agree with the intent of your comment but, as this is the second time I've seen this comment in this thread, I'll bite and play devil's advocate.

Disclaimer: I agree with the intent of your comment but, as this is the second time I've seen this comment in this thread, I'll bite and play devil's advocate. Additionally, I have absolutely no knowledge of dispatch or any other law enforcement software. Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? Does the dispatch software have a notes field? If so, is it procedure to put that sort of information in place? Do cops have access to it? If so do they regularly look at it? If "no" to those points, how would a police force as large as Atlanta's maintain that knowledge? A lot of large organizations rely heavily on tribal knowledge, so that's a possibility. But only assuming officers always patrol/police the same areas and never quit or get fired, or if they do, they always pass on the entirety of their tribal knowledge to the successor. So again, I agree with the general sentiment, but this doesn't have to be a matter of incompetent law enforcement personnel. It could easily be a problem of lacking software and a system prohibitively large to maintain that kind of granular information among all agents.

kazinator 11y ago
> Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? In the same place where cops record false intruder alarms and give people a warning or fine for too many.
- blantonl 11y ago
  Good point - but there is potential incoming revenue to pay for that. In this very remote use case, I doubt CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) vendors are going to write this use case into their development plans. Unless they saw this on HN...
manarth 11y ago
I would hope that the police do have a systematic method of correlating incidents with addresses. Such as, say, a history of reported domestic abuse. Or homes with residents that have been threatened with doxxing or swatting. And information such as whether the resident is a recorded gun-owner. I would sincerely hope that information such as this would be available to any officer dispatched to an address.
pbhjpbhj 11y ago
I don't think it's too great an assumption that information on a location involved in a suspected crime is added to a database so that lookups concerning that location have a backlog of such information. That's got to be close to MVP for a police database surely. The dispatcher who gives the officers the call to attend would then give the background information known - "Murder here 2 years ago - previous occupants; parking violations issued to this address; 53 unconfirmed reports of stolen phones, 47 of which were later found not to be stolen just giving wrong GPS info. Caller says their stolen phone is at this location according to GPS reports.".
simoncion 11y ago
> Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? Brian Krebs appears to have a local police force that knows how to perform this witchcraft: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for-cowards/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for... :) Search for the 'graph that starts: "I informed the responding officers that this was a hoax" and read through the one that starts: "One of the officers asked if it was okay to enter my house, and I said sure."

kazinator 11y ago

> Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? In the same place where cops record false intruder alarms and give people a warning or fine for too many.

blantonl 11y ago
Good point - but there is potential incoming revenue to pay for that. In this very remote use case, I doubt CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) vendors are going to write this use case into their development plans. Unless they saw this on HN...

manarth 11y ago

I would hope that the police do have a systematic method of correlating incidents with addresses. Such as, say, a history of reported domestic abuse. Or homes with residents that have been threatened with doxxing or swatting. And information such as whether the resident is a recorded gun-owner. I would sincerely hope that information such as this would be available to any officer dispatched to an address.

pbhjpbhj 11y ago

I don't think it's too great an assumption that information on a location involved in a suspected crime is added to a database so that lookups concerning that location have a backlog of such information. That's got to be close to MVP for a police database surely. The dispatcher who gives the officers the call to attend would then give the background information known - "Murder here 2 years ago - previous occupants; parking violations issued to this address; 53 unconfirmed reports of stolen phones, 47 of which were later found not to be stolen just giving wrong GPS info. Caller says their stolen phone is at this location according to GPS reports.".

simoncion 11y ago

> Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? Brian Krebs appears to have a local police force that knows how to perform this witchcraft: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for-cowards/ http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for... :) Search for the 'graph that starts: "I informed the responding officers that this was a hoax" and read through the one that starts: "One of the officers asked if it was okay to enter my house, and I said sure."