5 ms·

Chicago's top crime blogger is a 16-year-old with autism living with his mom

55 points by brandnewlow 17y ago

fallentimes 17y ago
>In the summer, when school’s out, he does this for 15 hours a day, signing on at 9am with his trademark Ed McMahon–esque “Here’s crime for today” and stopping at midnight so he can sleep. Rarely do five minutes go by without a new post. The only thing that breaks Timmy away from the buzz and chatter of the police scanner is his mom’s call of “Dinner’s ready!” “My mom doesn’t let us eat in the rooms here, so I have to eat in the kitchen,” he says. Now that's dedication.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Timmy's dedication extends beyond the content of his blog, too. When I invited him to come blog on the WC, I had no idea I was essentially recruiting a brutal tester/debugger to the team. About twice a week, he sends me long missives on things that "get on his nerves" about the site. While this was frustrating at first, his near-constant UI and user experience feedback has been invaluable.
Legion 17y ago
He's 16 years old, not 15. Not that the small error makes much of a difference.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  Fixed.
knightinblue 17y ago
What's with the 'living with his mom'? Where else would you expect a 15 year old to live?
- dasil003 17y ago
  It's just to emphasize the fact that he's not the hard-boiled cigarette-smoking 5-oclock-shadow-wearing private-investigator-type you might expect.
  - kyro 17y ago
    What wonderful imagery.
delackner 17y ago
Application idea: given that voice recognition systems are not up to the task of parsing a police scanner's output, dice that police radio feed's audio into a single chunk per "transmission" and add that audio to a mechanical turk work queue. The work task is simply to enter into a form: is this a crime? yes/no. location: street, street. text details: (free text). it wouldn't be perfect, but could this work?
- madebylaw 17y ago
  I was thinking something similar. You could have police scanners placed around different cities to get everything. I didn't know whether voice recognition could parse the output though, it's not really my field.
- jim-greer 17y ago
  This would be cool but I think it would be hard for the average Mechanical Turker to get it right. They'd have to learn all the numeric codes police use for everything, for one thing. Also the dispatcher and cops know the local geography very well and use a lot of shorthand. Here's the live police scanner feed for Seattle (mostly silent right now since it's 1am): http://www.komonews.com/news/content/scanner/31214074.html?video=pop&t=a http://www.komonews.com/news/content/scanner/31214074.html?v... Lots of other feeds are linked here: http://www.police-scanner.info/live-police-scanners.htm http://www.police-scanner.info/live-police-scanners.htm Having said that, I don't think you need to hire mechanical turkers - you could make a nice app for the community of people who are really into listening to this stuff, and they'd do the work for you - Timmy is not alone. Make a community site around that does a nice job aggregating the feeds, and that rewards accurately reporting them and adds maps, trends, etc. Not sure there's a business there - you might be able to get some grant money to get it off the ground though.
patio11 17y ago
I'm kind of hesitant to say this but I think somebody has to: there has to be an ethical dimension to this discussion. I understand Timmy is very much in favor of doing 15 hours a day of unpaid stenography on behalf of a for-profit business. (Which, if it were paid, would get smacked down before you could say Child Labor.) Timmy is "dedicated" to his blogging because Timmy is not neurotypical. It is a symptom of his neurological disorder, and destructive of his ability to do things that "normal" people take for granted. Positive feedback for the behavior feeds it. It makes him feel like for his thing he is the master of his domain, that he is special, and that causes him to withdraw from the more difficult, more scary, more real parts of life further into the police scanner. Because he is both underage and affected by autism, we have a special obligation to look out for his interests. I know, I know, he says he wants to do this. People with mental issues will say all sorts of really interesting things -- for every Timmy there is someone who believes that they bring order to the universe by sweeping the same floor, over and over and over. If Walmart gave that guy an unpaid job, but generously donated him busfare so that he could continue sweeping the floors for them, every one of you would go freaking ballistic. And you'd be right to do it, because it is exploitative. That the educational establishment is in favor of anything that keeps him out from underfoot is disgusting to me, but not surprising. I say that as someone with experience on both sides of the desk in special ed.
- philwelch 17y ago
  I hate to say it, but if Timmy's happy with this, who are we to try and force him to live a more normal life? Normal lives are for normal people. Would it really be better for him, and for society, if we dragged him away from his police scanner and Wordpress dashboard to try and teach him how to live like a normal person?
  - pyre 17y ago
    I think that the problem comes when he withdraws too far into his own little 'wordpress+police scanner' world. Much in the same way that people with heavy addictions (even WoW addictions) can withdraw from everything else. There is a line, don't pretend that there isn't one. It's just not at either extreme of the spectrum.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

55 points by brandnewlow 17y ago

>In the summer, when school’s out, he does this for 15 hours a day, signing on at 9am with his trademark Ed McMahon–esque “Here’s crime for today” and stopping at midnight so he can sleep. Rarely do five minutes go by without a new post. The only thing that breaks Timmy away from the buzz and chatter of the police scanner is his mom’s call of “Dinner’s ready!” “My mom doesn’t let us eat in the rooms here, so I have to eat in the kitchen,” he says. Now that's dedication.

brandnewlow 17y ago
Timmy's dedication extends beyond the content of his blog, too. When I invited him to come blog on the WC, I had no idea I was essentially recruiting a brutal tester/debugger to the team. About twice a week, he sends me long missives on things that "get on his nerves" about the site. While this was frustrating at first, his near-constant UI and user experience feedback has been invaluable.

Legion 17y ago

He's 16 years old, not 15. Not that the small error makes much of a difference.

brandnewlow 17y ago
Fixed.

knightinblue 17y ago

What's with the 'living with his mom'? Where else would you expect a 15 year old to live?

dasil003 17y ago
It's just to emphasize the fact that he's not the hard-boiled cigarette-smoking 5-oclock-shadow-wearing private-investigator-type you might expect.
- kyro 17y ago
  What wonderful imagery.

delackner 17y ago

Application idea: given that voice recognition systems are not up to the task of parsing a police scanner's output, dice that police radio feed's audio into a single chunk per "transmission" and add that audio to a mechanical turk work queue. The work task is simply to enter into a form: is this a crime? yes/no. location: street, street. text details: (free text). it wouldn't be perfect, but could this work?

madebylaw 17y ago
I was thinking something similar. You could have police scanners placed around different cities to get everything. I didn't know whether voice recognition could parse the output though, it's not really my field.
jim-greer 17y ago
This would be cool but I think it would be hard for the average Mechanical Turker to get it right. They'd have to learn all the numeric codes police use for everything, for one thing. Also the dispatcher and cops know the local geography very well and use a lot of shorthand. Here's the live police scanner feed for Seattle (mostly silent right now since it's 1am): http://www.komonews.com/news/content/scanner/31214074.html?video=pop&t=a http://www.komonews.com/news/content/scanner/31214074.html?v... Lots of other feeds are linked here: http://www.police-scanner.info/live-police-scanners.htm http://www.police-scanner.info/live-police-scanners.htm Having said that, I don't think you need to hire mechanical turkers - you could make a nice app for the community of people who are really into listening to this stuff, and they'd do the work for you - Timmy is not alone. Make a community site around that does a nice job aggregating the feeds, and that rewards accurately reporting them and adds maps, trends, etc. Not sure there's a business there - you might be able to get some grant money to get it off the ground though.

patio11 17y ago

I'm kind of hesitant to say this but I think somebody has to: there has to be an ethical dimension to this discussion. I understand Timmy is very much in favor of doing 15 hours a day of unpaid stenography on behalf of a for-profit business. (Which, if it were paid, would get smacked down before you could say Child Labor.) Timmy is "dedicated" to his blogging because Timmy is not neurotypical. It is a symptom of his neurological disorder, and destructive of his ability to do things that "normal" people take for granted. Positive feedback for the behavior feeds it. It makes him feel like for his thing he is the master of his domain, that he is special, and that causes him to withdraw from the more difficult, more scary, more real parts of life further into the police scanner. Because he is both underage and affected by autism, we have a special obligation to look out for his interests. I know, I know, he says he wants to do this. People with mental issues will say all sorts of really interesting things -- for every Timmy there is someone who believes that they bring order to the universe by sweeping the same floor, over and over and over. If Walmart gave that guy an unpaid job, but generously donated him busfare so that he could continue sweeping the floors for them, every one of you would go freaking ballistic. And you'd be right to do it, because it is exploitative. That the educational establishment is in favor of anything that keeps him out from underfoot is disgusting to me, but not surprising. I say that as someone with experience on both sides of the desk in special ed.

philwelch 17y ago
I hate to say it, but if Timmy's happy with this, who are we to try and force him to live a more normal life? Normal lives are for normal people. Would it really be better for him, and for society, if we dragged him away from his police scanner and Wordpress dashboard to try and teach him how to live like a normal person?
- pyre 17y ago
  I think that the problem comes when he withdraws too far into his own little 'wordpress+police scanner' world. Much in the same way that people with heavy addictions (even WoW addictions) can withdraw from everything else. There is a line, don't pretend that there isn't one. It's just not at either extreme of the spectrum.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]