[whirlingdervish]

A couple years ago one of the devs I work with came in to the office very early for some reason and discovered a man sleeping in one of the conference rooms. After the fact we discovered that an emergency exit door wasn’t locking properly.

He didn’t take anything even though he could have easily made off with tens of thousands of dollars of electronics. He just needed somewhere to sleep.

[bloodguard]

We had an AC tech ask us if we knew someone was living on our roof. Turns out an coworker's GF kicked him out of his house* and he was living up there.

Tent, free wifi, showers next to the bike room, full kitchen and big 80 inch TVs down in the conference rooms. He was livin' the life. He said he usually took down the tent and hid everything every morning but just got complacent.

*Yes. His house. She told the cops she felt in danger. Cops told him he had to stay somewhere else and go through the eviction process. Mad world.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Yes. His house. She told the cops she felt in danger. Cops told him he had to stay somewhere else and go through the eviction process. Mad world.

The pendulum needed to swing toward protecting women by default. As these things happen, it may have swung to a point where nuance needs to be applied.

Your example seems fairly complex. I couldn't opine on it w/o knowing the details of the complaint.

I can offer a different example. My ex's mental illness sometimes required me to take a stronger hand in her life, than would be benign otherwise. One time, she was in a delusional state. She stole my van and left the area. I wasn't able to report it stolen because she was my wife. The police were protecting her from the possibility that I was lying and using the police to harass her.

A stranger found her in the middle of the night, hundreds of miles away, in a remote area wrapped only in a towel - obviously not herself. I directed the guy to call the police because he could do that. Local cops delivered her to a facility where she was stabilized.

What I would change is that I would have had tightly limited status as her caregiver. I'd want my wife and I to be regularly evaluated by a female mental health professional, who had training to detect manipulative spouses. In cases where my wife might be in distress, police would defer to me. Meanwhile the details would be immediately forwarded to the MH pro overseeing my spouse, who'd have authority to intervene, if she saw an issue.

[corndoge]

> The pendulum needed to swing toward protecting women by default

He owned the house. If she felt in danger, the cops should come and escort her out of the house that doesn't belong to her. I don't see how your story is related to this.

[xnyan]

If you legally live in someone’s home, in most jurisdictions (in the US) then you have at least some rights even if you don’t pay rent.

The alternative is that one partner can abuse the other, then throw them out on the street if they wish or if the victim complains.

I think it would be better if there was a real third option, but I’m not aware of it.

[cultofmetatron]

> The alternative is that one partner can abuse the other, then throw them out on the street if they wish

Thats literally what happened here. You have a blindspot to men being the victim like the person here was.

[mrow84]

How do you know she abused him? Seems like you’re jumping to conclusions; (almost) none of us know anything about the situation so perhaps it is better to avoid speculating?

[atatatat]

Reclaim any of the 51+% of our federal budget on weapons we either don't ever shoot or leave in the desert,

use the reclaimed former tax revenue to maintain separate apartments longer, even if just a bedroom one rents.

[hash872]

The US spends under 10% of its federal budget on the military. In 2020 it spent more just on healthcare for the elderly than the entire military budget. Here, please take a look at the numbers straight from the CBO! https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57170

As for your second sentence- the total value of the US real estate market is about $56 trillion, so I kind of doubt that the government is going to make much of a dent here. There's not a lot of places where you can say even the US government doesn't have enough money, but....

[grapist420]

military spending is 51% of discretionary spending. https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ6wwEz... Not 51% of government spending, which is much much larger

[kennywinker]

But they lived together there? Even when it's under the status of a romantic relationship, that's still at least partially a tenant-landlord relationship and as such the tenant has rights. Setting aside all the gender politics - you don't get to evict a tenant at a moment's notice. And yeah, he got evicted sorta. But he still owns the house. I'm not saying it's an ideal situation... but given the tenant landlord power imbalance, I don't think it's actually obvious that he gets to keep living there and she doesn't just because they've separated.

[frosted-flakes]

I'm trying to get this straight. If he owns the house and lives there, then why do his tenant's rights supersede his own? The tenant might live there and thus has certain rights, but so does he.

[morsch]

I don't think it's absurd that the tenant gets extra protection to counterbalance the ownership issue that lets the owner-tenant have the last word in the long run. But I suspect the man would draw the short straw regardless of the ownership situation.

Which I'm fine with, it still seems to be a reasonable heuristic given how imbalanced I believe domestic abuse is. But obviously it's unjust in some cases, and not useful for same sex relationships. Let's strive for a world where as many women as men own shared housing and act abusive towards their spouse.

[atatatat]

Not if he's determined to be an aggressor in the eyes of law enforcement in the (at least, US) jurisdiction.

[jshmrsn]

I’m not a lawyer, but in my state there is a legal concept of your place of residence which entitles you to certain eviction protections, regardless of ownership or lack thereof of that place.

[dTal]

And yet, a resident was summarily evicted and forced to live in a tent.

[overgard]

> The pendulum needed to swing

There's no pendulum, there's just doing the right thing and the wrong thing. Doing something wrong in the other direction is just as bad.

[danielheath]

The world operates on heuristics, not perfect information, and we can’t make the right decision in every case.

Something can be the best available policy and also cause to poor outcomes in some situations.

[fires10]

I wish that was an option. I've been there with mine.

[SkipperCat]

Sadly that person could be charged with a crime instead of being recognized as a person in need.

We should be viewing these situations as a cry for help instead of a criminal activity. This is what I hoped the "Defund the Police" movement was targeting. Sadly that phrase had good intentions but pretty bad optics.

[actually_a_dog]

Even more sad is the fact that, although it's probably rare, there are some people who will commit crimes in order to get arrested, because it gets them off the street.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4agyzq/a-homeless-mississipp...

[Spooky23]

It’a not too rare.

A relative who is a policeman knows 2-3 guys too old to migrate south for the winter who commit some misdemeanor in front of a cop to spend the winter at the county lockup.

Beat officers often feed these guys and help them out in small ways.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> We should be viewing these situations as a cry for help instead of a criminal activity.

You're right. When we uphold a law for the law's sake, we've lost our way.

[SkipperCat]

Agreed - the "three strikes" and mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines have had judges forced to issue sentences which they, and their communities, felt were absurdly high.

[vegetablepotpie]

Right, but laws enforced selectively based on feelings is its own form of tyranny.

[WarOnPrivacy]

It can be but usually isn't.

The value of a local, penalty-backed law is in it's ability to guide bulk behavior. These laws imply a bargain we make with our governments, that enforcement will be limited to the stated objective.

Reducing traffic speeds by citing a few speeders - this upholds that bargain. Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion.

[baud147258]

Maybe my own opinion is coloured by the fact that I live in France, where speeding cameras are very common and seem effective in reducing speeding, but fining every speeder with automatic cameras seems a better solution than citing speeders at random

[jokethrowaway]

I hated speeding cameras with a passion in Italy. The concept is not bad but the ways limit are set is just plain ridiculous and an obvious plot to get people to pay the tolls for the highway (owned by Allianz as of now). The slower roads are perfectly fine and mostly deserted but you have stupidly low limits and the chance of getting a high bill which can be quite stressful.

I understand why people opt for the highways and paying a small amount now vs a bigger unexpected bill later on.

Another example of government policies and taxpayers money aiding private companies the government sold something to (they used to be public).

[petre]

The gilets jaunes felt quite differently about the speed cameras.

What I found really effective were traffic lights with speed meters that would turn red for five seconds if you were over the limit. No cameras, no fines, no police.

[powersnail]

> Reducing traffic speeds by citing a few speeders - this upholds that bargain. Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion.

I don't know. I feel that the citing every speeder is overall better than selectively catching a few speeders. First, it's fairer, leaving less space for selective enforcement based on arbitrary criterion. Second, based on my experience on US highway, the latter isn't very effective. While I usually cruise at speed limit, vehicles rush past me at 80~90 mph every day.

I certainly don't agree with the idea that police should give fines as much as possible to make profits. But it's equally wrong to deliberately reduce the amount of enforcement, because less enforcement leads to less profit.

In my opinion, enforcement is enforcement; the profit-making problem shouldn't even be a consideration when we decide how enforcement is carried out. It should be dealt with separately.

[thrashh]

I think a big part of the population believes 80-90mph is perfectly fine (of which I am a member) so everything is kind of working as intended. I don’t want the speed limit increased, and I don’t want the law to be religiously enforced. To me, we are in the perfect balance.

However, my world view is that all rules should be written to be broken in the right hands, with just enough pressure for someone who shouldn’t be breaking the rule to be discouraged from doing so. Nothing is perfect in life anyway, and you can never truly capture a complex world, so I think you might as well consider it in rulemaking.

That said, it does open the world to profiling, but that will already happen regardless. Racists will always find a way to be racist.

[sooheon]

> Citing every possible speeder while those fines fatten the police budget is a gross perversion.

Tying budget to citations is a perversion. Applying the law equally to everyone is just. You're conflating two issues.

[jakelazaroff]

Consider that "laws enforced selectively based on feelings" often describes racial profiling.

[foerbert]

This has been true of many recent movements. I wish I knew what was behind it. I'm sure it can be explained by humans being humans, but part of me can't help but wonder if it isn't intentional.

[toomim]

Some people believe that phrase had good intentions.

Other people, like the NYTimes, believe it literally means abolish the police: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abol...

[themacguffinman]

You mean "Mariame Kaba" not the NYTimes, because that is an NYT Opinion piece written by someone outside the NYT who does not necessarily represent the NYT's editorial views. Publishing other relevant perspectives that in-house journalists may not write for is the entire point of the Opinion section in every publication.

[stevezsa8]

Your office got off lucky.

We had a guy walk into our office behind employees. No one challenged the trespasser... he walked off with a stack of laptops.

[Scarblac]

As a teenager I worked in a large logistics center for supermarkets. Usually we would fill trucks that brought the supplies to the supermarkets, but rarely they had ran out of something small and would come to us with a van or so.

So one day two guys drive up with a van, park it at a loading dock, go into the warehouse and start loading the van with coffee. They even got help from some workers. Turns out they weren't related to any customers at all, they just stole a van full of coffee.

Which wouldn't be worth a story... But two weeks later, the same guys did the exact same thing again, at the same logistics center. Successfully, again. That takes some nerve.

[jacquesm]

A story from the RAI congress center in Amsterdam has it that someone purposefully scratched a 911 on the Porsche display, cue a car transporter that shows up the next morning with a big logo on the side that gets help from the staff to remove the 'damaged 911' so that it can be replaced with another. They never found either the car or the guys. This was before CCTV was common, but still, a couple of hundred people must have seen the whole thing and absolutely nobody thought anything strange was going on.

[AussieWog93]

>So one day two guys drive up with a van, park it at a loading dock, go into the warehouse and start loading the van with coffee. They even got help from some workers.

Reminds me of that scene from Trailer Park Boys

https://youtu.be/8d-bM-Whsmk

[User23]

Reminds me of a gang I heard about a couple decades ago that would just roll up in a moving van to a nice suburban house in a neighborhood where nobody really talked to each other and just empty the place.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Your office got off lucky.

I disagree. Sleeper guy wanted to crash & didn't want their hardware. There wasn't meaningful risk.

I think we make the mistake that perceiving risk makes it real. It's reality that determines our actual risk tho.

[tdeck]

They got lucky in the sense that their exit door was unlocked, and anyone (not just the sleeper guy) could have discovered it.

[WarOnPrivacy]

This is reasonable.

[anm89]

right, thats why they were lucky

[nsxwolf]

Did you ask the women in your office how they felt about that incident?

[petre]

We had a drunk homeless woman sleeping in the ladies room at our office, during work hours. After that event we got a faulty intercom which creates countless problems with the delivery guys, but also a lot less interruptions from random people doing fundraising for random causes.

[smoldesu]

Are you not insured for that kinda stuff? As long as you don't own the company, that seems like a pretty negligible situation to be in.

[pengaru]

Did your employer offer him a job as night security guard?

It appears he really badly wanted the position...