

Chicago's top crime blogger is a 16-year-old with autism living with his mom - brandnewlow
http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/museums-culture/77903/chicagos-youngest-crime-blogger

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patio11
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.

~~~
brandnewlow
These are great questions. Here's my take:

1\. I have a responsibility to all my readers, users, writers, to take care of
them and look after them. Because of Timmy's age, there's an extra layer
there.

2\. I'm not qualified to judge whether I should or shouldn't believe Timmy
when he says he enjoys what he's doing and how he's spending his time based on
his situation. If his mom thought he should shut down the blog, it would
happen in a heartbeat and we'd all be ok with that. He's a kid.

3\. Autism or no autism, when I was a teenager, I would have killed to be
"exploited" by older people who truly appreciated and enjoyed my work and
wanted to help get it in front of more people.

This is a very important topic. Thanks for bringing it up.

~~~
patio11
That is a very responsible take on the situation. With regards to #2, I would
encourage you to read the 5:17 PM entry here and reflect carefully on it. If
you feel unqualified to judge its import, hum a few bars to one of the mental
health professionals in your Rolodex.

[http://www.windycitizen.com/blogs/avondale-logan-square-
crim...](http://www.windycitizen.com/blogs/avondale-logan-square-crime-
blog/2009/08/22/rollerblader-may-have-gun-avers-diversey)

~~~
derefr
It sounds broken from an regular perspective, because regular people either
don't get involved in thinking very hard about crime and probabilities, or if
they do, they get a gun or some other form of protection to put themselves
more at ease. Thinking about crime happning right at this moment, in your very
own neighbourhood all day, but feeling like you're an ineffectual shut-in nerd
who wouldn't even be able to use a gun if his caring mother would let him have
one, would drive anyone to paranoia, I think—myself included.

~~~
frig
It isn't just the paranoia.

How do you interpret this:

 _I was kind of hoping I could hand the blog over to someone else, who could
release their indentity and really not worry about it. Plus, it would get some
pressure off of me._

...want to place bets about the source of that pressure and what it consists
of?

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

~~~
dasil003
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
What wonderful imagery.

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fallentimes
_> 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
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.

------
delackner
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?

~~~
jim-greer
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?v...](http://www.komonews.com/news/content/scanner/31214074.html?video=pop&t=a)

Lots of other feeds are linked here:

<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.

------
Legion
He's 16 years old, not 15.

Not that the small error makes much of a difference.

~~~
brandnewlow
Fixed.

