I live in the area. Crazy how many helicopters and drones showed up so quick and how many police there were. For several hours more and more police and FBI vehicles kept arriving. Probably ended up with close to 100 officers on scene. Salem NH PD, Methuen MA PD, Providence RI PD, NH state police, MA state police, FBI, and US Marshal service were the ones I saw.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston Marathon Bombing.
all of that and they basically just got lucky. the guy walked to brown from his car parked nearby and shot up some kids, waited days, went to a guy's house in Massachusetts, killed him and never even got caught - he committed suicide and was only found days after his second killing
if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't killers more often because this guy basically got away...
I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm trying to understand it. The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was killed and the arrest there hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad. A lot of commentary then that the police/FBI got lucky. Ditto Mangione. They got lucky he was found in a random McDonalds.
What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you only have a few outcomes:
A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing together forensic evidence
C) Not be solved.
Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.
The sentiment is basically that the "all hands on deck" manpower effort is futile and if anything even a political/propaganda effort to dissuade others from having similar thoughts. What good is it to mobilize 1000 FBI agents if they aren't going to move the case forward at all? What good is having a budget capable of mobilizing that many people for a single case and not to bear any fruit with it? Is this outcome better than what might have happened if this were relegated to local PD? Surprisingly the answer is "no, not at all." That is a big indictment on federal law enforcement and their abilities to turn their budget into actionable effort that makes the population safer. And probably suggests that such resource draining manhunts might even come at the cost of whatever the FBI does in fact do well.
Half of life is collective "give a damn". If you see 1000 FBI agents, read 47 headlines, and hear a dozen gas station conversations then you start to tune in. That's when the tips start coming in, as everyone wants to be part of the big "thing".
It’s easy to criticize a police investigation after the suspect has been caught. But in the moment, none of the responding officers had a clue what they were walking into. Brown is a large campus in a strongly residential neighbourhood with many hiding spots; and people were ordered to shelter in place.
> Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
There is to a point, and it's not some random organic sentiment: this is the image that has been crafted for decades, if not centuries. The police has a role in pushing it, but it's also has been a useful fiction for our societies as a whole.
"crime will somewhat get punished" has more weight with a competent agency with at least average intelligent people.
I disagree that his catching was inevitable. They only knew an identity yesterday. If the suspect wasn’t a coward it’s plausible they could’ve just driven away to literally any other part of the United States and then flew back to Portugal. I have no comment on the Kirk case.
As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are going to be violated in the name of safety I expect much faster results, and I’m sure the MIT professors family would agree.
How could they possibly have solved it faster than this? There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything else. Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go through it. The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately obviously related.
Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.
I am not saying luck isn't a factor - you're missing my point which is we're compromising privacy and going further into a surveillance state, yet it's not like the actual outcomes are improving.
I have a theory, it would be great if someone would do a rigorous study to back me up! Ha. I'm most likely wrong, but anyway:
The more effort a state puts into surveiling its population, the more effort law enforcement will put into suppressing dissent, and less into addressing crimes targeting the general populous.
Just checking, are you sure this is the story: "hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad." It seems that story is a-changing and that's an important note. My point might be that what is put out as the story often comes with an agenda.
If you watch some of the real life detective / crime shows. The people who murder people and get caught be cops, basically shoot people in broad daylight on camera, tell people about it, then immediately fold in interrogation.
People often fold during an interrogation/questioning unless they are career criminals and have been through the system and learn from their prior mistakes/luck.
Sure, but in the 21st century people are typically not thrown in prison on the basis of a confession only. The prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
We do have criminals who fold, either they're too confident, they trip up, etc. Recently some guy killed his sugar-momma in Fla, then took her car and drive it cross country to Seattle and along the way used her CC. He gave it all away in the jail interview.
In the 21st century, innocent people routinely accept plea deals to avoid the risk of trial. The corroborating evidence need not be strong because the threat of the trial penalty is enough when you can't afford a good lawyer.
>The prosecutors have to have corroborating evidence.
Bla bla bla, prosecutors are the good guys and show all the evidence they have....
Um, not.
We keep finding again and again we're putting innocent people in jail even for things as serious as capital crimes, and later it was found the investigation was botched and there was no evidence that person was guilty and other evidence was never presented.
Well, how exactly were they supposed to know he wanted a lawyer and not a lawyerdog, whatever that is? I don't even think that's a real thing! Clearly the suspect was crazy.
I mentioned to someone that day that the person would be caught by a family member - that this stuff was looking more and more like Mangione - who was also primarily caught by his mom. That being said, the only reason family ends up ratting these people out is because of the high pressure it ends up on the family. If it turns out they find these people, and the family did not turn them in, they are going to the big house too.
> the only reason family ends up ratting these people out is because of the high pressure it ends up on the family.
That is not true. There was no pressure on unabomber brother - he "ratted" him out entirely on own will. Also Elliot Rodgers parents called police after they read the manifesto - before any pressure happened. Ex wife of DC shootings had restraining order on him, feared him, and when police asked whether she thinks he is capable of violence like that her first answer was "yes".
The thing also is, these people are often assholes in their own lives, toward relatives too. They tend to have track record of domestic violence and abuse.
Other than going left leaning Robinson was not hated by his family, but when they found out they immediately got the police involved. Same with Mangione (not with the left leaning aspect, but the familial love).
I'm not saying your angle is wrong - it's just that one way or another they'll be turned in.
In my country if the police is really serious, and I mean national crisis level of serious, they can go full China and track everyone. They have the means.
Like presumably the US has doorbell camera databases and every car on the highway is electronically flagged?
I believe the theory that Mangione even wanted to be caught and arrested because he didn't see a viable life for himself anymore with his spinal problems and medical bills. Who social engineers their way into getting a CEO's itinerary and then keeps a manifesto on their person well after the crime
Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or getting reasonable treatment but hey,
It's a fun theory that everyone likes to support but it falls apart when you read his Reddit account and realize he had insurance that paid for spinal fusion surgery and claimed to have no pain afterwards without the assistance of medication. That's probably also why he doesn't appear in any pain in his appearances since the incident, not because the NY DOC (infamous for their terrible healthcare) magically got him surgery instantly.
He became radicalized over time and even wrote that his pain was improved. Somewhere along the way he read something or got it into his head that he had to murder the United Healthcare CEO where he never was a customer. It was just one if not the largest healthcare insurance company.
The Titanic disaster was a confluence of many instances of bad luck. Including the idea that if the lookout had noticed the berg a few seconds later, it wouldn't have sunk.
(Because then it would have hit the berg head on, crushing the front, but not ripping most of the side open.)
Maybe. The average homicide clearance rate in the US is only around 60%. But that includes a lot of killings where nobody really cares about anyone involved. This was a much higher profile crime so it would get a lot more attention. But there are high profile cases that get a lot of (at least local) attention that don't ever get solved either.
It is really difficult to ascertain motive and suspects when it’s a chronic homeless case getting murdered. It could be a thing from drugs to just looking at a crazy guy wrong one night, you literally have no leads unless there is a video or some other piece of hard evidence. It isn’t really about caring, judt that the environment they live in is so chaotic and uncontrolled that you’d have a suspect pool that is too big to reasonably investigate.
Sorry, to make my point more clear: They knew the identity of the killer, and this is part of how they found his dead body. If he hadn't killed himself, they would have found him regardless, since they knew who he was, and knew the license plate of the car he was driving.
Same perspective here just 15 miles northwest of scene. Pretty sure they confirmed officially presence of MA NH LEO, NHSP, MASP, FBI, CIA, ATF, and Secret Service.
Just a note, I almost immediately closed your site after opening because on my phone all I see when it first opens is a sign up form. I did end up scrolling and seeing the content, but I'd recommend dropping that form either off the front page or at least below the description of what your product is.
I saw the same, then scrolled and saw an embedded youtube video asking me to “sign in to prove i’m not a bot”… I did close the site. I recommend moving the sign up form below some more helpful/descriptive content.
When talking to foreigners and someone mentions USA, it's about 50/50 I get a trump joke or a fat joke. I don't think HN is the place for it, but stereotyping countries is pretty common.
Hot take, but parents should, y'know, parent. Steam offers parental controls which can disable the store entirely, and have a whitelist for which games can be played along with other features.
I can tell you're not a parent, because if you were, you would know that basically none of the digital solutions provided by tech companies to facilitate gating adult material from children actually work or are in any way thoughtfully designed.
Every one of these "just shunt the responsibility from the giant corporation with infinite resources to the parents who are already stretched thin" is another link in a long, long chain that is the woes of modern parenting and really in the woes of modern life, in general.
Historically we have typically gated adult content from children via opt-in systems, not opt-out systems, like you're describing - e.g. Adults opt-in to sensitive content, not children opt-out. There is a reason adult stores are separate from Walmarts and that 21+ bars are separate from family-restaurants.
Also these games are absolute garbage, so I'm not sure why everyone is jumping on this issue like we're losing something of significant cultural value... Why is low-quality XXX-slop the line in the sand we're deciding to rally around... This is not a slippery slope to fascism, or whatever make-believe story we're peddling about this situation, its somebody somewhere doing the right thing, for once, and slowing our seemingly inevitable decline into Biff's Casino Future the teensiest bit.
That's a fair concern about parental controls in general - many digital solutions are indeed poorly implemented. However, Steam actually has quite good parental controls (check out the sibling comments for examples).
Rather than assuming Steam falls into the same category as other problematic software, I'd suggest checking out Steam's family features before drawing conclusions.
Happy to discuss the specific merits of Steam's parental controls once you've had a chance to look at what Steam actually offers.
Steam has pretty good built in parental controls imo. You can allow-list or block-list games, and block viewing various content on the store, or even entirely disable the store. There are tiers to filtering such as “frequent violence” “any nudity” “frequent nudity” and “adult only”. You can also separately disable the viewing of user-generated content, which I think disables the steam workshop. And even set playtime limits.
Steam’s parental controls are pretty good if used properly.
> I can tell you're not a parent, because if you were, you would know that basically none of the digital solutions provided by tech companies to facilitate gating adult material from children actually work or are in any way thoughtfully designed.
I can tell you Nintendo's parental controls work correctly. Even the eShop doesn't display any content not suitable for younger ages for accounts under the parental control restrictions if configured correctly.
As a parent, I don't want my child reading your comment. Also, your comment is absolute trash, so deleting it wouldn't be a loss of anything of cultural significance.
No, I will not talk to my son about it. Hacker News has unlimited resources, so they should do it for me. I'm already stretched too thin - I have to get to Walmart to buy more wine and ammunition before it closes.
I believe in the past year or two someone passed a law with a specific deceleration amount. If you were decelerating at or beyond that amount, brake lights are required to come on. Maybe the EU? Can't quite remember. Would definitely be good to have that here in the US
Republicans only like specific jews. Trump consistently calls Schumer a Palestinian. By being able to selectively exclude jewish people from the category of "jew" they get to redefine antisemitism. This lets them keep both the neonazis who hate jewish people and the christian zionists who support israel as a mechanism of creating the End Times in their party.
They say it "could have weighed up to 200 pounds". How do they know? Are they just guestimating based on modern animals about the same size? Or maybe weighing/measuring a modern beaver and scaling up size and weight?
There's some debate over how useful this is for dinosaurs, but something that died out 10k years ago with closely related existing species is probably easier.
That's a better article than the link, since they actually bothered to get answers to the question from definitive sources. NPR also linked directly to the NOAA copy of the report, lending credence to the "sloppy relocation" theory of the case:
If they already fired the staff of the agency, it's actually pretty believable that the dedicated website would get shut down. Talk about burying the lede.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston Marathon Bombing.
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