What makes you think she didn't call the police?

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome...

"Two hours later, a Palm Springs police officer lumbered up the steps to my hotel room, paused on the outdoor threshold, and began questioning me in a steady clip. I wheeled through the relevant background information: I am a journalist; I live in Los Angeles; sometimes, people don’t like what I write about women, relationships, or sexuality; this was not the first time that someone had responded to my work by threatening to rape and kill me. The cop anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, “What is Twitter?”"

Um... Twitter isn't nearly as prevalent as people in the tech industry think it is.

Glad you posted this. They mentioned this incident in a segment they did on Last Week Tonight. The police are completely ill-equipped to deal with online harassment, even if they could determine the identity of the attacker, which they likely rarely can.

Most harassers really aren't that clever at hiding their tracks. Someone that smart is probably doing something more productive with their life.

It's likely a simple request from the police for identity is probably going to cough up the idiot.

One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.)

Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shit, and when they do, it's an extremely hard case to pursue.

Three, if you're tired of people talking about their lives on their blogs, don't read their blogs. You coming on here to whine about other people supposedly whining is ridiculous. There are plenty of us who actually want to solve these problems and are glad when people post.

So if I was mugged or being robbed, I have no friends around when this is happening, and I am not paying a security service, I shouldn't call 911?

If you think calling 911 will benefit you, by all means do it. There are plenty of people for whom it is either not a benefit or an active danger. For them, I can understand why they don't call.

> Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile cases put these kinds of assholes in jail it will stop.

What evidence do you have that the police will do something? We could look at people like Brianna Wu and Anita Sarkeesian, who I feel confident we'll agree have experienced massive and credible death threats. They report the threats they get to the police and FBI. Who's in jail as a result?

Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases. I haven't seen or heard of many court cases dealing with this, and when I have it's been via a blog post. Calling the police might be helpful in the specific case, but unless it really is high profile, it's not going to help change the culture.

> Also, from what I can tell posts like this are a lot more high-profile than court cases.

High profile blog posts don't make it stop. In fact, it likely adds fuel to the fire.

A video of a perp walk will drive home to the anonymous cowards that this isn't acceptable.

Maybe the fact that nobody went to jail for those threats means they weren't as credible as you seem to think.

Since when do the police care about online harassment?

Police care about death threats. Really.

Now, if the harasser is 2 continents away, it's going to get circular filed. If the harasser is two continents away, though, you can just ignore the message.

However, if the harasser turns out to be in the same state or even the same county, the police will care a lot. And someone in the same state qualifies as an imminent threat. And has likely done it to other people.