nickfarr

This is why it took me so long to come out with this story. The last thing I want to do is put myself out there only to be dismissed as part of a larger smear campaign (as I was at the time.)

Further: This is a direct description of what I have come to know as Jake's M.O. Not an isolated incident. This has to do with one person's behavior, it has nothing to do with the projects that person was involved with.

Maybe what Jake did to me wasn't all that bad. Maybe I deserved it. Fine, call me whatever form of coward or weakling you want but in the end, this was my hobby and I found other things to do with my life where I didn't have to put up with this level of stress.

Maybe to offer another insight that is not obvious: When you reach a certain point in an organization, what you do and how it impacts the thing you work so hard for becomes very obvious. Yeah, you sacrifice your personal safety for it as much as that sounds awful in retrospect.

What would I have to gain getting the police or others involved in a creepy note left in my room? The fact is, they proved they could gain entry whenever they wanted and no amount of police protection would do anything about that.

And then what...start rumors about creepy notes? Have people tell me I made the whole thing up? Get told by the Police there would be nothing they could do, or worse, invite them in to a world where they're actively detested?

What would all that do to the conference? It would be another circus taking away attention away from people who rightly deserved it for the great work that they're doing. Just like this whole thing is a circus.

The best thing that could have happened did, some friends of mine were scheduled to crash with me--one of whom was sick the entire time. After that, the notes stopped.

I totally understand your skepticism there. Yes, I was totally an idiot for not keeping the notes, not going to the police, etc. etc.

If I can offer anything, by the time it got to that point, I had already been told to "stop making drama" about the whole thing and somehow just pacify Jake by many people I trusted.

So I bring them a note! I bring them to my hotel room! Let's walk through the scenario in my head: What's to make them believe me now because I have some anonymous piece of paper. Who's to say I didn't make the thing up myself to try to get back at Jake? Why would someone believe me just because there's a shred of something.

My whole approach up until I couldn't take it anymore was to just ignore, to let it slide, to not think about it and move on. THIS IS WHAT HARASSMENT VICTIMS DO and yes, I should have recognized it at the time.

I guess I didn't make this clear enough in the post, but I had no intention of letting the talk go forward unless the presenter could bring up some really solid evidence of some sort. Slides, some kind of visual element or documentation were required to earn/keep your LT slot and, for understandable reasons, some people wait until the last minute to submit the final draft of those.

To be crass, I threw this person on the schedule and gave them a deadline with every intention of removing them the next day to shut them up so I could go to sleep. The LT schedules change up to and during the event itself and I've rejected a lot of talks once it was clear that the slides or revisions contained inappropriate material.

The goal of the event is to give everyone a chance to take the stage, the point is to not curate beyond clustering similar topics together. People sing songs, do dances and any number of crazy little things and sometimes will blow you away with an amazing idea.

That being said, I started training my potential replacements for the LTs at the 30c3 for the reasons you stated, among others.

I believe today, the talks are assembled by a team of three people with each person taking the helm on a particular day.

I know it's a hard job...that was part of the point that I think got lost in the whole article. That being said, this intimidation strategy (along with the rampant drug war incarceration of anyone who isn't 100% clean) has "cleaned up the city". Once the crime rates start going up again, it's going to get a lot worse.

Beat cops aren't just supposed to write traffic citations. They're supposed to get a litany of these "pink ticket"s, which account for all the quality of life violations that the Broken Window theory goes after.

Bear in mind, I didn't get a ticket from the Stop-And-Frisk incident, I got one for trespassing in Central Park a few months prior.

I plead not guilty because I was TOLD by the Police Officer that the ticket would get thrown out. I assumed this meant that the officer would not appear were I to appeal it, and when the officer appeals it gets thrown out.

What I didn't know is that the "ACD" option--Adjournment in Contemplation of Dismissal--was not offered to be at my arraignment. The first magistrate I saw wanted my $25, and didn't say a thing about throwing the ticket out. Not knowing my rights at the time (i.e. the ACD option), I plead Not Guilty.

Turns out the officer did appear and I was offered ACD. Had I continued with the trial, I would have made a point of the officer's statement saying that "this ticket would get thrown out as long as you appeared".

I didn't put it in the article precisely because I didn't want the shift in focus--but this incident made me think a lot harder about wearing my Google Glass again.

That being said, there's absolutely no reason that cops should not have a camera on them at all times. It's more for their benefit than ours.

As far as technologies that reliably work, the stop-and-frisk app is actually quite good, but requires practice like anything else.

I'd also be all for photographing cops out of habit. I stopped short of recommending that...but, hell, there's plenty of fodder here for a good month's worth of posts.

I'm actually going to take you to task on this once, precisely because the NYPD is set to become a "minority majority" force if current hiring trends continue. I've had many, many more interactions with the police than these two incidents in a variety of different contexts and I believe they're decent human beings who want to do the right thing. The systematic mistreatment of all underprivileged groups (including poor whites and the mentally ill, btw.) is, when you look at it, the bad cops getting the outsized share of attention. There are lots of cops who do the right thing when they can, I see it happening all the time even beyond the patina of the blue line of intimidation.

In my case, it was a freak occurrence. I chose to wear my admittedly ratty looking but thrift-store looking hat along with a Century 21 snowboarding jacket.

Had it been a slightly warmer day, this incident would have likely never occurred.

That being said, I think what's happening on the left coast is the widening income gap coupled with a context switch that the cops are still catching up to. There are a lot of kids who bleed entitlement, some of whom are quite wealthy and some of whom are dirt poor.

There was no official charge in the Stop-and-Frisk incident. I'm comparing that to a very professional (almost apologetic) Central Park trespassing ticket that ended up getting thrown out, as most of them do.

I'm assuming I was not charged with anything after the stop-and-frisk because they figured out I was probably a lot more trouble for them than I was worth. In this case, appearances were deceiving...what I was wearing at that time, due to the weather, screamed "punk kid/hipster" far more than the "Privileged Accountant who passes for White" clothing I had on underneath.

I believe everyone who's saying a person of color or otherwise underprivileged person would have had a much different outcome is 100% correct.

I should add that this was on the eve of the Super Bowl, and the NFL had set up quite the party in Times Square.

As said whiny hipster, I'm actually more prone to agree with you. I had no idea this story would resonate nearly as much as it has--and my driving point was that the NYPD is being set up by their superiors to police by quota. Naturally, said policing ends up being taken out on the backs of those least able to push back.

For the record, as the giver of said advice: I pretty much completely agree.

Actually, that was precisely it. I was in Times Square where there were tons and tons of cops, and not all that many revelers. (It was a really cold night, IIRC.) I heard the comment, looked around, realized they were cops and completely without thinking said, "You can't fucking ask that." Next thing, they asked for ID and as I began to reach for my wallet was thrown up against something by the three officers. It happened really, really quickly--just like being mugged.