Comment by TAAndreas | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TAAndreas | Hacker News Reader

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Great to see you here again and particularly great to hear these news! I was already relieved to see your HN submission in May and now I see that was the time when the first public contributions after your AskHN appeared on the GH profile you used here (What I didn't see is that you already used reddit again only some 3 weeks later)

The reason I contacted the police was that I wanted to delegate taking care of this to professionals. I'm not a psychologist and what I think might be a reasonable approach to helping out in such a situation actually might or might not be. (People seem to have very different approaches here from "I feel you bro" through "Hey it's not that bad" to "You can be really proud of x, y and z" and up to "C'mon, stop whining!" and even "It's actually your fault")

I'm very glad to see that this seems to have been the right decision. I wasn't too confident about it at first, b/c police really didn't leave a professional impression. When I read that post I was at work and my wife and kid were at home. They were quite shocked (and the neighbors probably somewhat "excited") that KriPo showed up at our place. Turned out, I was also right not to trust their research capabilities. I literally[1] stalked the sh*t out of you and sent them a good dozen of profiles together with your name, (work) phone number and address and the letter to your ex, her profiles &c. That may sound creepy but I actually really wanted to make sure they have all the information they need to reach out to you as fast as possible (I expected it to take minutes, not a week). Turns out doing so was both right and wrong: They really seemed not to be skilled investigators, but to the extent that some days (!) later they called me and told me they couldn't open the links.

So after that I really wasn't that full of confidence what concerns the police, so until I saw your HN submission in May I always thought about calling you but didn't really know how you'd react.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16403671

hi TAAndreas

you are right, the police was not very professional and it might have ended badly. Luckily it didn't. First i was scared that my ex send them to me and i was in trouble (althoug i did nothing illegal). Then i was relieved that it was about my post on HN.

Reading this made me uncomfortable, but also happy. A Stranger from the internet cared (about my life) and took action. I got 80 messages on that thread. Most of them were upliftig. But taking action is another level. Thank you for that! Faith in humanity restored.

You could have reached out to me directly. I would be happy to have a coffee with a fellow HN and "talk about it". I'd rather talk to a stranger with an open ear than a psychologist who listens because he/she gets paid for it.

If there is anything i can do for you, you can contact me at: tevlon84@gmail.com .

You did the right thing.Thank you!

I am glad that this story had a happy ending. Mine did not.

Due to an online misunderstanding, a person with good intentions reported to the police that I was a danger to myself. What followed was one of the worst experiences of my life.

What seemed almost like a SWAT team appeared at my house. I was pulled out of my home in handcuffs in front of my neighbors. I begged and tried to explain the misunderstanding but no one would listen. The police said it was the responsibility of a psychiatrist to decide whether I needed to be hospitalized and that I seemed fine but they couldn't make that decision. After spending hours alone in a concrete cell, when the psychiatrist finally came to talk to me, she assumed I must be dangerous because the police had taken me away from my home.

While I was handcuffed and sobbing, she told me that "just to be careful" and for my "own good" I was being forcibly put into a mental hospital for observation. I spent a night locked in a ward full of psychotic people and drug addicts.

Thank God one of my relatives was able to contact the hospital and convince them it was all a misunderstanding. A different psychiatrist evaluated me and I was immediately released.

I still have PTSD about the incident. When I hear a knock on the door, sometimes my heart races because I am scared it is men with gun who will take me away. I have had many, many nightmares about being locked inside the mental ward. I thought my life was over.

When I got home, my life was not ok. My neighbors saw the police response to my house and all stopped smiling or talking to me. I was so ashamed. This incident is still on my record and it makes it impossible for me to pursue certain jobs.

I am not saying you should never send the police to the home of someone you are worried about. However, you should only do it if there are NO OTHER OPTIONS for expressing concern. Stories like what happened to u/ tevlon are the exception not the rule.

I am sorry that this happened to you. I can imagine how traumatic that must have been. Have you considered talking to a lawyer to get damages and/or remove this incident from your records?

I do want to point out that tevlon was in Germany. That explains why the outcome was so different.

I talked to multiple attorneys. The jobs I am talking about involve security clearances and it does not seem like the true fact of the incident can be erased for such purposes.

I can petition to have certain legal consequences removed -- like my right to buy a firearm for hunting. This still would not erase the incident from the government database.

I can explain that it was a misunderstanding and show how I did not technically deserve what happened to me. However what I said was still very stupid and not something I ever want anyone else to read. It was my mistake for writing it but the consequence will follow me forever in this small way.

Well done. Just... well done. You should be very proud of what you did that day. Thank you.

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