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Comment by shaky-carrousel | Hacker News Reader

He could have been easily murdered. It's not the first time by a far margin that a bunch of overzealous cops murder a kid. I would never ever in my life set foot in a place that sends me armed cops so easily. That school is extremely dangerous.

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I think the reason the school bought this silly software is because it's a dangerous school, and they're grasping at straws to try and fix the problem. The day after this false positive, a student was robbed.[1] Last month, a softball coach was charged with rape and possession of child pornography.[2] Last summer, one student was stabbed while getting off the bus.[3] Last year, there were two incidents where classmates stabbed each other.[4][5]

1. https://www.nottinghammd.com/2025/10/22/student-robbed-outsi...

2. https://www.si.com/high-school/maryland/baltimore-county-hig...

3. https://www.wbaltv.com/article/knife-assault-rossville-juven...

4. https://www.wbal.com/stabbing-incident-near-kenwood-high-sch...

5. https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/teen-injured-after-re...

That certainly sounds bad, but it's all relative; keep in mind this school is in Baltimore County, which is distinct from the City of Baltimore and has a much different crime profile. This school is in the exact same town as Eastern Tech, literally the top high school in Maryland.

Hi, I'm not following the point being made.

I skimmed through all the articles linked in GP and finding them pretty relevant to whatever decision might have been made to utilize the AI system (not at all to comment on how badly the bad tip was acted on).

Hailing from and still living in N. California, you could tell me that this school is located in Beverly Hills or Melrose Place, and it would still strike me as a piece of trivia. If anything, it'd just be ironic?

For context, Baltimore (City) is one of the most dangerous large cities in the US. Between the article calling the school "Kenwood High School in Baltimore" and the GP's crime links, a casual reader could mistakenly picture a dangerous inner-city school. But in reality it's located in a low-rise suburb in the County. Granted, it's an inner-ring blue collar suburb, but it's still a night-and-day difference from the worst neighborhoods in the city. And the schools in those bad neighborhoods tend to have far worse crimes than what was listed above.

So my point was that while the list of incidents is definitely not great, it's still way less severe than many inner-city schools in Baltimore. And honestly these same types of incidents happen at many "safe" large suburban high schools in "nice" areas throughout the US... generally less often than at this particular school, but not an order-of-magnitude difference.

Basically, I'm saying that GP's assertion of it being a "dangerous school" is entirely relative to what you're comparing to. There are much worse schools in that metro area.

That sounds to me like it's pretty close to the middle of the curve a large High School in the US.

I doubt that. I moved around a lot as a kid, so I went to at least eight different public schools from Alabama to Washington. One school was structurally condemned while I attended it. Some places had bullying, and sometimes a couple of people fought, but never with weapons, and there was never an injury severe enough to require medical attention.

I also know several high school teachers and the worst things they've complained about are disruptive/stupid students, not violence. And my friends who are parents would never send their kids to a school that had incidents like the ones I linked to. I think this sort of violence is limited to a small fraction of schools/districts.

> I think this sort of violence is limited to a small fraction of schools/districts.

No, definitely not. I went to a decently-well-ranked suburban school district, and still witnessed violent incidents... no weapon used, but still multiple cases where the victim got a concussion. And there were arrests, a gun found in a kid's locker, etc. This stuff was unfortunately relatively normal, at least in the 90s. Not quite as often as at the school in the article, but still.

I went to a very small rural school, and remember the big deal made when the administration asked the seniors to take their rifles out of the rear windows while on school property.

There were fights, but no one was ever harmed with a weapon to my memory.

Based on your reporting, that's one violent crime per year, and one alleged child rapist. [0]

The crime stats seem fine to me. In a city like Baltimore, the numbers you've presented are shockingly low. When I was going through school, it was quite common for bullies to rob kids... even on campus. Teachers pretty much never did anything about it.

[0] Maybe the guy is a rapist, and maybe he isn't. If he is, that's godawful and I hope he goes to jail and gets his shit straight.

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