> Technology is supposed to make police work faster and safer.

Not sure I agree with the premise...

> Most of the time it does.

Citation needed

> But every so often, a computer system hiccups, and an ordinary person ends up staring down the barrel of a gun for no reason at all.

"Aww shucks, you know, bugs happen and sometimes guns get pointed at people because of them". Pardon my language but: What the actual fuck? How does a site write that with a straight face?

Just absolutely trash reporting and the site doesn't allow for copy/paste to top it off.

EDIT: And after reading further I can confirm this publication and author are not good at their jobs. The ending paragraph is absolutely absurd.

This isn't reporting, this is just saying what the police and the victim said while throwing in line at the end saying maybe we need more oversight.

This is bottom-of-the-barrel reporting and it make my blood boil for them to just shrug this off and make excuses for how the police acted here.

Journalists have given up except for organizations like bellingcat, lighthouse reports, etc. that focus on data based reporting instead of narrative.

>> But every so often, a computer system hiccups, and an ordinary person ends up staring down the barrel of a gun for no reason at all.

> "Aww shucks, you know, bugs happen and sometimes guns get pointed at people because of them". Pardon my language but: What the actual fuck? How does a site write that with a straight face?

At the end of the day, the worst bug I could write might delete an object from a bucket. No bug I create will ever cause physical harm or death to the end user or anyone. No bug I create will ever cause a medical device to give erroneous results causing a patient to be misdiagnosed. This is by design. I don't want to ever be responsible for anything like that. Do people working on these kinds of products just dissociate their work from the potential negative effect their work could have?

> > Most of the time it does.

> Citation needed

This is the most damning part of the ALPR rollout for me. If cops were successfully using this technology they'd be beating that drum loud and proud at all hours.