[conspire] (forw) Reminder that we are NextDoor's product, not customers

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> I was not previously aware of this particular story.  I googled the
> man's name and immediately found many news stories, including 2 local
> TV stations.  So obviously this story was important to people in the
> community. 

Up around Redwood City, there were at least 5-6 simultaneous NextDoor
threads, all of them very active and with a lot of overwrought people.
Being aware of the obvious emotional sensitivity, I was actually trying
to tread pretty lightly, and certainly tried hard to avoid being the
target of anger from people on the warpath against a convicted child
molester.

Since it was such a big story up here, I did some related reading on how
the Department of State Hospital's (DSH's) Sexually Violent Predator
(SVP) process works, i.e., what is the legal background and how does it
work.  To sum up, after DSH has completed Phases I through IV of
inpatient medical/psychiatric treatment, a panel of doctors at some
point clears the patient/inmate for Phase V, supervised release.
Legally, this is treated as parole, and the patient is still serving
time on a sentence, but with the twist of being cleared for that status
by doctors.  DSH finds a housing situation for the patient/inmate
somewhere in the state -- which has been since 2003 been handled on an
outsourced basis by a Pennsylvania company named Liberty Healthcare
Corporation -- and this proposal then gets put in from a Superior Court
judge to vet as having followed all procedures.  In the supervised
housing situation, the inmate/patient gets checked frequently, wears a
GPS bracelet, and in general does a closely supervised variant of
parole, all paid for by DSH using taxpayer money (but possibly with less
expense than locking the patient up in a state hospital).

Convictee Mr. Cheek, having been convicted of several nasty crimes as
late as 1981, then served a 32-year sentence, the first part of it in
prison and most of it in Coalinga State Hospital.  IIRC, his sentence
was _also_ (then) extended for several additional 2-year stretches
before he was cleared for Phase V release (recently), which is when
Liberty found the house in Emerald Lakes, and social media then blew up.
Most recently, reportedly the Emerald Lakes property owner has withdrawn
her rental offer to DSH after adverse publicity.  Liberty is back to
searching (quietly) for somewhere else.

I knew absolutely nothing about this before the Michael Thomas Cheek 
social-media frenzy erupted.  Among other things, I had no idea
California is one of several states with special SVP handling including
the tacking on extra years of sentence bit.   Such programs are
controversial in legal circles, and obviously the entire surrounding
subject is enormously contentious.  I would normally steer very far away
from those discussions; thank heavens, they have nothing to do with me
or my family or my neighbourhood.  But, hey, you know me:  I get
intensely curious about legal matters, and also feel a citizenship
responsibility to understand what's going on, even if the other people
in the discussion are mostly just venting emotion and going
transrational.

I'm aware that my whole "I acknowledge that you wish to tell people your
opinions about what you assume is reality, but if you don't mind I would
rather examine, determine, and discuss the nature of what _is_ instead
of whether you like it" approach pisses off most modern Californians,
because all they hear is "Rick is dissing my feelings."  Oh well.  I try
to be nice about it, and, if the other person refuses to talk about
anything but his/her opinions, then it's a short conversation.