Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
Crime has been on a significant downturn ever since lead was removed from gasoline, and thus stopped being vaporized in the air.
Are there places where crime spikes upward? yes, but almost 100% of the time thats caused by the failure of local, state, or federal governments creating disadvantaged, poor, underserviced people. . and you treat people poorly and keep them desperate long enough, then crime is going to occur.
They’ll happily spend millions on the crime part, but they wont even acknowledge the underlying issue that could be addressed for far less than what oppression costs.