If Barsanti were an assistant manager recently passed over for promotion, he'd be recruiting his cashiers in a storewide effort to sell a different brand of orange juice, but deep into the campaign, he'd start wondering if he really actually even really cares any more, really.

I want so badly to make a joke to undermine this, but there's far too much truth in it.

Not to mention, it's essentially just a cutesy pronunciation of Harlequin, which aside from the innocuous associations with stock clown characters, is also the name of the world's biggest romance novel publisher. So.

Wait, what the fuck is there to get? He just named the kid after a character.

My god. Run for president. I'd vote for you if that were the only item on your platform.

Sure, but last year, everyone lost their minds over people who fly the confederate flag.

That's a very fair point. Cheerfully withdrawn.

Oh, I wholly agree they would be legitimate responses. No argument there. My whole point is that re your number two, barring any other related information, the cops wouldn't be able to actually do anything until the "seduction" proved successful for the rapist and the rape occurred. Until then, there's far too much…

That's a totally different situation, though. If instead of talking about weird tutoring scenarios, he had talked explicitly about sex, that's different.

Yeah, I've said elsewhere here that I'm assuming there are details missing in this, like that the police looked up the guy's name and got no hits, etc. and then told this girl there was nothing they could do. Maybe I shouldn't make that assumption, but the incident at hand only offers up the specific details to which…

Yeah, that's already been pointed out to me. The conversation's already raised too many hydra heads to back off completely, but I acknowledge that the hypotheticals might not relate to the instigating actuality. And whatnot.

You're literally describing the plot of Minority Report. It absolutely does not follow that because attempted crimes are crimes, logically you can claim a crime has been commited before any act has taken place.

I guess I'm wondering why we're assuming that 1 and 2 didn't happen. We know the girl was turned around, but that could mean she didn't get what she wanted. I'm replying under the assumption that the cops did the bare minimum and realized that no crime had occurred. Maybe that's a bad assumption. But:

Well, stop and frisk is about stopping and frisking people to uncover crimes they've already committed or are committing. Being in possession of drugs, being in possession of unlawful weapons, etc. It's not about uncovering, for instance, a perfectly legal knife and then moving forward on the assumption that knife…

But in order for that guy to be charged with attempted murder and for all that paraphernalia to be considered evidence of attempted murder, he actually has to attempt the murder. Until he does, it's just a bunch of stuff lying around that could conceivably used for a murder.

What else would you have liked him to do there?

Well, OK. Not that they can't. But they're not supposed to. Just because they DO doesn't mean that it should be advocated further.

No, no. Being black or brown IS the crime in the US. Followed only in its severity by the crime of being-in-an-area-where-the-police-are-struggling-to-meet-their-monthly-quota.

Ah, different country. Gotcha, sorry. I think the point of the 4th amendment ought to be pretty much universal.

Sure. But the police can't be knocking on doors unless they're responding to a specific crime or the imminent possibility of one. They can't go after a person just for being sketchy. Like it or not, that's that old 4th amendment.