Ah, that makes sense! I employed a strategy where the hacker was basically always at the ropes except when passing a camera because the other guy needed to punch so many guards. I saw the alert level drop a bit when grabbing the diamond (when the hacker was not at the ropes) and I thought the alert was resetting from getting the diamond, not from the hacker.
So maybe just making it clear that the hacker is lowering the alert level could solve the issue which would also have the player use a more interesting strategy than mine lol