re: #331 lawhawk

Greets and saluts on this Boxing Day, post-Christmas quiet morning from the NYC metro area. The NYPD has been busy arresting people who have allegedly made threats against the Department in the wake of the assassination of the two officers last week.

I wonder if anyone’s bothered to arrest the Bundy clan and those who were out at the ranch pointing rifles at law enforcement there - a direct and imminent threat against law enforcement. Of course, those were feds, and it was Nevada, but seems like there was no such crackdown against the people who were threatening law enforcement.

My sense is that the events in NYC are getting wider play because it: 1) happened in NYC; and 2) the racial background of the shooter.

In reply:

1. I’d note that the guy who actually killed two cops in Las Vegas got kicked off of the Bundy ranch for his obviously violent tendencies, so it could be at least argued that those around Bundy were no longer responsible for his actions.

2. It indeed in part about police being killed in NYC commanding more attention, but it could not be otherwise. Though as a Chicagoan it annoys me to admit it, New York City is the largest and most important city in the United States. What happens there and how safe the city is presumed to be is of outsized importance to the nation.

3. The decision about whom to prosecute is also involved. Simply put, it is easier to find a jury in New York City that will convict someone for openly threatening the NYPD that it is to find a Jury in rural Nevada that would convict for openly threatening the Bureau of Land Management.

Successful police work produces defenders, those who feel their lives are better because of police vigilance or because the police protected someone close to the defender from crime or caught the person who had committed a crime that hit close to home. The work the BLM does produces few local defenders. Most ranchers see the BLM as unfriendly and run by distant bureaucrats. People with that sort of view are more likely to nullify in when on a jury.