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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

> Bricks & Minifigs CEO Ammon McNeff is a graduate of Brigham Young University. Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best are, by public record and documented account, members of the LDS community. When Reckless Ben's team, following the pattern of obstruction by local law enforcement, looked into the individual officers involved in these incidents, they found that multiple officers were also BYU alumni.

I thought “it has to be some kind of corruption here”. And yup it’s the mormon mafia apparently

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Honestly that pattern of actions by law enforcement was the most disturbing thing. There was a moment where they knew this person was present at a private property to serve a warrant in a legitimate lawsuit. Clearly the right and moral action for the police at that moment was to help serve the papers AND then escort the litigant from the property. They chose to behave more like mobsters than defenders of the public trust, like they were taking over responsibility from the courts

when people say that the police are there to enforce laws to protect capital, this is what they mean.

This is the main reason I read comment threads on law enforcement stuff on HN. There's a bunch of people trying to square their opinion of policing ("protect and serve") with the reality of policing ("protect and serve the wealth").

Thats because the cops were on the mormon in-group.

Sadly this is pretty on brand for police everywhere, but it's particularly egregious in "the land of the free".

If you want a sobering perspective on government power and its connection to wealth look into the history of labor movement.

Or this senate report about the CIA's detention and interogation program [0]. The section "Findings and Conclusions" is some of the most damning stuff I've ever read. Essentially they lied about the scope and brutality of the torturing, lied about its success - there was none or even negative effectiveness and every case they used as an example was a success because of information collected through other means - and actively sabotaged all attempts at oversight.

[0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/...

My understanding is that 50% of people in the state of Utah are mormon. I'm not saying there wasn't corruption, but it could very well be pure chance with those odds.

If cops are pulling over another person from Utah probably not a big deal but when dealing with an outsider from out of state the situation is different.

I can personally attest to this, along with many of my friends and family.

I've driven hundreds of extra miles per trip going around that damned state.

Hate to break it to you but the Mormon belt extends well up into Idaho (probably all the way to Montana on the East side) and down into Arizona, and diffuses out quite far from there. Probably need to go through Montana or skirt the Mexican border areas to avoid it, but border areas these days come with their own issues self created by our government...

I lived in Idaho Falls (well within the majority Mormon area that extends farther North at least to Rexburg) and never had an issue, but I definitely knew I was not part of the club.

Utah Mormons are of a different mindset, they're on home turf in their promised land and they act like it.

There's a Mormon that runs a local business in my area. One day he puts his business up for sale because he wants to move to Utah to get closer to his faith. Ends up moving back and reopening a couple of years later -- turns out he was Mormon, but not Mormon enough. They don't like outsiders, not even the Mormons from out of state, which kind of makes sense with being a historically polygamous group which expels the young men who aren't in the "in" group. Breeds a mindset of exclusivity.

Yeah the Mormons in Utah are of a much more vapid culture than those from out of state, I can say from experience. All of the out-of-stater Mormons I've met that were here for BYU and such, they all said they can't stand the people here. Don't blame them one bit.

> multiple officers were also BYU alumni

American Fork, UT is literally 10 miles from Brigham Young University, and BYU represents 1/4th of the state's bachelors degrees.

It's a bit like saying police officers in Italy are Catholic. I'd be more surprised if they weren't tbh.

(Disclaimer: I live near that area and also graduated from BYU.)

Yeah, as a non-Mormon, I agree. I think the Mormon connection is a paranoid distraction. The behavior of the police can be explained by the same kind of corrupt-small-town-police-defending-locals-from-outsiders behavior that happens across the country.

> The behavior of the police can be explained by the same kind of corrupt-small-town-police-defending-locals-from-outsiders behavior that happens across the country.

Mormons aren't implicated, but I fail to see how this can explain the behavior of the Oregon police.

I think it's the very odd police behavior that's triggered people trying to understand WTF is going on there.

It would be smart for the Mormon church to get ahead of this because blowback/reputational damage is hitting them. In the least Mormon Police and Mormon business executives appear to be behaving in ways you would not expect from truly religious/moral people.

Do you know all these involved parties aren't mormons in some mormon area/mormon company? Eg the old guy, the franchisee?

The Salem, OR ex store owner and/or the owner of the LEGO set or the youtube who got involved? I'd be fairly sure they are not. Had the store itself been in Utah that would have been a 50/50 maybe.

Ki Mcallister was also BYU

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