In the last days of 2022 Americans have learned (viz: the Twitter Scandals) just how controlled their sources of information are. As a result, one can not blame thinking citizens for questioning just about everything they read or hear. The lack of confidence in what their government, the FBI, the legacy press or the media tells them infects other, perhaps innocent sources of information. These days one is even driven to questions the motives and pronouncements of the tiny Moscow Police Department in far off Idaho. But current events give us cause.
As a scientist and observer of the political seen—this author— is disconcerted to see such a headlong rush to judgment in the USA regarding the murders in Moscow Idaho.
We do not know enough about the evidence against Bryan Kohberger the only suspect in the tragic and horrible murders of the four Idaho University students to agree or disagree with the media and others who seem to have concluded that this person is guilty with no corroborative evidence.. Few even describe him accurately as the “suspect” or “alleged” killer.
The indictment against Kohberger will not be opened perhaps for weeks, so the evidence against Kohberger will remain unknown. So an appropriate and constitutional approach to this case should be that the Moscow Police —without providing any information on what evidence they have—have arrested a suspect….still presumed to be innocent. That seems a difficult task for our modern day press and media practitioners to swallow.
But there are reasons to feel uncomfortable.
Moscow, Idaho is a small city, more of a town really, with only about 26,000 inhabitants. It is the epitome of the small college town, where a university dominates the economy. When Christmas/New Year break is over (in a week or so) some 8,500 students will surge back into Moscow to again fill up the university campus—-and as well the local pubs, hotels, restaurants, bars and shops. When the University is in session one out of every three town residents is a student. A huge (30%) portion of the population.
The fact that the Moscow Police, with the State Police and the FBI, up to now, have been unable to find even one “suspect” in the last seven weeks of their investigation, must have weighed heavily on the University, it’s staff, and the town that depends on University students for their economic survival.
The Moscow Police must have been under intense pressure to find “someone….some suspect” before the end of the holiday break. For if they did not, it was very likely that many worried parents would be hesitant about sending their young sons or daughter back to Moscow, where a lunatic knife-wielding killer was still on the loose—somewhere. The result of that parental fear would be a sharp decrease in enrolled students, and an enormous negative impact on the economy of Moscow and the University .
By arresting Kohberger, just before the end of the holiday, the Moscow Police have avoided the problem of frightened parents keeping their children home, and the potential scarcity of deep-pocketed students in town. A calamity that would have caused the near collapse of the Moscow economy.
The suspect will linger in prison in Pennsylvania for a while, his indictment will not be opened until well after classes have begun again, eventually the Moscow Police and the FBI will finally release the evidence they have against him. But by then students would have returned.
Is our 2020-2022 disbelief in all government veracity, competence, and authority misplaced? Have we become so hardened by the corruption in DC that we even question the good guys of the local Moscow police force?
Let’s hope, there is hope for honesty somewhere in the USA.
But what is the evidence against Kohberger? That is the question.
Has there been a rush to judgement for small-town economics?
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