> 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
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
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.
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").
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, actually, a bunch of people of the same religion (cult, really), university, and now, organized theft, are indeed guilty by association. I'm glad you see it too.
When I was called up for jury duty last year, the foreman instructed the all of us jury candidates that we should only evaluate the what was presented in court, and not to make decisions based on whatever is on the nightly news that night, and especially not whatever gets posted about the case on social media. That's the foremans emphasis, not mine. This was said not once, but several times a day while the process worked it's way out.
So I might misunderstand juries (sorry...suppressing a laugh there...assortment of people...), but I'm going to go with the instructions from the guy who works in the courthouse (I suspect he knows something about how juries work, but you probably disagree), and not some critical thinking impaired drone who accepts YouTube screeds from anyone who makes money from uncritical people accepting whatever they drool out as The Truth. Hit like so they can keep you full of infotainment...er...Truthiness!
I know I'm in the minority around here, waiting for inconvenient 'facts' to be established and being skeptical about obviously biased sources before I declare a guilty verdict and break out the torches and pitchforks, but I just can't help it. The curse of thinking independently over tracking social media upvotes.
Without an account with the journal, all I could read was the abstract, but it didn't hint to me that they corrupted the FBI, whatever that means, but have a high representation within the FBI.
Someone recently told me that when he worked for the BLM, there was a lot of LDS folk, which reinforced my observation that they are overrepresented in federal jobs in general (I have no evidence for this, just several anecdotes). I assumed it is because they usually don't smoke marijuana, so they are more likely to be eligible. That abstract gave more compelling possibilities that I didn't think of, that don't seem conspiratorial, like the higher multilingual likelihood at concentrated places like BYU, making it a great spot for recruiting.
Does the article go into more detail on how they "corrupted" the FBI that is not easily explained by them simply being ideal FBI hires?
I have read multiple accounts from insiders that were effectively:
1. LDS members can be obligated to provide each other jobs where possible.
2. LDS members (especially of the same congregation) are obligated to not report on each other to non LDS authorities.
And these factors made it sort of an invasion, where after a couple of likely competent LDS members started to make towards the top of government hierarchies, they started ballooning these organisations with their compatriots. Theres been a heap of money spent changing the public perception of this towards "Oh actually Mormons make great public sector employees because they dont drink".
You wont find much for this outside of books usually from retired spooks or journalists who involve themselves in that area.
But the issues have occasionally spilled over to public notice.
Please stop spreading misinformation. Neither assertion is remotely true. Affinity groups naturally form in an organization when enough are present, and this applies to all peoples and cultures. It doesn’t mean there is some mandate from some authority.
Exactly. The abstract essentially says “these people make for great employees for X Y Z reasons, but many people look at that and come up with conspiracy theories based on it”. Then the Parent says “look the research agrees with me!”
Depends. Do the atheists of your region have literal physical temples where they hold weekly ceremonies and tithings to a central coordinating organization that goes back almost 200 years?
I thought “it has to be some kind of corruption here”. And yup it’s the mormon mafia apparently