Posted by:
Alpiner
(
)
Date: May 21, 2015 09:30AM
There appears to be some confusion about police obligation here.
Police aren't obligated to protect *anybody.*
See Warren vs. DC for the horrifying background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_ColumbiaGetting to the case at hand, the woman was harassed via email and Internet. Link is here (OP didn't post a link):
http://onlineathens.com/blotter/2015-05-21/woman-concerned-her-safety-after-speaking-out-about-mormon-faithInternet and email trolling simply don't rise to the level of warranting immediate police action unless the writings contain specific and credible threats. Most of the time, they do not. There was no indication anybody had ever been to her house or spoke to her in person.
Answering the question directly, in order for Mormon police to ignore revenge against apostates, 3 things would need to occur:
-- The LDS church would need some kind of institutional messaging mechanism to let LEO's know who the targets are;
-- The LDS church would need some kind of institutional mechanism to instruct its members to target said individuals;
-- LEO's would have to actually allow said targeting to occur on their watch and do nothing.
The reality is, Utah's a pretty safe place, and Mormons are a generally (at least, statistically speaking) non-violent people with regards to murder and other forcible felonies. There's no church-sanctioned targeting of apostates going on. I'm sure Steve Benson and Tom Philips have received their fair share of Internet harassment, but I've not yet read or heard about any kind of targeting of them physically.
So, to answer your question, this woman's not entitled to any protection, anywhere, unless she buys it or brings it with her. Even in Utah, she will receive police response and/or protection in accordance with the level of threat. Online harassment usually doesn't merit protection for anybody.
There is no LDS institutional program in effect for Mormon LEO's to allow targeting of apostates. I was Mormon when I was in both Utah corrections and federal law enforcement, and I was certainly never brought in on anything of the type. If anything else, it'd make the church look bad if an apostate were harmed or killed, so the church would want to do everything in its power to prevent it.
And before somebody mentions the Danites, yes, I've heard of them. They went the way of the dodo 100 years past.