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‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

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Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#241

Post by fenomas »

parsnips wrote: post #200
hinkley wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm hung up on the same thing, chief. Why per capita per square mile instead of per capita? Why do the miles enter into it? Because of more interactions? I'd like to see just the numbers per capita. I suspect they're fairly close.

Because violent felonies such as homicide proximity is the requisite factor in victimhood. ie The victim must be located near the killer. Given 1 homicide in 100k for 100sq miles called "rural" vs 1 homicide in 100k for 5 sq miles called "urban", your odds of being in proximity of a homicide are much higher in the urban area. 20 times more likely.

> Because violent felonies such as homicide proximity is the requisite factor in victimhood

This doesn't stand up. Crime statistics are measured after the crimes happen; whatever effect might be due to proximity has already taken place.

Consider: in your example you say two places have equal per-capita homicide rates but one is 20x denser. It follows that the denser area will have 20x more people "in proximity" to any given homicide, and therefore that P(victim|proximity) must be 20x lower compared to the rural place.

The way you've done the math only makes sense if everyone "in proximity" of a homicide was equally likely to be a victim, but given equal per-capita rates that can't be the case.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#242

Post by ascorbic »

mirimir wrote: post #226

TFA doesn't explore at all how McElroy managed to "evade jail" after so many crimes. But it seems that basically there were enough people who would provide false alibis.[0] Maybe because he had threatened them. 0) http://mentalfloss.com/article/574749/ken-mcelroy-murder-ski...

That's a much better article

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#243

Post by puranjay »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #110
kemiller2002 wrote: post #96

So my family actually knew the sheriff from the next county over. He picked up McElroy a couple times for various things. (I think being drunk etc.). Now when this was explained, this was 26-27 years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but he explained that the man was a monster of an individual. (like huge.) The guy could pick up a hog from the other side of the fence and just walk off with it. Dead lifting a few h…

My grandmother in-law relayed a similar story growing up on a farm in Kansas. When she was a little girl there was a gypsy camp up the river. The gypsies would occasionally steal chickens. Her father eventually put a stop to it when they brazenly tried to use a car (I don’t know where they got it) to steal several chickens. Her father got his hands on one of the women and beat her senseless and one of the men engaged…

This might be strange to HN readers, but in large parts of the world, going to the police for protection or justice isn't the default. The police is often corrupt and complicit with the perpetrators, especially if they happen to be from a privileged class or social strata.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#244

Post by puranjay »

nostrademons wrote: post #17
fallingfrog wrote: post #8

Over the long timespans of human evolution I’m willing to bet that this is a significant selective pressure.. bullies probably just disappeared or were kicked out of the community to fend for themselves

He had 14 children, though - that doesn't seem like a failure to pass along his genes.

Human beings are weird in that "failure to integrate into society" and "failure to pass on your genes" don't necessarily overlap.

In fact, failure to integrate into a social order often increases your chances of passing on your genes.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#245

Post by defen »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #123
kemiller2002 wrote: post #96

So my family actually knew the sheriff from the next county over. He picked up McElroy a couple times for various things. (I think being drunk etc.). Now when this was explained, this was 26-27 years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy, but he explained that the man was a monster of an individual. (like huge.) The guy could pick up a hog from the other side of the fence and just walk off with it. Dead lifting a few h…

Reminds me a bit of the series Gunsmoke, which I recently watched for the first time online. Surprisingly good. Time frame is earlier but the feeling of "frontier justice" resonates.

Which episode? There are 635 of them...

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#246

Post by [deleted] »

dragonwriter wrote: post #174
vinceguidry wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These weren't all that long ago. Someone claimed that there are people walking around today that went to one of these events. I couldn't corroborate that claim but we're talking less than a hundred years ago. While the Middle ages were some 5-900 years ago. Also what makes these public killings so notable is the fact that it was a deliberate effort of an entire society to instill fear into a minority. That you don't…

> Also what makes these public killings so notable is the fact that it was a deliberate effort of an entire society to instill fear into a minority. That you don't see very often. I prefer the version of history suggested by the last sentence, but unfortunately cannot accept it was accurate. Looking around the world, I see it frequently and with broad geographic distribution. (Though it's not the whole society, just…

[deleted]

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#247

Post by jabl »

fenomas wrote: post #228
csande17 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "murders per capita per square mile" metric really gets to the heart of the question on every American's mind: what percentage of face-to-face interactions are murders?

If you wanted to track that you'd need to do the opposite of what GP is suggesting. That is, a dense urban area would have more face-to-face interactions than a sparse rural one. Given two areas with equal levels of per-capita violence, it would then follow that the more sparsely populated one would have more violence per face-to-face interaction, not less.

Wouldn't that assume that murderers do some kind of random walk, and randomly kill some person they happen to get close by?

I'm sure there are those, too, but IIRC in most violent crime the attacker and the victim know each other. Do people have substantially bigger social circles in cities?

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#248

Post by Teever »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #129
asfarley wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This article describes a situation where a bad person did bad things, and was eventually stopped. You are saying: "That was not the solution. But I don't know what the right solution is". How can you possibly know that there is an alternative without knowing what it is? I think what you are really saying is: "I have an ideological opposition to violence-as-a-tool which I cannot rationally explain". Or, "the consequen…

It stems from a fundamental faith that there is a good solution. Therefore, any non-good action is due to a failure to look hard enough for the good solution.

Which is a totally reasonable position to take except it overlooks the reality of time being a finite thing.

Re: ‘No One Saw a Thing’: When a Midwest Town Banded Together to Kill the Town Bully

#250

Post by HocusLocus »

OBVIOUSLY this vigilante justice was not planned over the entire time span of McElroy's rein of terror, or it would have happened long before. So there is no intrinsic aspect of flash-mob vigilantism we should be concerned about.

OBVIOUSLY no one here is in a position to exonerate any of the specific crimes McElroy committed.

Sounds like a nice place to live, but if you were to be drawn there because of this they probably wouldn't want you living there. That is the attitude of people who feel resentful that 'doing what needs to be done' has drawn more national attention than the collected crimes of McElroy ever did.

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