Apparently making a series of death threats against researchers is “not necessarily a crime”… if you’re a born-again right wing Christian.
From Paula Pant at The Colorado Daily, “CU biologists get death threats”:
Last weekend more than a dozen envelopes bearing the image of skull and crossbones and containing letters threatening the lives of CU-Boulder evolutionary biology professors were slipped under the doors of CU-Boulder buildings.
According to a reprint of the letter posted online, the threat reads: “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”
The letters and emails were signed “Michael Korn.”
Pant reports:
Several sources say Korn has distributed flyers on campus and has barged into offices of biology professors and administrators in the past year.
But in recent days the threatening e-mails and letters have occurred with increasing frequency and intensity.
On Friday an e-mail sent to CU-Boulder’s evolutionary biology department bore the subject line “a final CU Boulder EBIO appeal” and repeated the line “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society.”
It’s been going on for at least a year, and Jeffrey Mitton, chair of CU-Boulder’s Ecology and Evolutionary Biology department, has been targeted in particular.
If this were done by an environmental activist or animal rights activist (and similar things have been done by those groups), the university and police would respond with plenty of eco-terrorism rhetoric, calls for rewards, and pleas for new legislation.
But how do the police respond to this?
Police says they aren’t sure it constitutes an official threat.
“Just because you feel threatened, it’s not necessarily a crime,” Wiesley said. “It’s not directed against a specific person, John and Jane Doe. It’s more along a line of ideology – if you believe this, we think you’re wrong, kind of thing.”
Hmm. So let’s get this straight. If an animal rights activist makes sweeping comments about how he feels violence is justified against researchers, then lawmakers and industry groups go through the roof, he has his home raided, and cops are on red alert. If a born-again Christian makes sweeping comments–and targeted death threats–about how he feels violence is justified against researchers, then lawmakers and industry groups don’t have much to say, and cops aren’t even sure it’s “necessarily a crime.”