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Comment by bb88 | Hacker News Reader

I would assume if you're an overworked cop in an underfunded police department, it's gonna be hard to prove a murder from what looks like a suicide.

A toxicology is going to cost money and maybe not actually provide any more details. Any needle marks are likely to go unnoticed by the coroner doing the post mortem, if one is even given.

And the sad thing is, after all the investigation has happened, it's possible he killed himself. I'm sure lots of parents have thought their children would have never be capable of doing that, only to find out later that they did.

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But when a different citizen (CEO) dies, they have the resources for a hundred detectice manhunt

San Francisco exhaustively investigates when people are murdered on the street, no matter who the victim is. They have a 94% clearance rate for homicides.

94% feels low when they are determining suicide in only 40s

Someone notable, unambiguously murdered in broad daylight, with ample surveillance footage to go off of, is far easier to justify spending investigative resources on than an apparent suicide maybe being a murder. As the saying goes: "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses not zebras"

There was a brown kid stabbed to death in NYC the same day. No resources were expended to find his killer.

Yeremi Colino, 17, stabbed to death in a fight between two street gangs. The police have published photos of the murderers but evidently nobody in that community wants to say anything about who they are. NYPD claims they are putting resources into catching them, but how was the CEO killer caught? Some random member of the public turned him in.

Yes and unfortunately there's a saying that goes something like snitches get stitches. Talking to the cops is the last thing many people want to do.

Which is just another way of saying that the police will not protect informants or regular citizens from many kinds of crime. The police say they're underfunded and cannot do so. Which makes this a policy decision.

[1] https://www.polfed.org/news/blogs/2024/bbc-panorama-highligh...

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/03/underfundi...

(trying to keep any partisan links out of it, as there are MANY blaming one side or the other)

How do you really expect the police to do so? Even the secret service can't stop presidential candidates from getting shot at, and you can't possibly expect the police to provide anything approaching that level of security.

I'm pretty damn sure it's not impossible to do. Will it require changes to the police force, including in funding? Yes of course.

What about the migrant killed? NYT didn’t even report it.

You’re just reiterating the parent commenters point, the first reason you listed was that he was “notable”. It would not be hard to find cases of unambiguous murder that go unsolved or under-investigated due to lack of notoriety.

>You’re just reiterating the parent commenters point, the first reason you listed was that he was “notable”.

The parent commenter did not mention anything about being "notable". At best he was trying to imply it by burying it in between the lines. I stated it explicitly.

In one of the busiest square .5 miles on the planet, no less.

That's NYC. Interesting thing about NYC is that they have a lot of cops. I mean a lot. $11B spent on policing and the police to resident ratio is 1:162. Compare that with Boise, ID say where residents pay half per person as much but the police to resident ratio is 1:563.

Welcome to the USA buddy.

Why doesn't the US gov investigate and prosecute all the people on Epstein's video tapes found in his New York mansion? When you give me the answer to that you will have the answer to your question. You are asking the right questions Obi One.

> I would assume if you're an overworked cop in an underfunded police department, it's gonna be hard to prove a murder from what looks like a suicide.

In some countries, a doctor clarifies the cause of death.

* In almost all countries

I don't know any developed country where a trained coroner does not do handle unnatural deaths. But apparently USA likes to do its own thing.

Isn't their budget literally like a billion dollars a year?

No, it is not. And their budget is similar per citizen to most major cities [1], so implying that somehow they should spend money on every whim isn’t justified.

[1] https://www.vera.org/publications/what-policing-costs-in-ame...

Well, and are they underfunded or not?

The point is if that billion is already earmarked for normal police activities, and they're already underfunded, they can't be expected to cough up a bunch more money for this investigation.

But are they underfunded?

Yes, they are so vastly underfunded they cannot follow all such wild fantasy chases without ignoring things for which they have evidence, which would necessarily put other things behind, and then you could rant about those things.

Is this answer enough for something you could simply try to understand directly instead of repeating such simplistic and myopic beliefs?

It just looks like they have a lot of money is all. People keep saying they're under funded but then link to a page that says they have almost a billion dollars per year. Much more than any other civic institution I can find info about. How much funding would it take for them to pursue suspicious deaths? What else are they doing that they don't have resources for this? Maybe the problem isn't funding.

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