any members in Montana

Hi @immatthewj no worries I understand. This thread is now officially about Montana. All 12 people (16 including the ones who since have left) of the state may be mentioned but shall not be defamed...

. . . if you wanted some follow up on that story that I related, if you remember the name I referred to, and you google it as I just did, there are a ton of hits on it and I got a couple of things wrong. The incident happened in ’75 and the death sentence was originally by hanging, but he wound up getting eight stays, so he was never executed until ’95 and by then the method was lethal injection. There do seem to be some news stories about at least one of his attorneys, although in the one I cursorily looked at just now I did not see the one who I had referred to (although, I just scanned that story quickly) but it would surprise me if the one that I had written about was not mentioned somewhere.

Since your thread kind of morphed off into a discussion about Montana and the culture(s) there, I will say that the Montana I grew up in was nothing at all like the Montana that is portrayed in Yellowstone, but bad things did (and I have no doubt still do) happen there. (Another incident, after I joined the Air Force, in my home town to one of my classmates just popped into my mind.) But things like that get the residents attention when they do happen. I don’t live in the city now, but in the city closest to where I do live (30 miles away) it’s real rare when a night goes by that the local news does NOT report on a shooting or multiple shootings. And it doesn’t really seem to get anybody's attention. Oh, I am sure that law enforcement and the paramedics are affected in ways that I wouldn’t understand unless I responded to gun play or the after effects of that kind of action, but at least to me, hearing about it has become routine.

I used to do crime mapping so I was painfully aware of homicide rates and where and what triggered them. And that's only reported ones. As I found out, increasing the police increases the crime. (More cops, more reports written - so no, not the actual crime, just the stats) 

I used to do crime mapping so I was painfully aware of homicide rates and where and what triggered them.

That's interesting.  Out of curiosity, did that include Montana at all?  And if so, how did that state stack up?  

No, not Montana. I only worked on a few cities. Mainly San Diego, but for comparison, a few big cities (Seattle, SF, LA, Chicago...) as well