It’s definitely worth your while to read the Daily Camera’s coverage of how a group of Boulder city and county police apparently collaborated to kill an elk on Mapleton Hill, then steal the carcass, then not report their actions. The website’s many pages of reader comments are also revealing, both of some important details and of the huge public reaction to the event.

Amazing, disturbing and revealing in so many ways. Not only does one mourn the loss of this beautiful animal, but one must now acknowledge the emerging picture of a culture of lawlessness in our police force (remember our recent story about two Boulder Police DUI officers and their own DUIs?). Surely the rot goes all the way to the top of the police hierarchy, and surely personnel changes need to occur, starting at the top. North Boulder and Mapleton Hill are so chock-a-block with liberal lawyers, judges and City Council members (past and present) that I predict heads will indeed role — indeed, that the process is already underway. If that doesn’t occur, then we’re really in trouble.

Further, is this incident not also evidence of a culture clash between North Boulder’s liberal, animal-loving citizenry and people who, though they may work in Boulder, are part of the gun-toting, hunting, yahoo element that is out there, in Colorado and beyond. I can’t help thinking that the cops involved intended their act to be, not just a way of bagging a trophy and taking meat home to their freezers, but a premeditated and hostile affront to people living inside the (to them, effete) Boulder bubble. In other words, a statement writ small of the polarization and class hatred that’s sweeping the land.

UPDATE: New developments were breaking Friday morning, with Chief Beckner tweeting that two officers involved have been placed on “Admin Leave w/pay.”