[sanderjd]

It's not a semantics game! My only point is that it makes no sense to complain that these people have not yet been punished by the justice system for something they did less than a week ago! Of course they haven't, it takes way more time than that.

Pointing out the difference between things that happened in the past and things that are still developing in the present is not a "semantic game". I don't think anyone besides you is confused by what I'm saying here...

But your other point is a good one. You're right that my "media attention" thing is too narrow. I think another thing that matters is whether there is some broader political debate that they can latch onto. With respect to the protests in 2020, there was a lot of political disagreement about the protests themselves, which (unfortunately) made a lot of people sympathetic to those police officers.

But in this case, there is not any broad political disagreement about whether it's appropriate to intimidate local news outlets in order to cover up your corruption.