Doesn't it make sense for police to go after high profile killings? If they catch the CEO killer that's more good press for them, and if they were slacking there's more chance that they'll get hounded for it.

Sure. NYPD is doing the rational thing in a society that treats the murder of a wealthy CEO as a much worse crime than the murder of a semi-homeless maybe-illegal immigrant.

And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society.

>And in a society that strongly valued equality before the law, they wouldn’t dare treat the two cases so differently. Thus we can see that we don’t live in such a society.

How would "equality before the law" as you described even work? If some celebrity got killed and people wanted to contribute their resources into finding their killer, is that suddenly bad now? If my son got killed and I'm trying to find his killer rather than doing the Right Thing™ by devoting my time equally among all unsolved murder cases, am I a bad person?

You wouldn’t be, but the police doing so would be in such a situation, if there was equality.

Is a police department that shrugs and says "we'd want to solve this high profile murder that everyone wants solved, but because of 'equality' we have to solve this gangbanger murder that nobody cares about" really what we want? Isn't a government that's responsive to citizen demands also an ideal? What happens if they conflict?

Keep in mind, for this case in specific, a huge number of people did not want it solved

>Keep in mind, for this case in specific, a huge number of people did not want it solved

Where? If you go by reddit, there's a "huge number of people" who want to see society collapse in a socialist revolution, but that's clearly not representative of the overall population. Even the disparity between the support for kamala vs at the polls was stark.

If you go by literally any venue where people talk. There is, at the minimum, widespread 'darn - a completely awful human was killed - what a shame' mentality everywhere, and across the political spectrum.

Justice is not defined by the law, but by personal values. The prosecutor in this case is going to be obsessive in ensuring that none of the jurors understand their legal right to jury nullification, because if they do - this guy stands a very high chance of a mistrial - if not outright acquittal.

>If you go by literally any venue where people talk. There is, at the minimum, widespread 'darn - a completely awful human was killed - what a shame' mentality everywhere, and across the political spectrum.

that's... not the same thing being argued a few comments up? ie.

"Keep in mind, for this case in specific, a huge number of people did not want it solved"

I don't think it's controversial that the CEO isn't well liked, or that some (most?) people thought his death was a net good, but that's not the same as actively wanting the murder to not be solved.

I mean, yes, I do want a world where the police feel like they need to solve murders even when the victims are considered distasteful.

Your concerns about some people being more deserving of a good investigation reminds me why it's great that hospitals will serve everyone, even if they are a gangbanger.

Where do hospitals provide literally equivalent good service to everyone, without any preference whatsoever?