I wonder how often the Branford, CT police department provides 24 hour guards for ‘regular’ people who have received death threats.
It seems to me a tough, highly trained police officer would be much better able to take care of himself following a few threats than, say, a battered wife whose psychotic spouse and his psychotic family have vowed to kill her.
But it’s a safe bet the Branford, CT police department would not provide 24 hour guard for such a woman.
I don't believe that the officer has been threatened. I think that's made up or an exaggeration by the police. All the remarks I've read have been conditional, IF this, THEN that. Such a remark is not a threat.
So, even more to your observation, the police are selective in who they protect, and why they offer their services on the taxpayer's dime. They protect their own. The rest of us are on our own.
You are seeing the "officer safety above all" mentality here. Very often, the loud mouth bully is a coward. So you see officers "wait for backup" at a school shooting in progress, rather than go in and protect the kids. You see a marked preference for arresting middle-class people for minor offenses, than actually busting an inner-city drug house.
You see the police of LA during the Rodney King riots, and the NOPD during Katrina desert their posts rather than put themselves at risk.
The powers that be DO NOT WANT TO RISK people seeing just how many police would run away in a real conflict where the police do not have the advantage of overwhelming force and numbers.