The empathy exercise for those of us in privileged neighborhoods is to imagine: How toxic must the dynamic be for entire communities to feel less safe with police and want them out altogether?
Technically a crime. But we all knew they and their children needed the meat. If everyone did it, the deer population would collapse and no one could hunt effectively even in-season. If someone had called a wildlife officer they could have certainly made the trek down. But no one would think to call the wildlife officers on them, because we knew it would lead to their children going hungry.
I think the thing people from rich neighbourhoods miss about that sort of thing is that when they hear stories of that nature [1], people's children going hungry over a minor infraction is seen as a failure of empathy on the constabulary's part. It's not. It's a failure of the law, and the constabulary's job is to uphold the law, not play social worker to people who break it. Hence our community's collective judgement that it was in everyone's best interest if the wildlife officer never found out about our neighbor's poaching activities.
[1] Joe Oliver has a great rant about a similar situation, lest readers think this only works in rural settings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjpmT5noto