TheAgitator.com
Sniper Musings
Monday, October 28th, 2002Chief Moose
He still sucks. WMAL’s Chris Coors is trying to get the hype rolling for a “Chief Moose Appreciation Day.” For what? D.C. cops ran licence plates checks on that blue Caprice eight times (ten, by some reports). But our Nation of Islam killer and his Jamaican sidekick escaped a collar every time. Why? Because D.C. cops were blinded by the “white guys in white vans” profile. Should a police chief know better than to put so much faith in eyewitness testimony? Especially after one eyewitness out and out lied to them?
The only reason these guys were caught is because they practically begged for it. The reached out to the cops on several occasions (and were ignored the first half dozen or so times). They tried to tip them off on the Montgomery, Alabama shooting, but Moose and his minions didn’t catch on. Only after the snipers used a priest as an intermediary did they finally get some attention — and even then it took more than one call.
According to a friend of mine who spent some time in Portland (chief Moose’s prior police chief stint), our fearless leader was pretty much inept there, too, but was coddled by a protective mayor who liked what a black police chief did for the city’s image (I should add here that the friend who gave me this information leans well to the left in his politics).
Yes, the snipers are in custody, now. But I’d submit that it’s in spite of our leader, not because of him.
We’re vulnerable.
That’s the lesson I take from all of this. A couple of pissant malcontents with a rifle had the nation’s capital paralyzed for three weeks. Imagine what a coordinated team of well-trained terrorist snipers might do. We haven’t the slightest idea how to guard against terror like this, and when it does happen, our public officials trip all over themselves in the race to overreact. I’d guess that in a city with a murder rate like D.C.’s, ten murders in 21 days isn’t all that uncommon. But toss in some sensationalist media coverage and a region already harboring a target-number-one complex and you have a pre-written how-to-shut-down-the-city guide for any aspiring terrorist.
Profiling.
Interesting to watch the conservative crowd work themselves into a frenzy over the profiling issue. The same NRO-nics, and Kristol-ites (including Bill Kristol himself) who have been preaching the gospel of racial profiling to us for the past ten years, now, all of the sudden, are outraged — outraged — that local law enforcement may have missed Mohammed and Mavlo because they were policing on the “deranged white guy” profile.
So, to sum:
The “black-guys-in-BMWs-are-probably-drug-dealers” profile. Still OK. Consistent with what we know about black people. Good police work.
The “serial-killers-are-usually-white” profile. Racist. Offensive to white people. Poor police work.
Just so we’re clear.
The Death Penalty.
Yes, I know. They should fry, right? Or better yet, maybe we give the snipers a $50 gift certificate to buy some vertical blinds from the Home Depot. Then we should let someone from one of the victim’s families pop them from 100 yards as they’re loading boxes into the customized trunk of that blue Chevy Caprice.
That’s the “tough-on-crime” answer, right?
OK. But is anyone else a little uncomfortable with all of this talk about which of the four jurisdictions can summon the most electric chair juice to make a “trial” worth the time and effort? We’re speculating — publicly — about where it might be best to kill two people. Nobody else is bothered by this?
I know, maybe we can fry them first in Virginia, then zap ‘em a second, third and fourth time in Maryland, Alabama and at a federal penitentiary. Maybe we get ‘em a fifth time in Texas, too. What, you say? They didn’t kill anyone in Texas? But can’t we do it anyway, just for shits and giggles? I bet Texas would oblige.
No, I’m not feeling any sympathy for Messrs. Mohammed and Malvo. No, my heart isn’t bleeding. If they had given resistance at that Maryland rest stop and had subsequently been gunned down in a hail of bullets, I’d probably have flashed a warm smile inside.
But when we’re talking about using state power to take the lives of men in ankle shackles and handcuffs, the nonchalance and lack of somber tones gets me a little queasy.
If you’re wondering, yes, I’m against the death penalty. Even in cases like these.
WHOEVER privileged the “white van” descriptions over the Chevy Caprice description should have his pension yanked. The October 3 witness to the Pascal Charlot killing gave a clear, specific, contextually-significant account of a dark Caprice creeping slowly away from the scene with its lights off.
Had they even said, early on, it could be this OR this, then one of the eight occasions that police encountered the Caprice during the course of the spree would surely have turned out differently.
Well said, Balko. Well said.
From the left-most edge of your readership, excellent, most excellent, cut through the hype and get to the realities.
Here is my question- if there are, as we have been repeatedly warned, dozens or hundreds of Al Qaeda cells in the country right now- why don’t they take action?
As you point out, a well trained team of gunmen have been offered up a set of clear instructions on how to virtually shut down our capitol, yet they do not act?
Could it be, just possibly, that we are being fed a load of hype by the Federales? Could it be possible that there is a bit more real-politik at work here than many of us are willing/able to acknowledge?
Nah…must just be paranoid.
I only wish I was paranoid, at least then it really would be all in my head.
Unlike you, I’m not against the death penalty. But I still find it a little disturbing that harshness of (potential) punishment should play a significant role in selecting the lead jurisdiction for prosecution.
I’d rather see such decisions revolve around which jurisdiction has the strongest case, and/or where the most serious or numerous crimes were committed.
I agree with everything you have said. Except for the being against the death penalty part, I always have been for it, and always will. Except in this case. Along with feeling uncomfortable(no, not uncomfortable enough to rethink my stance on the death penalty) about the fact that the lawyer type folks are doing as you said, and fighting over where to kill them, I’d actually like my tax dollars to pay for them to sit in a 4×7 cell with no windows, and maybe a pot to piss in. But, alas, should they be jailed, one or both would probably get their advanced law degrees while watching reruns of Golden Girls on TV, when they are not ‘pumping up’ out in the yard.
I think you are correct in thinking that this debacle illustrates how unprepared we are for any future attacks. Media tells us time and time again that in not one aspect are we prepared for an attack…although the nice fellas in government tell us that we are so much further prepared than we were before. Before what? Before we realized that we don’t live in nice protected bubbles, I suppose. I would have thought if we were so prepared, especially in and around the friggin nation’s capital, then things wouldn’t have gotten as far as they did with the sniper. Chief Moose is a dork, agreed. But, I don’t think his inadequacy is the sole reason things got as far as they did. To me that’s like thinking good old Bush is the only one who runs this country. Admittedly, Moose might have had the ‘last word’ on issues, but I am sure there were lots of folks riding on the bus he was driving. It does annoy me, however, to see all the praise this man is getting for cracking the case. Cracking the case? Uh, unless the media is misleading us as they sometimes do, I think I heard that a priest called some crap in, and then the fellas at the rest stop…and didn’t the whole Caprice come in to light after another previously overlooked tip? Which part of this did Moose and his friends come up with? I guess I am just not clear on how the police/FBI/etc cracked the case, it sounded to me like the People more or less wrapped everything up for Moose, etc.
“we’re speculating –publicly–about where it might be best to kill two people. nobody else is bothered by this?”
These two people? No, I’m not bothered at all.
I can’t believe you wrote “collar”; that’s unfortunate.
BTW,
I’d be interested to know what undergirds your opposition to the death penalty.
For me:
I oppose it, too, but only in its current form, in favor of a more expeditious kill. Right now it’s a clumsy balance that jeopardizes civil rights and provides little deterrent effect or relief to victims. It’s a relativistic morass; I applaud your commitment, whatever its basis.
Don’t get me wrong–sometimes I can’t escape moral logic or religion in my politics, even though I believe I should, but I think I’ve got the death penalty debate licked. If we’re going to kill criminals it should be swift and brutal to maximize social benefits, because liberty is crapped anyway. Otherwise, we shouldn’t do it; there’s no real benefit for the cost.
By extension (maybe Julie was getting at this), prision/corrections in general could use a utilitarian analysis or two.
That racist bastard SHOULD quit! Why in the hell should HE be the one to write a book and get all the damned glory? All he did was sit on his fat black racist ass and tell other people to look for the WRONG suspects (WHITE Man in WHITE VAN) when his BLACK detectives were told after the SECOND shooting to be looking for TWO BLACK men! I hope that him and his racist wife do get the hell out of Montgomery County, take their racist reverse racial profiling attitudes and maybe go to New York and live next door to the Clintons; they’d be perfect neighbors!
“Chief” Moose is one hell of a fraud, a racist, and a thief! Firstly, He should NOT be allowed to profit from any book, because HE did NOT catch the snipers! He and his racist detectives had the beat cops (who did 95% of the REAL work on the case)looking for a WHITE man in a WHITE van when he damned well knew after the second killing from AN EYE WITNESS-no less- the he should have been looking for TWO BLACK men in a DARK late model SEDAN-NOT a white van!!! Secondly, it was the man who saw those two clowns asleep in that rest area that should be writing a book, NOT “Chief” Moose, whom is showing how much he really cares about the public by choosing to desert his job in favor of glory seeking, done at the urging of that pushy, equally racist wife of his, no doubt. I hope I live to see the day when that happy duo gets their due. God help the city that that bastard ends up in!