Comments on: Sniper Musings

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Jul 2003 03:08:45 +0000

“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!

By: Ralph DeMattia

Ralph DeMattia — Thu, 19 Jun 2003 03:04:15 +0000

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!

By: David Littlejohn

David Littlejohn — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 17:36:24 +0000

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.

By: david

david — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 14:43:42 +0000

“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.

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 13:19:12 +0000

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.

By: Qetzal

Qetzal — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 03:30:06 +0000

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.

By: James Lloyd

James Lloyd — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 02:39:19 +0000

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.

By: Canis-D

Canis-D — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 01:22:38 +0000

Well said, Balko. Well said.

By: Jim Henley

Jim Henley — Tue, 29 Oct 2002 00:33:56 +0000

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.