Replies

Am I the only one disgusted by all the accolades and backpatting for the "law enforcement team?" Institutional biases and bureaucratic incompetence allowed this pair to flourish almost to the point of nourishing them and then take credit for stopping them heroically long after the point where they should have been stopped had not all these biases and prejudices that nourished the problem existed.

I wonder if all this is going to provoke a rethink in both intelligence and police work, these big mess-ups? I see what others are saying here, but is it also not true that all this committee-like approach to important work is the big problem?

When this sniper case started they announced numerous members of many many depts. and agencies were setting to work and were going to be directly involved. But there's a point where more people doesn't mean you're getting more done - and it's not just that the extra people are not doing anything helpful, but you're actually getting less done than with the original group, because the extras start gumming up the works. You start having to spend lots of time updating everyone every day. "Well, we won't know what we're doing until those guys get back to us. But then we'll need to tell them what we're going to do, and find out what they're going to do about that, before we go ahead and do that." And then this monster becomes a great big dummy with no central brain. Almost like a jelly fish - all nerve endings but no eyes and no cognition.