It's willful negligence, imo, and Moose should be jailed. It's an elementary procedure, isn't it, and would've taken 5 seconds to run that search? But, nooooooooooo . . . they were having too much fun inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of commuters and yanking white guys out of their trucks, throwing them to the ground, and handcuffing them. A big dog and pony show.
Excellent post LW!
I know Moose is rabidly against racial profiling. Before he was run out of Portland, he endorsed anti-racial profiling measures that were lauded by those in the PC camp as historic. I've, also, heard, but cannot confirm (until I run a search, which I intend to do), that after the 9-11-01 attacks, Moose refused to investigate possible Middle Eastern terrorist suspects, because that would be *gasp* racial profiling.
In his search for the DC area shooters, Moose was willing to employ geographic profiling, psychological profiling, but never once did he mention racial profiling. Of course, by racial profiling, I mean: The willingness to entertain the possibility that the suspect is anything but white.
Some Moose quotes:
On Tuesday, Moose said "the task force has at least a "partial" description of suspects who he suggested are minorities. But he elected not to release the information, explaining it might 'paint some group.'"
"And if it somehow paints some group or causes people to be misidentified and causes them some hardship. That is the dilemma we want to stay away from."
In an article from abc.net.au, Moose states that he doesn't want to "muddy the waters" by releasing a composite sketch of the shooter too soon saying, "The concern is that we pollute the whole thought process, we cause people to have tunnel vision, think they see what they heard on TV and mix that up with reality." (OK, fair enough, I can understand that Moose would want to be cautious about releasing information that could be misleading or based on conflicting witness accounts, but then!:)
Chief Moose released a composite image of an older model, mid-sized commercial truck, with light damage to its right rear bumper and black lettering -- a row of large black block letters above a row of smaller letters, on each side.
Chief Moose said the white truck, which has a roll-up door at the rear, was seen at more than one of the shootings by more than one witness and he asked the media to distribute it widely.
Talk about polluting the thought process and causing people to have "tunnel vision"! Everyone was looking for the wrong vehicle!
The police claimed they were concerned about releasing misleading information to the public, but it seemed to me they were only cautious when it came to releasing any information that might suggest that the shooters were anything but white.