It is time to turn off CNN guys and let the police do their job. CNN and so many other media are over analyzing this thing to death; and all their so-called experts, if they were real expert, they would have been asked to help the authorities, not yap away with simplistic psychological profiling on TV.
<<Police grit shines under pressure
Chief keeps cool in spotlight's glare
Christie Blatchford
National Post
Saturday, October 19, 2002
ROCKVILLE, Md. - A teaser that ran periodically yesterday on CNN for the Larry King Live show and that neatly managed to nail those two touchstones so dear to the chill television heart -- police failure and public alarm -- said it all: "The investigation into the Beltway sniper has had a setback. What will the authorities do now?"
The answer was as plain as the nose on Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose's fierce and wonderful face: Why, they will do what they have done all along. They will do what police have always done. They will do what works.
As many officers as Chief Moose can muster will practise their craft, go back to the 12 separate crime scenes, talk to the witnesses again, invite in fresh eyes to examine familiar sites.
As many others will chase down tips from those who live in the suburbs that ring the Washington capital, sifting the overtly wacky (such as the man who early on walked into an Arlington, Va., police station and giddily confessed to the shootings) from the arguably malevolent (such as the now discredited, and as of late yesterday under arrest, faux witness to the most recent killing last Monday) and in the process perhaps finding a legitimate suspect or two, more likely dozens.
And when the Beltway sniper is caught -- Chief Moose does not allow that there is an "if" in the equation -- experience dictates it will be either luck, simple flatfoot shoe leather or a combination thereof that does him in.
As the Chief said wearily yesterday as he wrapped up his daily press briefing, "None of this is hard science, you know. We're doing the best we can."
It's curious: Journalism and police work have at least this much in common. Both are near-professions that despite the occasional public glimpse of a slick modern tool or two -- satellite dishes, TV studios-in-a-truck and tiny laptops for us; military aircraft with night-vision capability, profilers and laser graphics for them -- steadfastly remain low-tech trades plied best by stubborn hard workers with more instinct and grit than intellectual gift.
Yet the practitioners of the reporting trade, particularly when functioning in a large television-dominated pack as is the case here, persistently refuse to grant to their police equivalents the self-evident nature of this truth.
With hundreds of reporters camped out at Chief Moose's station, many driven to feed the insatiable beast that is the all-news, all-the-time cable network, every step in the investigative process is overblown and overdramatized, and the fundamental dictates of common sense tossed out the window.
Yesterday, for instance, there was much hullabaloo about the fact that in the wake of learning that one Matthew Dowdy allegedly had misled Fairfax County investigators about what he first claimed to have seen when FBI analyst Linda Franklin was killed outside a Home Depot, the area was once again being flooded by police. The questions came hard and fast: What did it say about the investigation? Had the first officers screwed up? What did it mean?
Chief Moose's reply -- that this was "nothing more than the reconstruction team laser graphing the area, doing some additional search.... I see that as very routine, very traditional, just good business to do what they did" -- was absolutely bang on. And any wet-behind-the-ears reporter should know it.
The day before, when I was at a Mobil Mart where the third victim, cab driver Premkumar Walekar, was killed, two Montgomery detectives were re-interviewing some of the gas station staff; a tip had come in about a possible "person of interest." And yesterday, other officers were at the nearby Michael's craft store, where windows were shot out just hours before the first of the nine victims was killed and which may have been the sniper's test run. Going back to square one is standard operating procedure for every police department in the world. It means what it means.
Yet the members of the pack come as virgins to every great American tragedy, despite the fact, as one veteran reporter noted wryly at one of Chief Moose's recent briefings, "I'm seeing all the usual faces here. It's like old home week." You might think, after the shootings at Columbine, after 9-11, after the Son of Sam, after all the other killing sprees that have left their scars on the landscape of this country, that the press would have figured out the basics.
And the thing of it is, you can't discuss this case, or any other investigation of multiple murder, without also discussing the mass media. The two are indivisible, linked at the hip such that it is sometimes difficult to ascertain who is in the driver's seat -- the police or the press.
There's no better evidence of this than in the charging, triumphantly announced on CNN as though its reporters had made the collar themselves -- and as though it were the sniper himself who'd been nabbed -- yesterday of poor Mr. Dowdy.
From the minute Chief Moose said in his Thursday briefing that this witness who had purported to have seen the sniper in the Monday killing was a fraud, the pack was after blood.
By noon yesterday, the Chief's answer was still the same: Yes, this was not an insignificant development, but it had hardly crippled the investigation, and it would in the fullness of time be dealt with, but he and the task force had more worrisome priorities. The pack was not satisfied: What kind of message would it send to other potential tipsters if he wasn't charged? Would people now be afraid to phone the hotline? Why wasn't something being done?
Chief Moose's reply was, as always, full of his profound faith in the ordinary citizen.
"Look," he said, "whether we make a show of this individual, people know what he did was wrong. Many are disgusted that it happened. I think they're glad we found that out before any irrational decisions were made. I don't know that it's imperative we move this case forward so rapidly." The tips line was still being overwhelmed with calls from the public; clearly people weren't frightened off. "I've spent my adult life enforcing the law," the Chief said. "If someone's violating it, obviously I'd like to see it taken care of." But it wasn't his focus. As Montgomery County executive officer Doug Duncan snapped once, when asked what the message to the public was, "What message do we need? We have someone out there who is shooting people who we need to arrest."
But the questions kept coming, with reporters demanding some sign of progress until, finally, one fellow suggested that perhaps Chief Moose was playing his investigative cards too close to his chest, the inference clear that perhaps the police were keeping information to themselves that might help the citizens here protect themselves.
Chief Moose's voice, when he answered this, was civil but laden with fury.
"Sir," he said, "I appreciate your question, but I have family that lives here, friends that live here. All of us do. I am personally insulted if you would think that I would withhold something from you or anybody else that would keep you safe.
"OK? So let's not even go there. Let's not even talk that way. It just doesn't even make any sense we would put people at risk, and hold something back that they could use.... For what gain? Our job is to protect and serve and that is the job and always has been the job. Maybe you needed to ask the question, but please, understand, there's no way we could live with ourselves and live with our families if we had information that would somehow keep people safe and then actually made a decision not to give that to people, OK?"
Still, all day long, the pressure was ratcheted up, until finally, late yesterday, Mr. Dowdy was arrested: Which of the two forces, police or press, drove that event, I ask you? And which of them ought to be making these calls?
Thus the conundrum Chief Moose referred to yesterday. "We are making progress, but it's a Catch-22, one that we struggle with.... We don't want to harm our progress," he said, by disclosing too much of it.
That's some catch, that Catch-22, as the writer who coined the phrase, Joseph Heller, put it. One of the smartest books about this sort of thing -- the triangle where killer, media and police meet uncomfortably-- remains Hunting Humans, The Rise of the Multiple Murderer, written in 1986 by Elliott Leyton, a Canadian anthropologist who, last I talked to him, still lived in Newfoundland.
Somewhat to his own surprise, he found that "the police, who are commonly regarded as stupid and brutal, often appear ... to possess more intelligence and insight into the killers than do the professionals."
As for the role of the media, then just becoming the powerful creature it is now, Dr. Leyton noted dryly, "No one ever became famous by beating his wife to death in an alley, but virtually all our multiple murderers achieve true and lasting fame."
Bets are Chief Moose will have the more ringing epitaph.
Christie Blatchford can be contacted at cblatchford@nationalpost.com
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