By James Bovard
Those who forget police debacles could be the victims of the next law enforcement fiasco. Former Montgomery County, Maryland, police chief Charles Moose passed away on Thanksgiving Day. He became famous as the most prominent law enforcement official during a three-week sniper rampage in the Washington area in 2002. The Washington Post ran a front-page piece on his death, and career and local officials hailed him as a âgreat leaderâ and âterrificâ while the media touted him as a âhero.â
But Moose was the mastermind of one of the biggest law enforcement pratfalls in this century. After the snipers were finally captured after killing ten people, Moose declared, âTwenty-two days felt like forever. It could have easily been 22 weeks.â Actually, if private citizens and the media had not acted proactively, it could have been twenty-two weeks. Criminologist Susan Paisner observed in late 2002 in the Washington Post that the two sniper suspects âwere caught despite [Moose] and the task forceâs efforts, not because of them.â
Blunders by Moose, the first black police chief in Montgomery County, and other law enforcement officials boosted the sniper death toll. Because the first shootings occurred in Montgomery County, Moose took charge of the local law enforcement response.
