[DirectorTsaarx]

Originally posted by geoschmo:

Snipers, anthrax, random hooligans (why do we always have to bring the race thing into it. ), are all things that strike randomly.

Funny you should ask about that. As I live in Northern Virginia, and some of those sniper attacks were uncomfortably close to where I live and work, I know WAY too much about the events surrounding that one. Including the fact that the guy in charge of the investigation was made chief of police precisely because he was completely opposed to "racial profiling". At least the usual kind, which presumes that blacks (or Hispanics, or Arabs/Middle-Easterners or whatever other non-white ethnic group you care to insert) is responsible for a given crime. In fact, said police chief was so opposed to said profiling that he ignored witnesses who claimed the sniper was dark-skinned and ignored the fact that the sniper's car had been ticketed repeatedly near the times & locations of the shootings. Beyond that, all the police checkpoints they set up when the later shootings occurred were instructed to ONLY pull over white men. No women, no non-whites, just white men.

Now, I agree that racial profiling is a bad thing. However, completely ignoring witnesses isn't very smart; not to mention the fact that saying all serial killers are white males, and using that as the basis for an investigation, is pretty damn close to racial profiling as well. It's just not "minority profiling"...

Finally, the snipers were caught partly by luck, partly because they started taunting the police, and partly because someone at the tip-line finally decided to listen to the people linking the shootings to other crimes. And that police chief in charge has been branded a hero for completely mucking up the investigation. What do I expect from a region where a man convicted of buying crack cocaine from a prostitute gets re-elected as mayor?

I'll get off my rantbox now. If y'all are offended by the above, I'm sorry. But I needed to say all that to a (hopefully) sympathetic audience.