HOW THEY CAUGHT THE SNIPER

HOW THEY CAUGHT THE SNIPER

I’m not sure I agree with the moral Orin Kerr, the latest Volokh Conspirator, seems to want to draw from the sniper case, but he provides the first account I’ve seen of how the identification and capture were actually made. (On the other hand, he misses a trick in parodying anti-law-enforcement paranoia: he could have pointed out the arrest was made by a task force led by the jackbooted thugs from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, some of whose agents were hovering overhead in a black helicopter: well, anyway, a Black Hawk helicopter.)

Weirdly, the key breakthrough — the call about the earlier killing in Montgomery, Ala. — seems to have come from Muhammed himself.

[Or maybe not: here’s a report that Muhammed talked (in a “nonconfessional” way) to a Catholic priest, who then submitted a tip. Which seems to raise the question: how serious a Muslim is this guy, anyway?]

[UPDATE: Friday’s New York Times reports that he both called the tipline on himself AND talked two priests about it. Are we dealing with another attempted-suicide-by-lethal-injection here?]

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com

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