Some words on the sniper situation in DC, in a roundabout way.

When the Gainesville serial killings were going on back in the 80's, I was living in Orlando, about an hour south. There was phenomenal pressure on the police to find the killer. They responded by finding a scapegoat, who as it turned out was completely innocent of the crimes (but admittedly had his own issues). I remember this so well because the scapegoat was the brother of a friend of mine. I won't post his name; you can look it up. The family was dragged through enough unwanted publicity as it was. My friend ended up having to drop out of school, and her brother had his rights basically trampled. They convicted him of some other crime that should never have gone to court, and gave him the maximum sentence for that, solely because he was a suspect in these horrific murders. There was no public apology when the killer turned out to be somebody else.

After I moved to Atlanta, history repeated itself in the form of the Olympic Park bombing. Again, there was enormous pressure on the police to come up with a suspect. And they singled someone out, and trampled his rights. Even worse, they used dirty tricks to try to get him to confess (actually, they probably did enough of that in the Gainesville case too). I won't post his name either. He too was completely innocent.

These incidents were particularly galling, not only because of what happened to the scapegoats, but also because they gave the public a completely false sense of security, while the real perpetrators walked around free.

There is as much pressure on the police in the DC sniper case as there was in the other cases I just mentioned. I have no doubt that they'd have a scapegoat already, EXCEPT that the ongoing nature of the crime is preventing this from happening. Anybody they take into custody will be pretty much exonerated by the fact that they're being held while the next day's incident occurs. So this must be particularly frustrating for the DC police (and all the other agencies involved). All I can suggest is that people lay off and stop pressuring them so much, unless you're the type who can somehow take solace in the police having a suspect who is quite possibly the wrong man in custody.

Let's just hope they get the real killer(s), and soon...

Woops, things might already be happening...