Two Cheers for Leaks
LEHRER, ELI
Two Cheers for Leaks The crime-solving tactic police hate. BY ELI LEHRER AROUND 1:00 a.m. on Thursday, October 24, with the manhunt for the Beltway sniper entering its third week, trucker Ronald...
...Around 3:00 a.m...
...It's almost a throwback to the Old West," argues Joe Vargas, a lieutenant with the Anaheim police who was one of the west coast's most respected public information officers before his promotion...
...Getting people involved works...
...They can help the person you're trying to catch and make everything harder on your detectives," explains Robert Wadman, a former Omaha, Nebraska, police chief...
...When the Washington Post and the capital area's Newschan-nel 8 reported that the sniper had left a tarot card at the scene of one shooting, a furious Montgomery County police chief Charles Moose sarcastically suggested that the media take over the investigation...
...Since even they are not infallible, however, the best "system" may be the one we have: an unpredictable but ultimately creative mix of official information, independent news reporting, and leaks...
...Working with another big-rig driver, he blocked the rest stop's exits...
...Since kidnappers tend to demand secrecy, police rarely publicized kidnappings before the early 1990s even though leaks rarely led to additional harm to victims...
...By and large, police departments have become much more open in recent years, and sharing information with the public has helped crack cases big and small...
...No system, method, or rule can cover every contingency...
...You can leak, and then the public has the information, but the person you're trying to get doesn't have a clear sense of what you're doing with it...
...heavily armed SWAT teams converged on the car and apprehended Beltway sniper suspects John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo...
...Managed correctly, however, openness and even leaks can assist law enforcement...
...Sometimes the police err on the side of releasing too little information...
...Two teenage girls kidnapped last August from a lovers' lane in Southern California almost certainly would have died at their kidnappers' hands were it not for an all-out media blitz about the case...
...In Chicago, where crime continues to decline even as it rises in many other large cities, an overly bureaucratic but effective strategy called CAPS (Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy) emphasizes two-way communication with the public...
...Although the over-hyped Amber Alert system for assisting kidnap victims bears a significant risk of creating false alarms, its underlying philosophy—get out as much information as quickly as possible—is enormously beneficial...
...Police priorities are developed partly from open meetings at the neighborhood level...
...The police cannot patrol every street at once, and releasing information helps the public to police itself...
...It's the first instinct to make sure that information doesn't get out," says Theron Bowman, chief of police in Arlington, Texas, and a sought-after expert on police management...
...Bowman explains that releasing too much information can actually hurt the public's ability to help the police...
...occasionally, they tell the public too much...
...and whatever the rule, there is no substitute for the exercise of judgment by seasoned law-enforcement officers...
...Good police work, in the end, relies on both openness and secrecy, gauged to the circumstances of each case...
...In fact, strategically leaked information often aids an investigation more than officially controlled news stories...
...When you release something [officially], it's out there and anyone who you're trying to get knows about it," says Edward Davis, the police superintendent in Lowell, Massachusetts...
...Police departments' dislike of leaks has a strong basis in fact: Uncontrolled leaks of every hunch the Eli Lehrer is senior editor at the American Enterprise magazine...
...In the late 1980s, "night stalker" serial killer Richard Ramirez managed to evade police and claim six more victims after then-San Francisco mayor Dianne Feinstein told a talk radio show the details of a dragnet aimed at catching him...
...In the sniper case, the leak of the famous tarot card and an ill-advised notice that police had stepped up patrols around schools did nothing to solve the case and may have helped the sniper claim more victims...
...Indeed, sensitive investigations always demand a degree of secrecy...
...He saw the license plate he had heard about over the radio— New Jersey tag NDA-21Z—and punched 9-1-1 on his mobile phone...
...Many of America's most effective police departments opened their doors wide during the 1990s and saw enormous crime drops partly as a result...
...Police captured serial child predator Alejandro Avila—who allegedly kidnapped, raped, and murdered 5-year-old Samantha Run-nion—after Orange County sheriff Michael Carona took the unprecedented step of briefing the public on the case's details last summer...
...A two-year-old website even lets residents see up-to-the-minute crime figures for their neighborhoods...
...Prosecutors, likewise, fear that releasing too much information can make it harder to find an impartial jury...
...Sometimes openness means the release of information that will turn out to be wrong...
...Releasing as much information as possible makes everyone part of the posse...
...Instead, reporters had overheard the number on police radios, and, after waiting for several hours, had released it without the consent of the police...
...From tip to capture, the alleged snipers' apprehension was a textbook law enforcement operation and a sterling example of citizen-police cooperation—except for one thing: The police had never released the license plate number that led to the suspects...
...The FBI, likewise, caught Una-bomber Theodore Kaczynski when the Washington Post published his rambling manifesto and his brother turned him in...
...On the whole, police departments' turn toward openness has improved the quality of policing...
...Wadman tells the story of a serial rapist who nearly got away because of a poorly timed leak...
...on Thursday, October 24, with the manhunt for the Beltway sniper entering its third week, trucker Ronald Lanz— his radio tuned to the "Truckin' Bozo" network—spotted a blue 1990 Chevy Caprice at a rest stop along I-70, a few miles from the Maryland-Pennsylvania border...
...Of course, it also carries risks...
...police follow don't help solve crimes...
...Major-crime detectives—who reach their positions through careful police work and attention to evidence—are particularly sensitive to leaks because they know that loss of control over evidence can destroy a case...
...Anaheim, California—which during the 1990s enjoyed the largest crime reductions of any of America's 50 largest cities—followed a similar policy of openness...
...Thus, as Washington, D.C.-area police hunted for the sniper, they announced that they were looking for a white van—a lead that would prove false...
...Both citizens and the media should appreciate that this is inevitable, just as they should respect the need for secrecy in many instances...
...And information about law-enforcement strategies is made available to citizens...
...For the most part, police hate leaks, even those that turn out to help them solve crimes...
...If every tip gets broadcast, then the public can go off in every-which direction," he says...
...Once it became standard practice to initiate mass publicity, kidnappings by strangers (never common to begin with) fell by more than 50 percent...
...Leaks are one of the most annoying parts of an investigation...
Vol. 8 • November 2002 • No. 11
