Three Weeks in October The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper

INTRODUCTION My name is Charles A. Moose. I have been a police officer, at the writing of this book, for more than twenty-eight years. That's more than half of my life. It's the only real job I've ever had.I didn't start out wanting to be a police officer. In the town where I grew up, at the time when I grew up'in Lexington, North Carolina, in the 1950s and 1960s'all a young black man wanted from the police was to be left alone. I was afraid of them. I never had any interaction with them. I was never arrested, or even harassed. That's because I knew enough to stay away from all the places where I'd run into them. I wasn't a criminal. My family wasn't victimized by criminals. I didn't go near the Do Drop Inn, which was a nightclub in our part of town, where the criminals hung out, so I didn't see firsthand any of the arrests that I heard about taking place there. I didn't know the police. I never met a police officer or a sheriff. But I knew they were bad. I believed they were associated with the Ku Klux Klan. I believed they beat up black people, and put them in jail, and worse. I believed they were involved in cross burnings and lynchings. I believed they made up cases, falsified evidence and told lies. If you were black, and you were arrested, God help you. When I was a senior in college, I started planning to go to law school. I still had no contact with the police, and I didn't know anything about the law, but I knew which side I wanted to be on: I wanted to be on the side of the people defending themselves against the police. So I took a class in criminology. I thought it would help me be a better defense attorney. Then I got tricked into meeting a recruiter from the Portland Police Bureau in Oregon. One of my professors told me he'd let me skip a test if I went and met with the recruiter. I was always eager to skip a test, so I went. I met the recruiter and took a qualifying examination. I passed. That led to my being offered a job. I took the job, thinking only that it would give me a perspective on the police that would be useful for my work as a defense attorney. It was a look at the inside. I'd see how the police made up cases, falsified evidence and stretched the facts. I was hired by the Portland Police Bureau on an eighteen-month probation, which was standard for all new recruits. This meant going to the police academy, getting trained, being partnered with another officer, then learning how to be a patrol officer on your own. I told myself I would do the eighteen months. Then it would be on my resume. I would have the credit for becoming a police officer. But something unexpected happened to me. As a police officer, I got a close look at crime, and the people doing the crime and the people being victimized by crime. I saw people taking advantage of other people. I saw people hurting other people. I didn't see the police hurting them, even though I didn't see the police doing all that much to help them, either. And I saw that I had the opportunity to do something about that. The power goes out in a thunderstorm, and you're driving by the JCPenney in your district. You find the back door kicked in. Inside, you find people stealing everything in sight. You get a call on a ?rape in progress.' You go in, and find a guy who's been raping and beating an old woman, and he's running out the back door. You get a child abuse call, and find someone who's been trying to have sex with babies. You get a call on a burglary, and the victim is a poor black woman. This isn't some rich suburban family, where the thief has stolen the woman's diamonds and pearls. It's a poor black woman who lives in government housing, and the thief has stolen her cheap costume jewelry and her TV set and her food stamps. And here was the big surprise to me: The people doing this terrible stuff were black people. It was real black-on-black crime. It's notMoose, Charles A. is the author of 'Three Weeks in October The Manhunt for the Serial Sniper', published 2003 under ISBN 9780525947776 and ISBN 0525947779.