Dark Side: Who’s side are You? The Victim’s
As the self-esteem of each investigator on a task force flags, the unit itself seems to suffer from a collective loss of confidence breeding mistakes, infighting, defensive behavior, and, ultimately, bureaucratic paralysis. In a multiagency task force, such as the Atlanta child murders, the paralysis ran so deep that different agencies actually distorted facts in order to protect themselves from the recriminations everyone believed would come. This, obviously, benefits the killer who is often only a few steps away, reading about the dissension in the newspaper or hearing it in the news, and realizing that each change of his MO throws the entire police machine off the track. We will also explore the investigative process of following leads. What we call “red herrings, information overload, and the needle in the haystack,” will cover the gamut of the problems involved in pursuing the real killer. As the serial killer strikes more victims and adds more clues to the already ...