10-25-2009 Minnesota:
It was a kind of case local investigators hadn’t seen before.
A boy taken at gunpoint in front of his brother and friend. No witness saw what direction the masked gunman took the boy or got a good description of what he looked like.
The abduction of Jacob Wetterling is one of the highest-profile investigations in Minnesota history. Today marks the 20th anniversary of the 11-year-old’s abduction.
A lot was learned from the investigation. With so many different departments — there were 50 investigators working the case at its height — investigators now realize the importance of having one leader.
“We’ve learned a lot,” Stearns County Capt. Pam Jensen said.
They also learned the importance of good case management and prioritizing leads. Everyone was concerned about finding Wetterling, so the investigation expanded quickly, with investigators following leads as far away as California.
Looking back, Jensen said they should have kept the focus local. But she said she doesn’t want to dwell on what should or could have been done.
“It was the adrenaline,” Jensen said. “Everyone just wanted to find Jacob.”
A lot of good things were done early in the investigation. Investigators made a good decision to get so many resources into the area and use those resources to conduct an extensive ground search. They were able to get an FBI profiler to help them identify a possible suspect.
Today there are many more resources to help in such investigations.
Amber Alerts are the biggest change in getting information to the public about a missing child.
Sex offender registration means there’s an automatic pool of suspects, Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said.That is the problem with this thinking: Consider that a Department of Justice study shows that 97%+ of new sex crimes are committed by someone who has never before committed a sex crime. Why then, without evidence, are former offenders targeted? Law enforcement is constantly wasting time looking at them.
Most people now have cell phones and quickly call police when they see something suspicious, Sanner said.
And those cell phones have cameras, so people can sometimes capture images of crimes as they take place.
“We can share information at a quick pace,” he said. ..Source.. by Kari Petrie
October 25, 2009
MN- Investigators learned from Wetterling case
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1 comment:
"Sex offender registration means there’s an automatic pool of suspects, Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner said."
I just hope that they weigh all of the information behind each registrant before considering him/her a suspect! Or do the really think that because 19 year old "Romeo" slept with 15 year old "Juliette" 15 years ago and to whom he's still married with children of his own that he's going to abduct and rape a child.
That kind of crappy police work only wastes precious minutes following an abduction. When I hear that the cops are interviewing sex offenders within a radius of a crime, I hope it's only the one's whose prior crime(s) fit the M.O. of the current investigated crime. If not, then these cops are doomed to fail.
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